Impact to Climate Neutrality
In its SONNET City Lab, Bristol City Council searched for ways to make use of crowdfunding - specifically a Community Municipal Bond (CMB) mechanism - as an investment activity to collectively raise capital to install energy efficiency measures in local community buildings. They surveyed citizens across Bristol and building managers of the community buildings about their opinion of such an initiative. They also technically surveyed the buildings to assess the value of the energy efficiency works that needed to be undertaken. The result was a business case. The goal of the project was to work with communities to explore how community buildings could receive energy efficiency improvements within the existing funding environment. The city started this initiative to help Bristol meet the EU 2030 target set by the EU Climate Law and the European Green Deal.
The Innovative Approaches of Bristol's Municipal Bond
SONNET provided a very valuable tool to speak to people and find ways of making the CMB proposal acceptable to more people since the investments could have been as little as £5. This inclusive and valuable practice can potentially attract a wide variety of people across the city rather than a small number of people who invest more money. Through citizen's investment, Bristol focuses on carrying out the projects its inhabitants are interested in. Community and built environment was the focus of this specific project.
Key Enablers
- Political: Political commitment at the highest level in the city (Bristol City Council) to the UE Missions.
- Social: Citizens, building managers, and community groups. Everyone was included in the process of investigating the possibility of using crowdfunding
- Technical: Enough technical capacities to create online surveys, online meetings, and an online platform
Key Inhibiting Factors
- Social: the pandemic was a big problem, having live events would be much better for the project.
- Economic: more funds to organise more events with citizens would be useful.
- Lack of awareness: building a greater understanding of how citizens perceive energy efficiency, and the use of community buildings was difficult. More in-depth interviews would have been necessary.
Scalability
The process undergone in the project can be replicated in any city. Although the Bristol City lab did not have immediate plans for scaling up or replicating the experiment, it did see a massive opportunity in going straight into the delivery of known solutions to make a bigger impact. The learnings gained from the city lab will be useful for energy-related activities, especially in the context of the City Leap agenda for Bristol. The project can be viewed as a pilot - there is a lot of rich data collected (e.g. on the energy efficiency of community buildings, including recorded discussions with architects and energy specialists about how best to undertake building audits before conducting them) that can inform other activities/projects
Key Lessons Learnt
Main Opportunities
- A valuable tool to speak to people and find ways of making the CMB proposal accessible to everyone, as the investment of as little as £5, was provided.
- The tool has the potential to attract a wide variety of people across cities.
- The project helped communities to reflect on their community buildings as cohesive places where they can have a conversation about climate change.