About 3Ci
Who we are
3Ci is a partnership between Connected Places Catapult, Core Cities UK, London Councils, Key Cities, Scottish Alliance, and other local authorities across the UK aimed at supporting local authorities secure the necessary long-term finance for achieving net zero.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has provided £1.5m of funding to support this work to leverage the combined scale of cities to mobilise finance and drive investment into low and net zero carbon projects across all of the UK’s largest cities, rather than individual ones.
What we do
Cities are where we can pioneer new cycles of net zero investment
3Ci – Cities Climate Investment Commission will facilitate an unprecedented public-private financing partnership to achieve net zero targets.
We commit to playing a key role in delivering our ambitious national net zero commitment, city by city and neighbourhood by neighbourhood. This includes the retrofit of homes and commercial properties, integration of renewable energy, shifts to sustainable transport networks, circular waste management, and the enhancement of green spaces and waterways. Our on-the-ground leadership will bring business, finance and local communities together, to secure the necessary long-term finance for achieving net zero and ensure that solutions to accelerate change through innovation that is fair to all.
As an initial step we have commissioned research to assess and analyse the low carbon investment that cities need, and the associated investment cases. The findings of the report were launched at COP26 with a series of dissemination events.
Why we do it
Local government leaders have been the vanguard of taking action against the damaging impacts of climate change, including in cities. In the UK, local partnerships have been formed around climate emergencies declarations, identifying and implementing programmes of work. Climate action becoming more integrated within city economic recovery plans, recognising that the green economy will both produce some of the quickest impacts and achieve the most long-lasting benefits.
Despite this heightened activity, the investment case for local net zero programmes and interventions remains poorly developed.
The barriers to investment lie not in the availability of finance, but rather in the ability to create robust business cases and investment models that address issues of scale, longevity and confidence. Through dialogue with the investment community, it is clear that such business cases will be strengthened where the plans of cities can be brought together, generating greater scale, volume, and predictability, thereby creating a more attractive and substantial proposition for investors.
3Ci is uniquely placed to:
- Support UK cities in achieving their carbon reduction targets, whilst developing a deeper understanding of the low carbon investment opportunities and challenges faced by UK cities.
- Create increased confidence within the investment community in low carbon projects by leveraging the benefits of the scale offered through networks of cities rather than individual ones.
- Provide the basis for engaging with industry on the opportunities for the supply and deployment of low carbon technologies into the marketplace.