This project will turn Essex County Council's (ECC) retrofit ambition into investable delivery in local authority two-tier areas (where both county and district councils share responsibility), starting in Essex with a social landlord pilot. The innovation is a trusted data-to-finance pathway. We will conflate landlord asset records with real-world energy use and billing data, secured with the owner's consent. We will then use this data to prioritise homes, package works by archetype and prepare bank-grade investment packs that can move through credit assessment with confidence. Building on earlier EssNet work, we will use data not only to reduce delivery costs, but also to standardise and bundle smaller projects into aggregated portfolios that are attractive to institutional investors. This is a step change: instead of relying on static proxies such as EPC ratings, we will use observed performance so that lenders can underwrite retrofit against evidence rather than estimates. This process will be co-designed with: 1. **Experian** (our data and analytics partner), providing the consent workflow, secure integration, and portfolio analytics 2. **NatWest**, advising on finance structuring and shaping term sheets to reflect lender expectations and market practice. Bankers for Net Zero (B4NZ) will act as a convener, bringing together authorities, landlords, lenders, underwriters, and data providers to agree common rules and standards that lower transaction costs and transform fragmented activity into investable portfolios. Open data pathways and digital infrastructure will make emissions and savings data more reliable, interoperable, and lower cost. In turn, this helps banks, investors, and government to target finance where it achieves the greatest impact. The pilot will strengthen the evidence base through additional sites. Learning will be shared with Kent, Surrey, and Brighton & Hove councils, alongside a wider network of authorities. In line with Strand 2 guidance, if funded we will work with xRI to combine Essex pipelines and Experian data with national sensing datasets to improve targeting. Outputs will be practical and ready for adoption. These include: * A live data and consent framework in Essex, * A standard schema and onboarding kit for landlords, * A house triage and aggregation toolkit, * Bank-grade investment packs and model term sheets shaped with NatWest, * A portfolio evaluation with verified savings, and * A blueprint for schools and the wider public estate. Over time, this approach can unlock significant private capital for retrofit by giving the market the data certainty, shared standards, and confidence it needs to scale.

EssNet Pathfinder Plus will accelerate the transition to net zero by tackling the practical, non-technical barriers that currently hold back community-led energy. Building on the success of the earlier EssNet Pathfinder project, it will help communities to develop more local renewable power, cutting bills, improving energy security, and supporting a just transition. EssNet Pathfinder created **Essex Community Energy CIC (ECE)**, a not-for-profit energy services company that helps households and businesses install rooftop solar and batteries with no upfront cost, selling electricity to them for 17.3p/kWh on a 'Pay as You Go' model. The project also identified major potential for small-scale ground-mounted solar. In Essex alone, 43.5 MW of sites were mapped, with more than 1.3 GW estimated across England. A recent Ofgem rule change (CMP446) now makes it easier for these sub-5 MW projects to connect to the grid, creating a timely opportunity for community-led renewables. EssNet Pathfinder Plus will unlock this opportunity by: **Planning innovation**: Testing streamlined processes tailored to community projects, reducing cost and delay. **Procurement innovation**: Developing compliant routes for councils, schools and hospitals to commit to buying local clean energy. **Financial innovation**: Developing a revolving Project Feasibility Fund to support early-stage development and unlock investment. Alongside delivery in Essex, the project will carry out knowledge exchange with other councils and community groups across the UK, building partnerships and providing practical tools for replication. By addressing planning, procurement and finance together, EssNet Pathfinder Plus will demonstrate a model for rapid, scalable, community-led renewables: helping households save 15-20% on electricity bills, generating reinvestment for local communities, and making a measurable contribution to the UK's clean energy and net zero targets.

no public description

The EssNet Pathfinder project will develop and deploy Essex Community Energy CIC (ECECIC), a energy services company structured as a social enterprise and designed to support the numerous opportunities for community-based/led energy generation, storage and use which exist across the County of Essex. By deploying new business models and providing expertise services to communities (both domestic and business) ECECIC will enable decarbonisation of the local energy network, increased levels of energy security and a just transition to Net Zero. EssNet Pathfinder fundamentally supports Essex's Net Zero ambitions and will result in benefits to the environment, local businesses, and the residents of Essex. The project is designed to be scalable and replicable and has the potential for positive impact across the UK.

The Essex Net Zero Delivery Task Force (EssNet) will address multiple non-technical systemic barriers which hinder or prevent the delivery of net zero targets. It focusses on the whole net zero system in the county of Essex (heat, power, mobility, product manufacture and usage). It is led by Essex County Council (ECC). EssNet will address, financing; capacity, capability and skills; policy and regulation; system governance and common data standards for open source and interoperability. EssNet will draw upon a mutli-disciplinary team of experts and newly created mechanisms to overcome non-technical barriers and accelerate the journey towards net zero systems in Essex.

The objective of this project is to undertake a feasibility study for developing Climate Positive houses for the social housing sector, with a view to testing the concept in Phase 2. Climate Positive homes generate a net saving in carbon emissions, thus making a positive contribution to achieving 'net zero' carbon. As we emerge from Covid-19 social housing providers are challenged in meeting their budgets and rising unemployment risks an increase in fuel poverty and bad debt on rent payments. This will challenge their ability to deliver their responsibilities to improve the energy efficiency of social housing, deliver net carbon zero and address fuel poverty. They are therefore interested in alternative delivery models that can operate within their financial constraints. Power Circle Projects (PCP) has developed an innovative business model to support this. PCP works with social landlords to develop local energy systems which generate, store and trade energy to achieve affordable climate positive solutions. There are many barriers to social landlords delivering these projects such as small capital budgets, lack of trust in third party funded solutions, low 'risk appetite' and lack of experience or time. PCP's business model addresses these barriers by operating as a socially-owned licence-exempt energy services company offering a range of services that will deliver and operate local energy systems. These services include developing, owning (where applicable) and managing local systems, operating a socially-owned Virtual Power Plant, selling the resulting electricity and providing grid services. Project structures can be flexible to suit individual customers and their risk appetite. The feasibility will be tested for GHA's new build development at Bilbohall in Elgin, as well as a retrofit scenario for roof replacement programmes which could achieve a similar outcome. GHA has already engaged PCP to undertake early concept work. This looks at installing whole roof building integrated solar PV to create a local power plant linked to a centralised battery by private wire to create a local energy network. The energy will be sold back to tenants at affordable rates with excess being exported to grid. Building on early concept work the Phase 1 feasibility study will develop a technically and commercially verified solution for a new build and retrofit scenario to enable field testing of a prototype system in phase 2. The business model and technical innovations will enable PCP to support the wider delivery of 'climate positive' homes in the social housing sector.