Beyond Targets: The wider benefits of local climate action

An exclusive video featuring highlights from UK100's Beyond Targets conference held in Birmingham, showcasing how local leaders across the UK are moving beyond climate targets to deliver tangible benefits for their communities.

Watch the highlights

Filmed at Austin Court, Birmingham in 2025, this collection captures the energy and ambition of local authorities driving forward climate action across Britain as they gathered to launch UK100's flagship Beyond Targets research report. From council leaders and senior officials to industry partners and policy experts, these highlights showcase the collaborative spirit needed to achieve our clean energy goals.

The conference launched UK100's new flagship report revealing how councils across the UK are delivering tangible benefits through climate action – from cleaner air and warmer homes to new jobs and stronger communities. The evidence is clear: when we plan for the wider benefits, the returns on climate investments multiply.

Featuring insights from:

• Christopher Hammond, chief executive, UK100 - discussing how the conference expands understanding of what the climate challenge means beyond dates and targets
• Cllr Adam Hug, Westminster City Council - exploring what "Beyond Targets" really means for local communities
• Cllr Chloe Turner, Stroud District Council - highlighting the need for fairness across the country as a whole
• Clare Wildfire, Mott MacDonald - examining the powerful link between energy retrofit and better life chances for children
• Cllr Ryan Jude, Westminster City Council - emphasising the essential role of knowledge sharing events like this
• Lynne McDonald, UK Power Networks - celebrating the fantastic action already happening across local authorities

The conference demonstrates how local authorities across Britain are pioneering solutions to accelerate the clean energy transition, moving beyond clinical approaches to connect hearts and minds on local climate action. It highlights how bringing together public and private sectors helps demystify climate action and makes it tangible for people's lives.

Key themes from the conference:

• Beyond targets: Expanding understanding of what the climate challenge means - it's not just about dates or amounts of emissions, but about lives improved in local communities
• Health and wellbeing: Ensuring climate action delivers health benefits and helps unlock cost of living benefits for residents
• National fairness: Moving beyond areas that happen to have political ambition around climate to ensure everywhere in the UK focuses on delivering climate action and all the benefits for communities that come with that
• Hearts and minds: Taking climate action away from clinical or engineering approaches to storytelling that connects with what matters to communities
• Shared learning: Creating essential opportunities to share learnings from all different areas, whether from organisations working with councils or local councillors and officers themselves
• Celebrating action: Recognising the fantastic celebration of action actually happening, with great case studies for other local authorities to take inspiration from
• Research launch: Introducing UK100's flagship Beyond Targets report, which reveals how 117 local authorities committed to balancing emissions represent 60% of the UK population and are delivering real impact in real communities

The conference demonstrates how local authorities across Britain are pioneering solutions to accelerate the clean energy transition, from community energy projects to strategic infrastructure planning. It highlights the diverse challenges faced by different regions and showcases practical solutions being developed through collaboration and shared learning.

Through UK100's network, these local leaders are sharing knowledge, developing best practices, and building the partnerships needed to deliver clean, affordable energy for their communities. Their insights and experiences offer valuable lessons for other local authorities looking to accelerate their own clean energy initiatives and unlock the wider benefits of climate action.

This conference forms part of UK100's ongoing work to support local authorities in delivering ambitious climate action. It builds on our mission to unite ambitious, cross-party local leaders to tackle climate change in their communities, showing them what works, and making the case for greater local powers.