Green futures investments

Coventry is leading the way in green innovation. We are seeking investors, land owners or delivery partners for the following projects.

• Coventry Strategic Energy Partnership
• Community Growing Network
• Green Finance - Natural Capital
• Green Finance - Retrofit

Coventry Strategic Energy Partnership

The Strategic Energy Partnership is a 15 year contractual joint venture between Coventry City Council and E.ON which will focus on innovative decarbonisation solutions.

The partnership’s aim is to create a greener and healthier Coventry with a focus on energy sustainability, supporting a thriving local green economy and providing a better quality of life for all. Four Strategic themes will drive the partnership forward and help to deliver the mission; clean local energy, jobs and skills, innovation and scale, and community benefit. 

By enabling long-term and sustainable infrastructure planning we are investing and supporting the city’s route to net zero which in turn will provide environmental, economic and social benefits.

Investment opportunity

The partnership will deliver various energy infrastructure and social value projects, drawing on innovative approaches and solutions throughout.

Delivery activity has been grouped into nine programmes that the various projects will sit within. These include solar across the city, building decarbonisation, electric vehicle charging, energy security, domestic energy efficiency and, community benefit.

Projects from these programmes will be developed and joined up to maximise the value of our delivery approach. This could include opportunities to work with additional partners or investors on schemes and, as this is a 15-year strategic partnership, opportunities will be designed to deliver long term benefits.

• Planning Status: All projects are at different stages of the planning process
• Promoter: Coventry Strategic Energy Partnership
• Investment Type: Financial investment and partnership opportunities
• Scale/Value: £2bn+
• Sector: Energy and Sustainability sectors (inc. Climate Change & Net Zero)
• Timeline: 15+ years
• Lead: Public/Private: a Contractual Joint Venture partnership - Coventry City Council and E.ON

Website: www.coventry.gov.uk/sep

Community Growing Network

Network will increase the opportunities and enhance the quality of local sustainable food growing, community gardening projects and creation of natural spaces across the city.

The project involves derelict or underutilised plots of land being offered to community groups for growing projects. Coventry City Council is leading the project, as a significant landowner in the city, but is also keen to work with other landowners. The programme will help bring communities together, tackle social isolation and will provide new skills through training and development for participants and can help some of the most vulnerable members of the community. The scheme will help to tackle food poverty and well as boost biodiversity across the city.

This is an exciting opportunity for partners to help sponsor the Coventry Community Growing Network, through funding, offering volunteer time and donation of resources or land.

The programme has already attracted some funding through E.ON to develop the first pilot sites and create a toolkit to support community groups, as well as resource to facilitate the programme, however it is programme is scalable, the more funds and resources acquired the wider we can grow the network across the city, host more events and market the scheme to attract more volunteers

Green Finance - Natural Capital

In order to strengthen the region’s green economy, the West Midlands has been selected by Defra as a pilot for Local Investment in Natural Capital, which will include the development of a natural capital investment strategy and pipeline of green finance investment opportunities for the region.

Coventry City Council is keen to work with private landowners and investors to identify opportunities for projects that support nature’s recovery.

Opportunities include investment to create new sites for biodiversity net gain, including the creation of habitat banks which would generate returns for investors over a 30- year period, with opportunities to increase investment and returns through ‘stacking’.

Coventry City Council has an Urban Forestry Strategy aiming to plant 360,000 trees by 2032, a tree for every citizen. There is an opportunity to support this initiative which can be used for carbon sequestration.

The Council is seeking to deliver a network of ‘green and blue’ infrastructure across the city and this includes features such as raingardens, tree planting to increase shade including initiatives such as the creation of ‘tiny forests’ and pollinator friendly planting. Some public sector funding has been secured to enhance ‘green and blue’ infrastructure, but there is an opportunity for private match funding to add value and increase outputs.

Green Finance - Retrofit

The Council is leading on a domestic retrofit programme which has involved securing over £30m public funding since 2021, which has levered in private match in order to retrofit 2,500 homes.

However, the majority of the households fall into the ‘able-to-pay’ bracket, where they do not quality for any grant funding but find themselves not in a position to invest in retrofit measures themselves. Therefore, there is a major challenge to secure investment to scale up retrofit across the city.

An opportunity exists to work with Coventry based investment institutions to develop new financial products that may incentivise and enable householders and small business owners to improve the energy efficiency and use of renewables to reduce costs and enable affordable warmth for property owners and their tenants.

Coupled with investment in retrofit measures, there is also a green skills gap to be tackled. This includes an increase in training, apprenticeships, boot camps and working with contractors and education establishments to grow skills and capacity and create new jobs.

There are also investment opportunities to support place-based retrofit schemes to deliver solutions at scale, ranging from insulation, solar pv, district heating systems, energy storage solutions and electric charging points, alongside complementary green and blue infrastructure. Investment will generate savings in energy bills alongside producing clean energy which will yield returns to investors.

There is also an opportunity to partner with local organisations and training providers in order to increase the development of green skills to support retrofit work.

Contact us to find out more about how you can support green futures.