City Science, in Partnership with Runnymede Borough Council and London Borough of Hounslow, has been commissioned by UK Research & Innovation to support understanding and building synergies for decarbonization across the Heathrow Strategic Planning Group region (Runnymede Borough Council and London Borough of Hounslow, Spelthorne Borough Council, Elmbridge Borough Council, Surrey County Council, Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, Slough Borough Council, and London Borough of Ealing.
Our work will highlight key areas that need significant investment going forward to enable low carbon growth in the area and to secure on-going revenue to support this region in financing further decarbonisation.
Our work will include:
Offsets: Collaborating with Runnymede Borough Council to pilot the creation and financing of Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust (HACT) retrofit credits, measuring the carbon reduction created through retrofitting social housing (ensuring retrofits fulfill key criteria, and the income created benefits either the environment or society.
Electric Vehicles (EVs): Collaborating with the London Borough of Hounslow to support their investigations into opportunities to create additional offset revenue from EV chargers.
HSPG Energy Analysis: Investigating the current energy/heat demands, sources, and infrastructure within the HSPG area to outline the existing barriers to decarbonisation, such as grid constraints. This will inform opportunities in the area to help overcome these barriers and identify where investment might be needed to enable low carbon economic growth.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Collaborating with Runnymede Borough Council to investigate the feasibility of utilising local waste streams to produce sustainable aviation fuel.
Transport & Spatial Planning: Developing a dynamic model to improve understanding of the current generators of emissions across transport modes, and the potential for new public transport initiatives to help reduce those emissions over the coming years, including decarbonising mobility more generally.
Additionally, we’ll work to build upon the Joint Strategic Planning work previously carried out by HSPG, looking at how planning can enable low carbon growth and stimulate investment in decarbonisation.
This exciting project is set to be completed in June 2025. We look forward to working collaboratively on this project, to better understand and share synergies that will support decarbonisation across the HSPG area.
