This week marks six months since COP26 brought 200 world leaders to the United Kingdom to discuss climate change.

As we all find ourselves living through the largest cost of living crisis for 30 years, whilst watching the horrifying fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine, I find myself reflecting on the challenges we all face.

An inconvenient truth about net zero is that, however important it may be, it cannot be the only thing that matters.

We can and must achieve a net zero future. That is a given. But precisely what that future looks like will determine whether we have succeeded or failed in a wider sense. Is it a sustainable future? Does it have a functioning economy? What jobs are people doing? Where – and how – do they live? Are our communities thriving and happy? And all of them – or just some?

If we want to deliver a genuinely sustainable future – one that delivers jobs and better quality of life as well as meeting the environmental challenges we face – we need to get better at defining our goals and setting metrics for success. We need to get better at defining Clean Growth beyond a limited – if entirely admirable – aim of “net zero” by some date in the future. Net zero may be a destination we need to reach, but it is not the only one, and how we get there matters, too. What we need is a complete and evidence-driven enviro-economic strategy.

That starts with good data – and the right data. At the moment we are good at measuring some specific things, but bad at measuring a whole range of things that should count as clean growth.

The Office for National Statistics publishes data on the size of the UK’s low carbon and renewable energy economy, but this only accounts for activity within 17 strictly defined sectors.

Businesses working in alternative fuels or hydropower – or nuclear power, for that matter – count as contributing to the low-carbon economy. But that data doesn’t capture all the work going on within other sectors to make them more sustainable. Adapting the way our industries work, and the sites that they use, should count as clean growth.

Investing in public transport infrastructure should count as clean growth.

The official data suggest both turnover and employment in the low-carbon economy remained static between 2014 and 2020. It says the low-carbon economy accounts for just 1% of total UK non-financial turnover. We know that simply doesn’t reflect the work going on to achieve clean growth.

Neither does it capture another important aspect of clean growth: whether it is helping deliver better jobs and better opportunities for the communities that need them most. Clean growth can be a lever for levelling up – and it must be.

Our obligations to future generations do not start and finish with a measurement of the level of carbon in the air, however important that may be.

This is a hugely important moment for private-sector investors, developers, government and local government alike. The opportunity and will already exist; now it is time to do the hard work of defining exactly what we will do, and how, and how we will measure our success.

In Bradford, we have set out exactly what we mean by Clean Growth and are already embedding it into all aspects of our work.

We have identified key economic development sites like Esholt, where a former wastewater-treatment works is being transformed into the UK’s largest clean-growth testbed, with over a million square feet of commercial space earmarked for biotech and cleantech firms.

We are reinventing our city centre, with major new developments like One City Park – offering the highest quality of office space with the lowest environmental impact – accompanied by the UK’s best funded Clean Air Zone and multi-million pound investment in public transport and pedestrianisation.

Our City of Culture 2025 bid – which has been shortlisted in the final four cities for judging – is heavily built around using culture as a driver for job and skills development, and sustainable economic growth, across all our communities. Nor is all this work entirely contingent on the bid’s success. Much of it is already happening.

As an economic proposition as well as a moral imperative, Clean Growth works. There is huge interest in sites like Esholt and the Southern Gateway – a King’s Cross-scale regeneration opportunity in the heart of the city – because investors see what those sites can deliver.

They see a council with a clear strategy and a willingness to work flexibly with new partners to achieve common ends. They see the opportunity for far greater percentage returns than in overheated markets further south, which lack Bradford’s size, manufacturing base, or natural resources.

For Clean Growth to truly work, it must be a partnership. Even the most forward-thinking council still needs investors who share their vision, and ideally a bold government which enables transformative schemes that can deliver on its promise to “level up”.

Above all, this partnership must include the people who live and work in our towns, cities and neighbourhoods.

Clean Growth must not be something we do to them, or even something we do for them. It must be something we do with them. After all, when it comes to building a genuinely sustainable future for our towns, cities, country and indeed planet, we all have a stake in the game.

Author: Jason Longhurst, Strategic Director of Place at Bradford Council and Chair of the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development