The Carbon Flex Project

Cities are making energy decisions every day. The Carbon Flex project asked the question 'Are we investing in the right things at local level to decarbonise the grid faster? To answer this, the Carbon Flex project assessed the carbon value of matching energy demand to renewable electricity more of the hours of the day.

Cites can take the lead to capture this ‘hidden carbon’ value by setting Net Zero and 24/7 Carbon Free targets, and begin to act today by accounting for carbon with more timely location-based datasets that are rapidly becoming available.

National governments can do more to ensure open access to data and move toward mandatory carbon reporting. Programmes and policies can then value the avoided carbon of distributed actions - either through individual programmes or targeted policies can be designed and implemented today.

As governments move toward the goal of operating national grids entirely carbon-free, many related policy areas will be affected that allow us to measure carbon benefits of these actions. There is an urgent opportunity for cities to kickstart the journey today, reducing their own carbon offset burden early, thereby contributing to reducing the cost of decarbonising electricity nationally.