Collaboration is key to building cleaner cities

A roundtable event at Coventry’s MotoFest spectacular explored how cities need to adapt to the climate crisis and how they can get the most out of the green economy.

E.ON

04/08/23

“. . . it actually fills me with a huge amount of hope listening to the people today and the level of commitment they have to do something about decarbonising our cities and our industries. We will make progress, we will achieve this, and what better place to do it than in Coventry . . .”

Those were the words of E.ON’s UK Solutions COO, Chris Lovatt, concluding a roundtable event at Coventry MotoFest 2023 looking at how cities need to adapt to the climate crisis and exploring the opportunities for the green economy in helping everyone to become more sustainable.

In the hour long discussion (which you can watch in full below) the panel discussed a range of topics including:

The regulatory and policy changes needed to support the electrification of cities and the automotive sector
The demand for the right skills and green engineering jobs and how schools, universities and employers can work together to inspire the next generation – especially supporting some of the more disadvantaged pupils
The obstacles faced by innovators, entrepreneurs, and start-ups and how to overcome them

Here are some of the key comments from the range of speakers at the roundtable event:

“For this to be successful it’s going to require collaboration across a range of sectors: private industries, entrepreneurs, councils, academia, universities – to provide a joined up solution that fully engages members of the public and provides sustainable jobs for the local area and creates a sustainable local economy.”

Chris Lovatt, COO of UK Solutions, E.ON

“If you’re going to ask people to engage in different behavioural change you need to take them with you. If we are going to be a thriving economy and we’re going to drive down our carbon emissions, we’ve got to invest heavily in the industries that are going to drive the economic fortunes of places like Coventry in the future.

"These are massive challenges as a country that, at the moment, we haven’t really set out how we are going to do that in a properly organised and coherent way.”

Jim O’Boyle, Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, Coventry City Council

“We came across a series called Extreme E: all electric racing in the world’s most extreme locations, bringing awareness to climate change, as well as men and women racing together to try and push more gender equality. As a new media and sports rights holder, it [Coventry] felt a very relevant place for Veloce.”

Dan Bailey, CEO of Veloce Racing

“Arc is very much focused on challenging perceptions and also making sure we understand what the real situation is. It’s very easy for people to jump on to bandwagons because they hear snippets of information, and those bits of information aren’t always correct. We want to find the perfect solution, if that’s possible, with the best tools that are around us. Coventry is where the best automotive people are.”

Mark Truman, Founder and CEO of Arc Vector

“Bringing sport, bringing racing, bringing cars into the city centre, making people proud to be from Coventry is such a massive thing. For so many of our children and young people, especially those from more deprived communities, the chance to see things in their city centre, to feel excited by their city, to be excited by the heritage and the future of their city is such a massive thing. “It’s so important we hear the voices of our children and young people.”

Matt Clayton, Looked After Children – Coventry City Council

“Transport emissions are by far the biggest emissions on the global pie chart of carbon emissions. Passenger car transport is the biggest sector within that and although we are the largest UK auto manufacturer, we are a relatively small player on the global scene.

"We are in a world where we are being regulated to do it, rightly so, but we are ahead of that regulation, we are going to hit our net zero targets ahead of that. We want to learn from others as we go around and we want to share our learning about what we do.”

Murray Paul, Director of Public Affairs, Jaguar Land Rover

“We are, as a country, falling behind because of the over-regulation that isn’t keeping pace with technological advance. We’ve got to catch up and be more sophisticated . . . if we are to capitalise on the tremendous advantages of all this innovation.”

Margot James, Executive Chair of Warwick Manufacturing Group at Warwick University

“The theme that comes across is around connectivity – all of these innovations require data to be taken out to be analysed and actioned. By 2030, 3.3 billion ‘things’ will connect and transact directly with each other. There’s a huge amount of work that we're doing about how these things connect securely and how these things connect sustainably.”

Neil Smith, Head of Energy, Vodafone Business

Read our other blogs

Birds eye shot of city centre cycling lane with 2 cyclists

09 June 2023 Blog post

15 minute city: The future of sustainable energy for cities?

15 minute cities - designed to accommodate life’s necessities by having urban amenities within easy reach - could play a vital part in helping reduce carbon emissions and creating cleaner air in our most populated cities.

18 October 2022 Blog post

How smart cities are only getting smarter

The future of smart cities promises to look vastly different than the present − and it's clear that coming years will bring more mind-blowing advancements to a town near you.

9 September 2021 Blog post

The 10 smartest cities in the world

Artificial intelligence and automated technology are just some of the new solutions that are enabling cities to run more efficiently and smoothly.