What is LNZA?
Funded by the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, LNZA is a two-year WMCA programme delivered in partnership with the region’s local authorities.
Launched in 2024 and due to complete in 2026, it will make the West Midlands more attractive to place-based net zero investors of all kinds – traditional investors, impact investors, philanthropists and the public sector.
How will it work?
Working at the hyperlocal level and co-designing outcomes with communities, we’ll create warmer homes, reduce energy bills, build better transport networks, and open up green spaces.
We’ll help net zero projects become investment-ready, create innovative ways to channel investment to them, and compile indisputable evidence of climate, health, financial and economic benefits.
Over time, LNZA will help deliver against the Mayor’s vision of jobs, growth, transport and homes for everyone.
What are we doing?
1. Delivering more Net Zero Neighbourhoods
Building on the pilot Net Zero Neighbourhood in Brockmoor, Dudley, we’ve funded six more projects, so neighbourhoods across the region can start their net zero journeys.
We’re supporting local authorities to identify energy projects in the neighbourhoods, engage with communities about local priorities, prepare homes for their retrofit journeys, and collect data to demonstrate the impacts of their work for the citizens they represent.
More information on Net Zero Neighbourhoods is available here.
2. Building a pipeline of investment-ready projects
We’ll help local projects become investment-ready by opening up opportunities for new ideas to be generated.
We’ll work with our partners to create an easy-to-navigate way for project owners to engage with us and secure support with technical, legal, financial and regulatory aspects of projects.
We’ll build capacity within project teams to ensure that projects are delivery-ready, investment-ready and sustainable.
3. Developing options for a West Midlands investment vehicle
We are working with investors and other stakeholders to devise options for an investment vehicle specific to West Midlands’ needs.
Learning from existing delivery models, we’ll identify appropriate mechanisms for channelling finance to local projects and work up frontrunners into deliverable products.
4. Building evidence of impact
We’re developing a new digital platform to capture, store and make data available on the benefits created by our retrofit and Net Zero Neighbourhood projects.
Known as DataLeNZ, it will encourage philanthropists and impact investors (organisations which accept lower financial returns in exchange for positive social benefits) to put their money into projects that would not otherwise be able to attract investment. It will also help combined authorities and local authorities across the UK make the case for more public funding of Net Zero Neighbourhoods, because this will help leverage private finance.
We are also looking more broadly at measuring and reporting on impacts. We recently commissioned the NHS Strategy Unit to review available metrics that capture health and wellbeing impacts.
You can read their report below.
And in 2025 we expect to commission a wide-ranging impact evaluation of the whole programme, focusing on what worked for whom in what circumstances, so that other combined authorities and local authorities can learn from our experiences.