Five years ago, our first report made more than 100 recommendations. The message: climate and nature recovery is very broad, with many entry points, many potential actions. Lots of places for people to engage.
Two years ago, we documented 64 significant impacts. These we counted where there were improvements to people’s lives, to nature, and to infrastructure. We also counted significant strategies and policies developed by local councils that will be acting collectively for more rapid, frictionless change in the coming years.
This article summarises a raft of further changes across Essex, both big stuff and small detail. I’ll detail progress in four sectors: Homes, Water, Nature, Energy.
Homes and housing
Suddenly, after lots of preparation, big numbers.
Seven Local Plans in the county are now aligned to net zero development policies. This means homes will have much lower energy bills and emit less carbon. Developers are on board and delivering. This is the new game in town. Homes for people that are comfortable, cheap to run, and not trashing the planet.
The Uttlesford Local Plan is the first to have both Operational Energy and Carbon (Net Zero) with an extra layer of Embodied Carbon policies for all new housing.
Already 147,000 new homes planned in Essex are aligned to the net zero standard. Some homes are already being built to this standard. These standards are called “healthy homes”, and also meet the well-known passive house (Passivhaus) standards applied elsewhere.
These homes will provide a national benefit. They will need no direct fossil fuels at all, helping reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports from increasingly costly and risky markets. It will help economic growth by allowing money to be diverted, say for new skills and supply chains associated with lower-carbon construction methods.
There are additional benefits, as these policies become increasingly joined up. New homes are also subject to Biodiversity Net Gain requirements, which means that farmers and landowners can obtain income by enhancing the ecological quality of their land rather than depleting it.
Water
We only have two problems.
Too much water. And too little. The driest part of the country, and now periods of intense rainfall brought by warmer air. East Anglia is going to experience growing and extreme water stress. There will be shortfalls, unless a number of things change. Fortunately long-distance water transfer by pipe and surface rivers already supplies water to reservoirs in the region.
Somehow we’re going to need to use less water, at home and in businesses. The average household uses 136 litres per person per day. The building regulations limit new-builds at 110 litres each person-day. A safe place looks to be about 85 litres.
Thus we have a useful rule-of-thumb. Cut domestic water use limits for new homes by 25 litres per person per day, reduce existing household usage by 50 litres per person per day, and scarcity may be prevented.
We’re still going to need to address non-domestic water demand, such as by encouraging greater water efficiency and more water reuse; requiring greater transparency around water use in data centres; spreading the uptake of water efficiency measures; and having more drought tolerant landscaping in new developments.
And yet, we’ve just gone through the wettest two months ever to start a year. Fields, rivers, roads and lanes, flooded, often impassable. Potholes hidden. It doesn’t look like we’re short of water.
What to do?
First, create more ponds and reservoirs on farms, ideally in a way to boost nature recovery and reduce flood risk alongside providing drought resilience. Farm methods that include rainwater harvesting, no-till (no-ploughing) to improve water holding capacity all year round, and the use of Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) will all help encourage infiltration and groundwater recharge.
Second, set policies in development plans to get drinking water use per person down to between 75 to 85 litres a day.
Third, increase long distance water transfer.
Fourth, expand the use of NBSs to address water over-supply (from rain) and water scarcity (from climate heat). These NBSs include leaky dams on rivers and streams, green water-holding facilities, creation of new wetlands (some with the help of beavers).
The key principle is this: use nature to hold the water, let it percolate slowly into the ground, let it fill groundwater reserves. This we want: to stop fresh water running clear away to rivers and the sea.
Nature recovery and green infrastructure
We’re proud to have been an early mover in completing a county Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). It highlights areas where nature is thriving, strategic opportunities for habitat creation or enhancement, and actions that can be taken to carry out creation/enhancement. It provides a platform for nature to become “bigger, better and more connected”.
Many communities, local groups and farmers will have a key role in delivering nature that is accessible to people to enjoy. As government makes further funding available, we hope to see scarcity turn to abundance.
The recent Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) national policy requires developers to offset their developments with biodiversity credits. The basic principle of BNG is that new developments must leave nature in a better state than what was there before.
Planning will start by prioritising developments to deliver BNG onsite and thus close to homes. BNG will also provide new sources of income for farmers and nature landowners. The Farm Clusters are leading the way in connecting farmers across whole landscapes and showing land can be more productive and be better for nature.
There’s another piece of tired legacy thinking that plays in here: that you can’t have agriculture that is good for nature if you want food. This we now know to be nonsense, and farmers across the region (including in Essex) are already demonstrating this by adopting sustainable, regenerative and other food and environment-friendly methods.
Homegrown energy
My autumn 2025 Chair’s Blog #2 detailed the wonderful advances in Community Energy in Essex. Communities across Essex are coming together to reduce energy bills, cut fuel poverty and increase renewable energy generation. There are exciting plans too to create local grids to share energy between households that produce and those in need.
Since then, two significant national policies have just been published (in Jan and Feb 2026).
The Local Power Plan sets national aspirations to deliver 8GW of local power generation by 2050 (equal to nearly three Sizewells). It wants to see 1,000 local projects across the country, and will put in place £1bn of funding in this parliament.
The Warm Homes Plan is putting £15bn into cutting household bills, and making homes warmer and more efficient. The aim is to reach 5 million homes by 2030, with greater direct support for low-income households, a universal offer to all for low/no interest loans, boiler upgrades, and heat networks.
Every county will benefit, if businesses, public authorities and communities are ready to make the best of these new opportunities.
And now, another shift. National government has also just approved the deployment of plug-in solar to allow households without gardens or roofs to deploy solar panels on balconies of flats. In Germany last year, 1.5 million households installed plug-in solar panels on their balconies in tower blocks. This can happen quickly, and household energy bills will fall.
We can think of all these advances in energy efficiency, renewables generation and community sharing as means to increase “homegrown energy” – cheaper, more secure, less prone to international geopolitical shocks.
The future is here
Some of these transformations have implications for national government. They show what an intermediate-level voluntary body, working with councils at county, unitary, district-city-town and parish levels can do quickly.
So don’t be taken in by that tired thinking that says you can’t have nature and climate recovery if you want growth.
Here is a day to celebrate: 25 March 2026. For a whole day, 100% of the UK’s electricity was supplied by renewables.
Three big zeros come to mind. This is what net-zero now means.
Zero running costs (nearly) to produce this electricity.
Zero costs required to clean up the pollution (there isn’t any).
Zero carbon produced.
People have often pondered – why is productivity so poor in the UK (and indeed across the industrialised countries)? Because we waste real resources on fossil fuel energy and have to keep paying, day after day. And we waste more on cleaning up the mess of environmental and health costs. Then there’s the climate mess too, coming down the road unless we can continue these changes quickly.
Endnotes
The Essex Climate Action Commission is Chaired by Professor Jules Pretty OBE DL. All Commissioners work voluntarily and are listed at: https://www.essexclimate.org.uk/our-commissioners. This article is an edited version of a Chair’s Blog: https://www.essexclimate.org.uk/chairs-blog.
For more reports and supporting material, see the Chair’s YouTube channel “Story for Climate and Nature Recovery: https://www.youtube.com/@JulesPretty58. Look out too for the new podcast to be launched on 29 May hosted by Jules Pretty, called “Heat! Camera! Action!”
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