Ellison Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8XS ask@neecco.org.uk 0191 233 2000 Donate

Our Work

The North East England Climate Coalition is focusing our work to:

  • Tackle the climate emergency
  • Reverse ecological collapse
  • Deliver an urgent and just transition

We have decided to address these priorities through a number of more specific categories or work streams.

Rather than NEECCo selecting its own work streams, the Interim Steering Group decided to align our work areas with the categories assigned by the UK Committee on Climate Change (UK-CCC).

The UK-CCC produce an annual progress report which is delivered to Parliament and for the last 5 years have consistently organised their work into 11 categories.  The most recent report was published in June 2021 and the Summary Report can be found below.


UK Climate Change Committee:

  • Surface transport
  • Aviation and shipping
  • Industry
  • Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
  • Hydrogen
  • Buildings
  • Power
  • Agriculture and land use
  • Waste
  • Fluorinated gas (F-gas)
  • Public engagement

Since our inception in March 2020 we have secured 21 regional or sub-regional organisations from across sectors as our Strategic Partners, to develop and drive forward the work of the Coalition:

  • ·       CBI
  • ·       Environment Agency
  • ·       FSB
  • ·       Natural England
  • ·       North East Culture Partnership
  • ·       North East England Chamber of Commerce
  • ·       North East England Nature Partnership
  • ·       North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System
  • ·       Northern Gas Networks
  • ·       Northern Powergrid
  • ·       Public Health England
  • ·       Schools North East
  • ·       Tees Valley Nature Partnership
  • ·       TUC
  • ·       VONNE
  • ·       Youth Focus North East
  • ·       The 5 North East Universities

We have been working at pace to establish planning groups aligned to the UK Commission on Climate Change focus areas. In discussion with the Steering Group and our wider partners, so far over 70 NEECCo partners have engaged and established the following planning groups to develop our proposals:

  • Land Use and Agriculture (led by North East England Nature Partnership)
  • Housing Retrofitting (led by Northern Housing Consortium)
  • Built Environment (led by RIBA NE / Constructing Excellence North East)
  • Public Engagement (led by VONNE & TUC)
  • Waste and Resource Management (led by GENEE)
  • Sustainable Finance (led by NEECCo)

These groups are developing regional action plans and proposals for work we can undertake collectively, at scale across the region with the intention that working collaboratively we can be more ambitious in our plans and seek investment to make these ambitions into reality. 

If you or your organisation could add value and would like to get involved in any of the Planning Groups, please Contact Us.

Sectoral Work

Several of the Coalition’s regional level strategic partners are developing and delivering work that is not specifically linked to any of the NEECCo work streams, but are initiatives that have been catalysed or initiated in part in response to the emergence of NEECCo.  These initiatives are aiming to embed and begin to drive forward the ambitions of the Coalition at a sectoral level.

ICS Sustainability Strategy

One example of this would be the work of the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System (NENC-ICS) on their Sustainability Strategy, much of which will be contained within the membership of the ICS itself, but some of which will doubtless involve partnerships across the Coalition.

Going Green Together

Finally, VONNE has convened the VONNE Climate Action Alliance (VCAA) to enable the delivery of a programme of community based and community led actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to test, learn from and share the ways in which Civil Society can best make its distinct contribution to the challenges of rapid change to a low carbon world.

They recently launched the Going Green Together project with a mission of supporting organisations and communities in the North East to take climate action.

NEECCo is working to encourage and support such programmes of work, using our agreed 3-tiered approach to developing sectoral level approaches:

  1. Sharing Good Practice
  2. Identifying positive examples and sharing them across the sector e.g. health, built environment, housing

  3. Collective planning and delivery, region-wide, sector-specific
  4. Identifying areas where collective work across the sector could bring significant savings or greater impact.

  5. Regional Activities which cut across sectors.
  6. Identifying areas where partnership beyond the sector would bring potential benefits and where being part of NEECCo could add value and increase impact

If your organisation would like to lead a sectoral response aligned with the aims and under the umbrella of NEECCo, please Contact Us