1.a. What have the outcomes of the project been so far (e.g. development of a mapping tool to understand emissions per area)?
We now have an improved understanding of the target market for (EV) car clubs, as those interested appear to be generally young adults (and potentially middle-aged adults), who do not need to act as ‘volunteer-drivers’ for their children.
We now have a stronger evidence base of the mobility needs and trends within the Low Carbon Neighbourhood area. This can be used to develop other service offers in the community and replicated in similar neighbourhoods.
The project has opened communication and created stronger links between Newcastle City Council (NCC) and Northumbria University. This involves various departments and skillsets in the University and has led to numerous spin-off projects now under development, many involving Newcastle City Council.
1.b. How will these outcomes be sustained?
Outcomes will be sustained through clarification of the role that the Council plays in supporting the deployment of more car club schemes.
The outcomes can be considered in the next tendering exercise for future car clubs across Newcastle in terms of tendering and providing future contracts for city-wide car clubs.
2. What is the anticipated longer-term impact on progress towards Net Zero (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions savings)?
We anticipate that the lessons and pathways mapped out by this project to address the challenges in promote low carbon neighbourhoods in suburban communities, will have a major impact in the medium-term and will support achieving the longer-term Net Zero goal. Collective learning to develop a strategic approach to supporting social housing tenants with the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), particularly in circumstances where the housing does not have private driveways, represents an ongoing logistical challenge. It remains unclear whether tenants feel they can make the transition without embedded EV charging posts in their communities, as opposed to wider access to rapid charging networks at strategic locations. This may mean adapting the public (adopted) highway in specific neighbourhoods that don’t have off-street parking facilities. Whilst the electric vehicle car club offer (initially incentivised for 2 years) in this case did not have enough latent demand, there is still a need to define how to devise EV charging infrastructure deployment. It is possible that the allocation of EV charging infrastructure is required ahead of subsequent trials for EV car club deployment.
3. How has this project evolved your approach to net zero (e.g. approach to stakeholders/ways of working)?
The project partners initially set out to develop a stronger empirical (data-driven) evidence base to support wider approaches to Net Zero, but subsequently decided (after being nudged quite strongly in this direction by LGA & UCL Net Zero Innovation programme colleagues) to focus into a more tangible real-world study. The project enabled the time and space to collaborate in a much more meaningful way and has allowed the project team to coalesce around a case study of a systemic city-wide challenge. The teams met both in person and online, and shared respective (and complementary) expertise and insights as to how various organisations and service areas operate (and develop a ‘business case’ and planning for this). This allowed the project team to develop a deeper appreciation of the various drivers and challenges faced by the different stakeholders.
Wider partners were engaged by visiting their offices, including CoWheels. The Inception meeting for the community research was held in the CoWheels’ offices and through online meetings, they demonstrated some of their data visualisations for analysis. They also joined in, together with Newcastle City Council staff from two different Departments, as well Northumbria University project members from two different departments, the local site assessment visit (‘walk and talk’)
We shared the lessons of the project surrounding charging infrastructure with registered providers of social housing stock as the estates to the East and West are provided by Registered Housing providers which should inform their future projects.
Numerous projects are likely to be initiated by Northumbria University into electric vehicle charging optimization that can benefit from the strong collaboration with Newcastle City Council. One recently funded is a European Commission (MSCA) funded project on “Electric Vehicles Point Location Optimisation via Vehicular Communications”
4. Who will benefit from your project (please consider benefits to other parts of your organisations and your community)?
Our strategic partners and registered housing providers will benefit by having detailed information into transport needs of the estate. Our contracted (including EV) car club provider has been able to gain detailed insights of a specific communities’ mobility needs and was nudged to ‘think outside their box’ away from ‘business-as-usual’ modelling (although given the financial de-risking, this may not be replicable). Their contract comes up in 2023 and they (and other competitors) may better understand what the Council is looking for going forward from their services.
Newcastle City Council will have a stronger understanding of the challenges into rolling out electric vehicle charge points to areas with social housing. A wider set of stakeholders have learnt how to use Northern Powergrid’s AutoDesign tool to help identify potential EV charging sites.