Doing just transition in the Mission Net Zero project

How do we implement a just transition to net zero? This is a core question for Praxis Research, a Bristol-based startup which supports participation and democracy in the journey to net zero. In this blog Praxis Director Emilia Melville explores thoughts and reflections from an exchange session between the Community Leadership Panel on Climate Change and Just Transition and Inclusion Associate Grace Reid. Grace has been supporting the implementation of just transition in practice in the Mission Net Zero project.

Mission Net Zero is a £5 million multi-partner project funded by Innovate UK and led by Bristol City Council helping accelerate the transition to net zero in the West of England. It is exploring local and regional demand for climate action and how this can be paired with the money and skills required. To date, it has developed three new community climate investment plans as well as a regional clean energy investment plan. It has also enhanced skills locally to ensure there will be more skilled people to do the climate work needed, such as making improvements to buildings to reduce their energy use or installing new products like heat pumps.

The term ‘mission’ reflects the idea that the state should actively channel and steer resources from the state and private sector to benefit the population, rather than take a backseat in regulating the markets. Economist Mariana Mazucatto uses the example of President Kennedy, who influenced the public and private sectors to put a man on the moon, to argue that governments should be doing the same now to respond to the climate crisis.

Just transition, meaning responding to climate change in a way that is fair for everyone, is at the heart of Mission Net Zero. However, implementation of the principles in the Just Transition Declaration into ‘business as usual’ approaches is not always straightforward.

The project hired an Inclusion Associate, Grace Reid, to help think through implementation. Grace commented that everyone in the Mission Net Zero team was already on board with just transition, and she didn’t feel the need to justify her presence on the project team. Through listening to the project partners, Grace identified a number of cross-cutting challenges to the implementation of just transition in the Mission Net Zero project, and developed a Just Transition in Action model for addressing these. The challenges included:

• systemic barriers
• equity concerns
• resource limitations
• engagement complexity
• power imbalances
• and trust deficit.

The model for overcoming these involves Equity, Inclusivity, Accessibility and Empowerment, with a further set of four actions linking these together. Within the project, action plans were developed to act upon these in practical yet ambitious ways.

The Community Leadership Panel, which is part of the Community Climate & Nature Action Project, was interested to hear about the Mission Net Zero project’s experience of using this framework as a tool for implementing a just transition. The conversation among the panel members zoomed out from the model to consider the wider implementation of just transition. The discussion below draws on comments made by panel members during the session, but the framing in this blog is the view of Praxis Research.

Accountability processes

Panellists asked how the projects’ implementation of just transition would be maintained over the longer term. Whilst there is not currently a mechanism for accountability after the funded period of the project in February 2026, Bristol City Council has a long-term commitment to climate action and just transition, having endorsed the Bristol Just Transition Declaration. The panel reflected that this question of enforceability of just transition aspirations has been recurrent in the panel development – including whether the panel itself can or should have ‘teeth’. You can explore this alongside other learnings in the recent insights report on the Community Leadership Panel, published by Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership.

Intrinsic vs instrumental values/Idealism vs pragmatism

Ensuring just transition is compatible with creating a project that will provide the returns on investment needed to attract private finance is something the Mission Net Zero project is thinking about. These core systemic issues were also apparent in the Democratic Listening Circles on Just Transition developed by Praxis’ directors in collaboration with the Just Transition Declaration authors. Do we need to enter into different, more open-ended approaches to reflection that cut beneath the technocratic detail, alongside more pragmatic and systematised approaches?

‘Justice’ and current political discourse

Perhaps conflicts between principles of justice and an economic structure that makes us value money so much, creates tensions with centrist politics. Rejection of establishment values has been mixed up with rejection of the net zero policies. As a result, the language of just transition risks being seen as part of a ‘woke’ leftist educated middle class elite, despite its roots in workers movements of the 1970s America.

Research by Climate Outreach shows that the majority of British people support ambitious action on climate change, but find it more compelling when this is framed in terms of ‘prosperity and a better future for all’ (72%) than in terms of ‘just transition’ (58%) Climate Outreach. Fairness is perceived as “doing right by everyone involved; justice, by contrast, may be taken to imply wrongdoing in the past that must be atoned for.” Climate Outreach.

With major UK political parties rejecting net zero policies and trying to dismantle existing climate legislation, the Community Leadership Panel wondered what durability just transition attempts will have.

The content of the work of Mission Net Zero, of the Just Transition Declaration, and other initiatives such as Bristol City Leap is both needed and has potential for popular support. However, the language used in public communication needs to resonate with people outside of climate policy circles. How can we imagine other ways of bringing this into public conversation at all levels? What are the interventions we could make that would cut through, and be engaging and interesting for people who aren’t making climate action their hobby, or paid to be here?

These are key questions for our times.

Thank you to everyone involved in the conversation whose ideas are included in this blog, to Praxis Associate Charlie Siret for editorial support, and Praxis Director Jack Nicholls for editorial review. Learn more about Praxis Research’s support for the Community Leadership Panel on Climate and Just Transition.

Find out more about Mission Net Zero

Find out more about the Community Climate & Nature Action Project