Last academic year 2023-24, in a project funded by the BPI's Seedcorn Fund, principal investigator Ed Atkins and his research team created the Net Zero Resilience Index. Recently, Ed along with key contributors Tom Cantellow, Dr Sean Fox, Dr Caitlin Robinson and Professor Martin Parker published the findings of the project.
The findings highlight that "Understanding the geography of economic vulnerability and resilience—where the winners and losers are likely to be—is essential to develop place-based policies to mitigate the unintended negative consequences of the UKs net zero transition."
In developing the NZRI, the researchers concentrated on assessing "risk across four factors: Complexity (employment diversity), Relatedness (industry co-location), Reliance (dependency on few industries, especially those at green restructuring risk), and Working Age Population."
One key output from their work has been an interactive map which shows on a scale of 1 to 10 the local authority areas most at risk - the higher the score, the more at risk. In addition, two policy reports on the project have been released through Policy Bristol. Find links to these outputs via the article below.
Their research findings signal that the net zero ambition and associated economic vulnerabilities necessitate policy change across three areas:
- Future Net Zero policy must support communities in old industrial towns
- Devolution provides a key route to support communities
- More attention must be paid to communities beyond existing industrial clusters
Read the full article for further details including explanations of these policy recommendations: NZRI - jobs vulnerable to decarbonisation require a regional approach
The BPI look forward to bringing you more on this project as it progresses.
For the background to the project, read the original project abstract.