The grid in the UK is constrained, slowing down the country in its push towards net zero. This is one of the most significant challenges for the regulators as well as developers, with many connections dates now being beyond 2030. Is the scale of the problem truly understood?

The system needs to be flexible and resilient in its operation, as the events of the last couple of years (pandemic, Ukraine crisis, general political instability) have pushed energy security to the front of everyone’s minds.

The traditional approach to delivery including developing organically over longer periods is no longer going to achieve the outcomes required. The accelerated requirements of the network development need a fundamental change in philosophy to deliver. A host of holistic approaches to the practical challenge exist, but we clearly need a programmatic approach as our grid has to support adoption of low carbon technologies such as Electric Vehicles, Heat Pumps and Integrated generation and storage (e.g. Solar PV and BESS).

Covering the skills gap, the need for digital investment, Modern Methods of Construction, Social Value impact and changes are required in the delivery approach.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, speakers from AECOM will explore these grid constraints in the transition to net zero.

In recent years energy auditing has become a compliance exercise within the UK and Europe through ESOS and EDD regulations. This has in certain circumstances devalued the work. However, in the drive towards net zero, energy audits provide a clear baseline of current operational scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions and an insight into existing operational practices.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk will explore how to deliver high quality energy audits and supplement the on-site time with further decarbonization expertise for renewables, heat migration, electrification of heat, future fuels and transport assessments, which allows for a range of strategies to be developed to meet internal and external constraints in the challenge to net zero, whilst maximizing the energy audit investment.

No and low carbon hydrogen is seen as a key part of decarbonisation of the energy system - not a week goes by without an announcement about a new mega project, a national plan, or an industry transforming trial. We will try to assess what does this mean in reality, where will it be used and where will it be produced.

Although there is uncertainty of the future uses of hydrogen, the demand from its existing uses can be captured and in times of uncertain fossil prices no-carbon hydrogen can be increasingly competitive. What are the barriers to delivering this no-carbon hydrogen?

Any no-carbon hydrogen project requires three main ingredients– lots of renewable energy, fresh water, and electrolysers; the challenge is to secure supplies of all of these.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, AECOM will discuss how they are working with clients to unlock these challenges, with case studies to explain how these challenges are being overcome.

Human activity is driving the loss of biodiversity and organisations increasingly need to consider their impacts and dependencies upon nature.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk will cover the terminology, why this subject is so important as well as outlining the changing landscape for organisations. It will then look at how to get started in understanding how businesses can approach this subject as part of their strategies and reporting.

What is social value? How do you embed this throughout your business? And why is it important?

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, led by Caron Dunlop, Technical Director of Social Value at Mott MacDonald, will seek to address these questions.

It’s been over 10 years since the introduction of the Public Service (Social Value) Act 2012 and many organisations, large and small, are still struggling with how to plan, manage, deliver, and account for social value.

This session will explore the roots of social value and how it aligns with CSR, ESG, Sustainability and Social Impact. It will be a back-to-basics webinar that sets out some simple and easy to understand principles, tools and techniques that will allow listeners to get to grips with the foundational elements of creating a robust social value strategy.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, Mott MacDonald will explore decarbonisation and climate resilience, how they are typically approached on projects, and how to deliver an integrated approach (and the benefits of doing so), through early engagement, the use of nature-based solutions and more.

The CIRPASS Consortium is currently developing the landscape for the roll out of unified Digital Product Passports (DPPs) in Europe. A DPP is a digital record of a product’s unique identity. DPPs are the way in which stakeholders, right across the supply chain, can access key traceability data on that specific product. DPPs will be an extremely useful resource for businesses in practically addressing climate change.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk will shed light on how the CIRPASS Project is developing the future of product identification and the passage of products through our economy.

The proposal to replace Environmental Impact Assessment with Environmental Outcome Reports in the UK has generated mixed reaction. What is it about the proposed reform that causes concern, is it the potential change in process or the change in focus from assessing significant effects to environmental outcomes?

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, Mott MacDonald will consider the positive impact a focus on environmental outcomes could have on project delivery and protection (or rather enhancement) of our environment.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, Mott MacDonald will present change in carbon sequestration rates that result from BNG designs for infrastructure development to answer the fundamental question: did BNG increase carbon sequestration rates and, by doing so, help to address climate change, or did BNG decrease carbon sequestration and make climate change worse?

