Net Zero Council focuses on developing sector-specific plans for Net Zero

Broadway Initiative • Jul 11, 2023

Yesterday the Net Zero Council met for the second time, bringing together industry leaders with Minister Graham Stuart in a group for which Broadway Initiative provides the secretariat. Our convenor Ed Lockhart played a key role in calling for the Council and bringing it together, and joined the discussions yesterday at Admiralty House. 

We were delighted this second meeting managed to get into more depth on industry's plans for Net Zero. The Council discussed the principles that might be used by each sector of the economy to develop strategic frameworks that will underpin the transition, and attendees planned how to secure the widest possible engagement. 


We were especially pleased the meeting focussed on developing sector-specific plans, an area of work Broadway has been developing since our 2021 report Sector Wide Net Zero Plans, summarised here https://www.broadwayinitiative.org.uk/sector-plans. We believe these plans are invaluable in the quest for Net Zero, and we are looking forward to supporting the council in taking this work forward and excited to get more business sectors getting involved over coming months.


The Net Zero Council brings Government together with business and finance leaders to support the UK’s key sectors in the race to net zero, adapting to and unlocking the opportunities of the green transition. The Net Zero Council provides a vehicle through which we can pool our expertise, taking advantage of the UK’s world leading position in the race to net zero to secure a transition that is both pro-business and pro-growth.


by Broadway Initiative 22 Apr, 2024
BT marked Earth Day by announcing their partnership with UK Business Climate Hub, the one-stop-shop for UK SME net zero advice managed by Broadway Initiative. BT announced they were joining the UK Business Climate Hub partnership to help small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to take steps to halve emissions by 2030, and pointed their SMB clients to the Hub's ‘Seven Steps to Sustainability’. The UK Business Climate Hub is the UK portal for SME net zero advice, developed with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the international SME Climate Hub and the UK’s main business organisations, energy networks, high street banks and professional bodies. The coalition is managed by the Broadway Initiative and endorsed by the Net Zero Council . Existing members of the coalition include Barclays, British Business Bank, British Chambers of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Electricity North West, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), HSBC UK, Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), Institute of Directors (IoD), Lloyds Bank, Make UK, NatWest, National Grid, Northern Powergrid, and Sage. 
by Broadway Initiative 25 Mar, 2024
The Broadway Initiative has launched the Nature Market Dialogue, the space in which stakeholders and influencers can collaborate on the future of UK nature markets. The launch took place on the 25 th March during a roundtable that marked the commencement of the Dialogue’s first workstream, a deep dive into nature market governance. Nature remains in decline. Biodiversity and ecosystem services continue to suffer despite increased public interest and funding, philanthropic efforts and government regulation. Conventional markets have proved incapable of driving investment in the natural capital on which human flourishing and planetary health rely, so nature markets have emerged as a solution. The Nature Market Dialogue is bringing together all the key voices to realise the potential for high integrity nature markets. The Broadway Initiative’s State of UK Nature Markets 2023 built on the work of multiple partners to identify three key challenges: governance, demand drivers and policy continuity. Supported by Esmée Fairburn, the Nature Market Dialogue aims to harmonise and synergise the excellent work being undertaken to crack these barriers and secure agreement on what needs to be done next. The Dialogue will develop a new consensus to respond to the government’s pending consultation on mobilising voluntary green finance and negating greenwash, building the necessary momentum to carry nature markets into the future. The first workstreams are intended to take 18 months to complete, but the Dialogue is here to stay. The Dialogue launched on the 25th March with the initiation of the governance workstream, at a roundtable in partnership with the Environmental Markets Board, Frontier Economics and Arup. Ministers, officials, finance experts and leaders from business and farming gathered to learn both from each other and from the mistakes of the voluntary carbon markets. The roundtable marked the beginning of a process that will surface a consensus among all market participants.  Peter Young, Broadway Chairman and Chair of the Nature Market Dialogue steering committee, said: ‘The Nature Market Dialogue is a vital intervention in the development of high integrity nature markets precisely because it is a dialogue. We are asking everyone with expertise or opinions to head to the project website https://www.naturemarketsdialogue.uk/participation to register their desire to participate. Only by building true, broad consensus and working in a co-ordinated way will we be able to unleash the potential of nature markets to reverse the biodiversity crisis.’ Annabelle Ong, a Director at Frontier Economics, said: ‘Frontier Economics is delighted to host the first Roundtable of “The Nature Market Dialogue”. We urgently need to find ways to accelerate nature recovery and Nature Markets can play an important role in facilitating private investment in nature recovery. I am looking forward to bringing together stakeholders from a wide range of sectors to discuss how we can avoid the pitfalls of voluntary carbon markets and create high integrity nature markets that deliver for the environment and society.’
The State of UK Nature Markets 2023 Cover
by Broadway Initiative 30 Oct, 2023
The Broadway Initiative has released a review of the progress towards establishing high integrity markets for nature across the UK.
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