Net Zero Hack for Impact: wrapping up & next steps

And that's a wrap! After months of planning we were absolutely delighted to host Northern Powergrid for their inaugural Net Zero Hack for Impact on the 31st January.

This was the first of its kind for Northern Powergrid, who are pioneering in their approach to working with data in the open. They have the commitment and ambition to support our region to achieve its net zero pledge and are looking to use their investment fund of more than £10m in innovative projects to fuel progress towards decarbonisation.

That is why they wanted to work with us to deliver this event - to convene innovators, policy makers, data enthusiasts and people who are passionate about decarbonisation to build data-driven solutions to challenges facing the energy sector, serving as a potential starting point for future innovation projects and funding proposals.

This wasn't an ordinary event for us either - it was the last event we'll be hosting at Munro House. We used the event as an opportunity to celebrate the last ten years and, at the end of the day, raised a glass to the years to come as we go 'On Tour'.

Northern Powergrid have been one of our sponsors for many years and we couldn't think of a better partner to celebrate with. Even despite train strikes on the day (typical), we still saw a great turnout. We were thrilled with the energy in the room throughout the whole day - people were passionate and jumped in with both feet, offering their ideas and contributing to vibrant discussion in the morning and hard work building solutions in the afternoon. Fuelled with a delicious, locally sourced lunch and the promise of energy saving prizes to come.

A day passes by very quickly at our hack events, and even in such a short time our attendees, with help from Northern Powergrid and the Open Innovations team, were able to produce valuable outputs. We encourage everyone who took part, and anyone who wants to learn more about Northern Powergrid's innovation funding opportunities, to get in touch with Gillian Williamson at gillian.williamson@northernpowergrid.com.

Highlights from the day

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Open data provides vital information to empower stakeholders to make more informed decisions, identify opportunities to collaborate and get involved with how we can develop our network to deliver our region's net zero ambitions.

I'd like to thank all the stakeholders and partners who took part for demonstrating their passion to drive innovation and change across the energy industry. Working together, we were amazed at how much could be achieved in one day.

This event demonstrates our ambition to drive forward decarbonisation through innovation, collaboration and data-driven decision making. Doing so will help us ensure our electricity distribution network is fit for the future and meets the needs of the customers and communities we serve.

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We followed our usual, tried and tested Unconference approach on the day. In the morning session, we worked together to define the themes and challenges that are facing Northern Powergrid's stakeholders and network. The themes that emerged were:

• Standards & Infrastructure
• Measuring Progress Towards Net Zero
• Positive Public Engagement
• Publishing & Sharing
• Planning & Net Zero

We captured all of our thoughts, ideas, design and data sources in our Collab Doc - where you can learn more about the prototypes we developed on the day. As we have done for previous hackathons, we build a basic Lume template website to host some of our outputs on the day.

We created an open Github repository and visualised data using our OI Lume Charts, our in-house charting library. Explore the website, take a look over the Github repository, and find out more about how we developed our infrastructure and visualisation library.

We're delighted to partner with Northern Powergrid to host the inaugural Net Zero Hack for Impact event. Northern Powergrid has always been pioneering in their approach to open data and embrace our radically open approach to making a difference at pace.

Conclusion

We were delighted with the outcomes from our Net Zero Hack for Impact - the first of its kind for Northern Powergrid, and the last event we'll be hosting from Munro House.

A huge thank you to Northern Powergrid for being our sponsors and friends for so long, and we are looking forward to seeing what comes next out of the event.

If you attended, or you are interested in Net Zero and would like to know more about future collaboration and innovation funding opportunities then get in touch with us at hello@open-innovations.org.

Join us at our next event, How Does the North Win? Find out more here, and don't forget to register!