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, held in partnership with Jacobs, we will look at how we can approach this requirement, using a combination of traditional and innovative approaches, to create new market funding and finance opportunities.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, held in partnership with Jacobs, will explore the positives and negatives of the current ways of assessing ‘total value’, and where we need to get better evidence to provide a more robust analysis.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, held in partnership with Jacobs, we will demonstrate the importance of the independent systems’ integrator role in bringing together diverse stakeholders to agree on a common vision, and how this has played out in real-life scenarios.

Speakers:

Phil Raynor, Director of Water and Environment, Jacobs
Joseph Danyluk, OneWater Director, Jacobs
Dee Grahamslaw, Place Based Planning Pilot Lead, United Utilities, Jacobs

While biodiversity net gain is now embedded in legislation as well as policy, it is imperative that we maximise our opportunities to deliver wider environmental benefits for example climate resilience and social cohesion, this presentation will give a brief overview of the landscape around environmental net gain, followed by case studies demonstrating the implementation of the natural capital approach.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk will look at the critical role of energy storage in the energy transition, and will introduce Jacobs’ modelling of the optimum combination of short, medium and long duration storage solutions to meet net zero by 2050 and eliminate fossil fuelled generation by 2035, at least cost. We will further define long-term duration and take a more detailed look at hydrogen and its role in energy storage to effectively balance intermittent renewables ‘when the wind doesn’t blow’ or the ‘sun doesn’t shine’.

After the world’s oceans, soil is the world’s largest active carbon store, holding 80% of terrestrial carbon, which is almost three times the amount held in the world’s atmosphere. Soil carbon and soil health are intimately linked, and with soil health come multiple other benefits, those Soil Ecosystem Services such a supporting food and fibre production to help achieve food security for all, supporting biodiversity (both above and below ground level), water filtration and flood risk reduction.

Of all the world’s enormous volume, life depends on a very thin living skin, the soil, exposed at the surface. But across one third of our land soil is degraded and we need a paradigm shift in how the critical importance of soils is understood. We should be talking about the inescapable link between human, societal and planetary health and the health of our soils, the Soil Life Nexus - there can be no life without soil, and no soil without life. The carbon cycle in the soil, and the protection of the land, are at the centre of the paradigm shift and are crucial factors in the fight against climate change. This talk will discuss the potential role of soil carbon in the journey to Net Zero and the wider co-benefits which can be achieved through sustainable soil and land management and stewardship.

This Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk will explore what role energy networks play in energy transition. We believe that there are opportunities for avoiding and deferring new infrastructure (through changes to the system design principles), to deliver infrastructure in time (through least regrets decisions combined with a robust system for agreeing anticipatory investment) and to move away from traditional solutions through better early assessment of possible solutions.

In the wake of COP 26 and the forthcoming Environment Bill, natural capital is moving from a buzzword to a critical approach in helping organisations to better understand their impacts and dependencies on the natural world. However, it is often seen as quite a challenging, niche area to grasp, due in part to dense data requirements and technical processes. Technology has an important role in making natural capital accounting more accessible, achievable and accurate.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, Michael Aquilina, Environmental Consultant, Natural Capital and Environmental Net Gain at AECOM, will explore some of the challenges currently faced in the field, the key opportunity areas and how AECOM are using their award-winning Natural Capital Laboratory to apply innovative technology to a real-life project.

Emma will outline the NFM Manual which is due to be published by CIRIA shortly. It aims to help local groups and communities undertake flood risk management by working with nature, maximising the wider benefits achieved. The talk will outline the NFM delivery process the team has developed and concepts, methods and tools included to help users understand all aspects of developing an NFM project. The manual is focussed on NFM in river catchments and currently provides more detailed technical guidance on some of the more complex NFM measures to design and implement. Emma will bring insights from developing the manual and relate this to some of the NFM projects that Mott MacDonald is involved with in the UK.

In this Sustainability Delivery Group Expert Talk, we will introduce what the energy transition is and the key drivers behind this change. We will discuss and explore the challenges for its implementation, and what this means to us as a society.

The environmental and social agenda is continuing to gain prominence across a wide variety of sectors in the UK and with stakeholders large to small, and from policy, academia to NGOs. This is driven by the imminent need to address biodiversity loss, climate change, access to nature, and preservation of our landscapes, and central to this is land management and how we can balance the interdependencies and interests from these to deliver multiple benefits. This talk will help to unpick this nexus and present considerations for how we can develop solutions for a sustainable future.