FOR COUNCILS
FutureNow is the community-facing brand of the Peterborough Accelerated Net Zero (PANZ) project. Developed through research, testing, and collaboration with local residents and organisations, it reflects the city’s voice and vision for a sustainable future.
WHAT IS PANZ?
Turning big ideas into action
The Peterborough Accelerated Net Zero (PANZ) programme was funded by Innovate UK, responding to the need to break down barriers that local communities have to accelerate Net Zero action.
PANZ supports local authorities to transform conceptual decarbonisation aspirations into a tangible, investable pipeline of projects that not only deliver carbon reductions, but also make a real improvement to the communities they are delivered in.
OUR HOPE?
That PANZ becomes a blueprint for other councils. A model of how local leadership and ambition can be supported by evidence-based project identification, strong project pathways, decision-making tailored to the local community and robust monitoring, to lead to investable projects that can power a city’s transition to net zero.
We’re working with local partners, national experts and community champions to deliver real results.
PETERBOROUGH CITY COUNCIL
As the project lead behind PANZ, we’re not just setting the vision, we’re making sure that the views of our local residents are central in every decision we make. From travel decisions to home upgrades, we’re making it easier for everyone to be part of the solution. We want to give our residents access to information so they can make informed decisions that best suit their homes and travel needs.
As a diverse city, Peterborough is well placed to explore people’s preferences, so we can design and tailor engagement campaigns to our communities, considering the type, format, style and timing of information and conversation.
Ultimately we want to create projects that bring together residents, businesses, the public sector and investors to make change happen, street by street, home by home.
THE PANZ TOOLS
CERO.EARTH BY EDENSEVEN
- Bring all carbon data together in one place
- Plan and deliver climate projects more effectively
- Measure, track, and report progress with ease
- Work better with partners and local communities, and share successes and lessons learned.
NORDIC ENERGY
Getting net zero infrastructure off the ground is often slowed by too many complex processes, scattered information, long project timelines, and the need for specialist advice. This can mean it takes months just to plan a project, when really we need to move much faster to meet net zero goals.
To help change this, Nordic Energy worked with Peterborough City Council and the wider PANZ project team to develop a new approach. They created a suite of 3D interactive, photo-realistic digital tools to support local authorities to plan and deliver net zero projects.
These easy-to-use tools, built on diverse datasets, enable local authority teams to rapidly test scenarios that would once take weeks, giving them practical support to plan and deliver infrastructure faster.
- ODIN – Project Identification Tool – including detailed technical and commercial modelling to create and map city scale net zero opportunities in minutes.
- THOR – Project Delivery Plan Developer – an interactive project development guide for local authority officers taking net zero projects from concept design to delivery-ready, RIBA-benchmarked action plans.
Tool highlights:
- Faster delivery: Cut project scoping and testing time from weeks to hours.
- Scalable solutions: Applicable to cities across the UK and beyond, with potential for expansion.
- Suite of net zero modules: Tools feature heat network, solar, wind, electric vehicle charging, retrofit and heat pump modules.
- Adopted by teams: Ensured long-term use through close collaboration with end users, refining everything from modelling outputs to interface language and interactions.
Go-to-Market Approaches for Low-Carbon Heat
ENERGY SYSTEMS CATAPULT
Decarbonising heat spans a range of technologies and delivery models. Both households and businesses face common challenges when transitioning to low-carbon heating, including concerns about upfront and running costs, uncertainty around energy prices, and limited understanding of which technologies are best suited.
Energy Systems Catapult has explored how low-carbon heat solutions can be delivered at scale through research focused on rural heat pumps and low-carbon heat networks. We’ve built a strong evidence base on emerging approaches to scaling low‑carbon heat, including:
- A library of business models, delivery models, and complementary funding mechanisms that councils can deploy.
- A summary report on consumer attitudes to heat pumps and the business models they value.
We’ve used these insights to produce two complementary reports that tackle different parts of the low-carbon heat challenge. Our Go-to-Market report examines how a local retrofit one-stop shop could accelerate the uptake of rural heat pumps. In parallel, our Delivery Model Suitability Assessment compares different approaches for deploying small-scale low-carbon heat networks to support route‑to‑market decisions.
While grounded in the Peterborough context, the insights provide clear direction for other local authorities seeking to scale low‑carbon heating solutions.
