Interview with Mary Kerr, Climate Finance Lead, Glasgow City Council

This is the latest interview for our Future Local Lab, where we’re joined by guests from around the world to discuss what the future holds for local government, with the emphasis firmly on what the sector can do now to start preparing for the future.

In this interview, we sat down with Mary Kerr, Climate Finance Lead at Glasgow City Council, to discuss her journey in local government so far, the goals of Glasgow’s climate finance team, and how other councils can make the most of climate investment.

Watch the full conversation on Youtube here.

00:00 – Introduction
01:32 – Mary Kerr’s journey into local government
03:26 – Role as climate finance lead
07:16 – Building the climate finance team
10:30 – Model for climate investment
13:56 – Engaging stakeholders and strategic alignment
17:19 – Key initiatives and themes
20:43 – Barriers and challenges
23:59 – Lessons for other councils

A written version of the interview has been edited down into a Q&A format, which you can read below.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

Could you tell us a bit about your journey into local government?

I don’t even know if my journey into local government was chosen as such. I left school and took on a physics degree because I enjoy problem-solving, but my life took a bit of a different turn because I became a mum, and my focus became children and kids’ clubs.

From there, I worked part-time at a bank, where there was an opportunity to become a qualified paralegal, which I took up and which is what led me into Glasgow City Council. The job was for a supervisor paralegal in Glasgow’s debt recovery department, and I must admit that when I applied, I didn’t think I was going to get it. But when I received that call, I was hugely surprised and excited to be starting in the council. I think it’s underestimated coming into the public sector, as when I first joined Glasgow City Council, I then understood the opportunities that were available in Glasgow City Council.

I had some, and I still do have some, fabulously supportive leadership teams that throughout my career have progressed me into different positions that suited my skills and helped me along the way in gaining skills and progressing forward. Now, I can say I’ve been involved in a number of fantastic interventions in Glasgow City Council. I think that’s one of the main things with working in local government – it provides you with that opportunity to be involved in hugely exciting projects: I’ve been involved in the Glasgow City Deal and the low-emission zone program, managing the latter and other hugely valuable and exciting projects that have changed Glasgow. They are things that you can actually walk around your city and be proud of.

It’s why I would encourage people to look into local government jobs because they not only unlock your potential, but you’re also involved in things that you can see within touching distance as well.

So, I suppose my local government career and my entry into local government weren’t necessarily planned, but it worked out in the end!

Can you tell us about your role as climate finance lead? Why was this role created and what does it involve?

At Glasgow City Council, we’re very focused on partnership work. Understanding challenges and needs and innovation is a big thing in the council. This proved helpful for defining what my role was going to be. We, as a council, initially linked up with the Resilient Cities Network, and they provided us with a fellow named Kenny Hogg, CEO of Howden Scotland, just following COP26. Kenny helped us to actually work out any stumbling blocks and how we could mobilise some of our climate projects. Kenny was essentially ingrained in the council for a period of time, to basically turn a mirror on us and tell us what we needed to be doing. He recognised the fact that it couldn’t be just business as usual, and that Glasgow needed somebody specifically focused on the role of climate finance and linking private and public sector funding so that we can get bigger bang for our buck and continue progressing.

My job role was actually created in 2023, and I started at the tail end of that summer. It was an interesting role to start because it unusually came with a blank sheet of paper, whereas normally, you go into a role and things and the objectives are defined. But over time, my main objective became finding a route to get private sector financing into the council so that we could mobilise some of the council’s major climate projects.

I embarked on research into models across the UK and Europe that other local authorities were using, and found there are many; there are so many other local authorities doing some fantastic work. But at the end of it we realised there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all all, so we had to work out what that model looked like from a Glasgow perspective. My job was specifically to look into this in relation to how we do that and how we mobilise that.

I was lucky enough to take a report to our City Administration Committee, and they approved a budget for me to create a team. This team’s creation recognised that we don’t have all the skills, capability, and capacity within the council, so it is made up of internal specialists. It has some fantastic internal specialists in legal, finance, and procurement, and we also link into the sustainability team within the council, plus we supplemented that with the external specialists.

Namely, we have Brodie’s working with us from a legal and procurement perspective and PwC working with us from a financial consultancy perspective. We have a fantastic team that’s been brought in to look at the art of the possible from a Glasgow perspective and how we actually progress forward with that. This job role is unique in that no other local authority has this specific job role. So I find it actually hugely exciting that Glasgow created it.

What does your climate finance team do in the council, and what is that team aiming to achieve?

The team’s main objective is to understand how we mobilise private sector investment, asking how we open up assets from a city perspective to benefit our citizens, and wondering how we do that in a way that we can control from a local authority perspective.

We’re focused on the decarbonisation of the city, and prioritising the energy theme first. At the same time, we’re looking at potentially creating a delivery vehicle and a climate investment vehicle. The delivery vehicle element will essentially be some form of partnership, but we’re currently looking into every model available to us. Nothing’s off the table from a Glasgow perspective, and we’re to do a full assessment to work out what’s best from a city perspective, as again it’s very much about how we mobilise the assets in the city for the benefit of the citizens. So that’s our focus.

The delivery vehicle will be a procurement exercise, looking into how we actually create this model and the conditions needed to get the investment in. For now, the investment is the challenging part because we’re not looking at a one-to-one asset range. This means we’re looking at multiple projects, potentially ensuring pooled investment – albeit with a caveat, because we are in the process of trying to work out what this will mean for the council.

The climate investment vehicle is slightly different. We want to know if there is a way that we can create a fund that not only Glasgow City Council but potentially other local authorities, and even the whole Glasgow City Region could tap into. So we’re considering what that looks like and how we progress it, meaning there’s a huge element of work. Currently, the timeline that we’ve got from the climate investment model is we’re expecting to press a button on procurement by November 2026. So as you’d expect, the team that is currently working on the project at the moment are in full throes of workshops, defining objectives and critical success factors. We’re speaking to a lot of the stakeholders that are involved within the space, as well as linking up a lot of the governing structures.

We have the Sustainable Glasgow Partnership in Glasgow, a partnership from the city perspective. I have a standing agenda item on that, purely for the fact to make sure that everybody understands what we’re doing from a Glasgow perspective and what our strategic intention is, so that we’re all aware of where things are going.

How have you managed aligning these strategic objectives and bringing people together?

For Glasgow, COP26 was fantastic because it got everybody on the same page, provided additional networks and spaces for people to talk about the climate and how we were progressing our climate work from a city perspective. But certainly from Glasgow City Council’s side, one of the main things from a stakeholder perspective is we have such a strong leadership in Glasgow politically, as well as a very supportive Chief Executive and our fully leadership team within the council.

When I first started, I established the Climate Investment Board – a joint elected member and senior leadership board – for the purpose of working out how we problem solve within this space and how do we drive things forward. I think that reflects how Glasgow City Council understands the opportunities of innovation and how we need to do things differently. We are going to be in a space where finances are going to be constrained and they’re not going to be the same over the next 10-20 years. I’m super lucky that we have that support from a leadership perspective, but we also have it with the main stakeholders around the city as well.

I mentioned the Sustainable Glasgow Partnership, which is key as well because we have fantastic leaders in different ventures within the city: Academics, utilities, even community sits within the space as well, meaning there’s lots of people who are able to give us advice and provide us with direction from a project perspective as well. We’ve been very clear from a project side that we need to be engaging with the market as well.

So COP26 put us in a really good place and helped drive everybody in the same direction. But also, the leadership is very much about sponsorship and how that message is driven forward. Ensuring everybody’s aware of what our intentions are and that our first theme is going to be energy. There are other themes because of course we are focusing on our net zero ambitions, but the first theme is definitely energy, and this is what we need to put our focus on just now to see if we’re able to create those conditions to drive the projects forward.

What is the model for climate investment? What are some of the key initiatives that it includes, and how long has that been in the making?

It’s been in the making since 2023 when I started. Of course, it started with understanding what other people did to learn what we at Glasgow can do. We’re very much focused on let’s learn the lessons that are out there from people. People, certainly from a local authority perspective, have done fantastic jobs in the space. Glasgow is very focused on taking those learnings and making them something that we could actually work with.

The model for climate investment is looking at that in its totality, essentially. There are a number of other models to mention. Bristol City Leap was a standout foundation model, for example, at the time. I remember this all started in 2023, and there’s been a number of fantastic models that have been created since then. But certainly, we recognised that Bristol were driving forward in a place that we were really appreciative of because their focus was on social value.

Social value is a big thing from Glasgow’s perspective, because we’re very much about social value and how we’re driving things in a fair and just way. It’s not about the council saying this is where we need to go, rather we need to make sure that from a community’s perspective, this is right for Glasgow, and Bristol were already doing that. So we used Bristol as our foundation model.

We also looked into the London Edge and Sustainable Development Capital model as well, which again, was something that resonated within Glasgow. That’s why we are looking at the two-pronged approach of the delivery vehicle and the climate investment vehicle. But you know, again things can change and within this space things move quickly. We’re in a world where we’re having to be reactive in spaces whilst actually progressing proactively, which I suppose we do often from a local authority’s perspective. But again, it’s about thinking about why we’re doing it, to try and put our citizens in a better place.

The first theme is energy. It would be great to hear about some of the other themes and if there’s any examples of what you’ve been able to do so far with green investment in Glasgow.

From an actual climate finance perspective, there isn’t much at the moment about matching up the private sector funding into the space. That’s definitely what we’re trying to progress forward.

From an active green finance space, we have progressed a number of feasibility studies and have brought in multiple grants to be able to do that. But one challenge to overcome is understanding the investability of the projects. That’s while the environment is changing and the public sector and the private sector are speaking to each other a lot more. We’re starting to understand what the challenges are from each side, because if you just look at it, it looks as if local authorities haven’t got investable pipelines, and it’s not that. The issue is very much about the fact that you have to invest in feasibility and feasibility costs, but you’re not going to invest in it until you know that you have an investable project. So there’s that world of risk that we need to balance, but the reassuring things are those conversations on where we’re going next and how we’re progressing that.

So with themes, energy is our main one. Waste and transport are obviously ones that are high up from a city perspective as well. We will obviously be trying to understand what the opportunities are following the implementation of the model for climate investment. The intention with this is that we learn our own lessons as well as implementing the main things that are working, those success elements, to drive the projects forward. So the intention is that we’ll be able to take some of the learnings from this and use them within those spaces as well, so that we can progress towards our net-zero ambitions.

What are some of the barriers and challenges that you’ve experienced both in this role and in private-public sector partnerships concerning climate adaptation projects?

There are a few, but the good news is they’re being spoken about. With revenue models, some of our projects will generate revenue, others won’t. So from an investability perspective, it becomes more challenging. But those more challenging projects are the ones that we need to get mobilised as well, so we’re trying to create an environment where you can fix the problems and provide the revenue that’s required. So it’s certainly a big thing in relation to the return on investment and how we actually manage the return on investment and making things commercially viable.

And in making them commercially viable, understanding the fact that there is that corporate social responsibility for everybody as well, because the whole reason that we’re doing it is to try and make the city a better place as well.

Another challenge is recognising we don’t have all the skills and capacity within the council, and we recognised that even in the early stages of us deciding upon Glasgow’s model and brought in external specialists. But we won’t have the specialists going forward so we need to make sure that we’re building that internally, which is of course a challenge in itself.

The other challenge is being market ready. We have to understand that if we’re building something, the market is actually going to be ready to react to that. Glasgow is lucky insofar as we do have scale – we are a large city and we have scale from an energy perspective, so it’s how we actually manage that going forward. We also have to consider how we link up with our employability staff regarding building the skills for the future because that’s going to be a huge thing that we need to fulfil in order to progress things forward. But the main thing is ensuring we have investable projects, but in a way that it’s going to help the city out.

What lessons would you give to other councils who may be earlier in their climate investment journey?

Learn from others, because everybody’s at different stages within this. We’re all going in the same direction, and we all need to learn from each other. Ask the silly questions and approach people. Our leadership team are very focused on sharing messages, so I’d say to anybody wanting to find out what Glasgow are doing, certainly come and ask. You can get in contact with me and I’ll share what I can share, keeping in mind commercial sensitivity for certain things of course. The only thing I would say is there is an element of commercial sensitivity at certain times. Reassuringly though, there have been a number of local authorities that have got in contact with Glasgow already, and I’ve been in meetings with them what we’re just share what we’re doing, once we get to the point that we can share information.

I would say my main lesson would be ask the questions, find out who’s doing things, and that’s how you will progress within this space. There’s may be cases where there’s national policy that you need to catch up as well. But we are still actively speaking in the climate investment space to find out how and when things will actually be implemented because

things move so quickly, so you need to understand what’s happening and it’s a continuous learning process. It’s about understanding what everybody’s doing and how we can play into that space and how we can learn from each other. The main thing is that from a best value perspective and from a local authority perspective, it’s taxpayers’ money that we’re working with, so we need to be speaking to one another and working out if there are ways that we can do things that is going to be financially beneficial for all.

What are your reflections on how the sector as a whole is progressing when it comes to climate action?

It’s really reassuring that the public and private sectors seem to be getting more closely aligned. More conversations are happening, and we’re starting to understand each other’s business more, and the complementary work that we’re doing with each other and how we can progress things forward. Local and national government involvement within this space supplements this, too.

Everyone understands that the world needs sorting. Although fossil fuels are not currently within our gift and control, we’re not going to have them forever, so we need to start taking those actions now and start progressing things forward. I think it’s reassuring though that the public and private sectors are coming together more often to try and sort out these problems.

I mentioned earlier how the Resilient Cities Network worked with Glasgow City Council; even that’s an example of the public sector and the private sector coming together to solve some of the main challenges that cities are facing. The reassuring thing is that both worlds are coming together for the greater good. From the city’s perspective, we should recognise the skills that are out there that can help us in a local authority sense.