Letter 15 — To Zero Carbon Headingley
Retrofitting resilience, one street at a time
Date: 27 October 2025
Recipient: Zero Carbon Headingley — Headingley Development Trust
Context
Week 3 of One Letter a Day turns from science to practice — from institutional reflection to the communities that make resilience visible. Zero Carbon Headingley is one Leeds climate active neighbourhood groups, hosting regular meetings, public consultations and, this month, a Retrofit Advice Fair. This letter explores how such local initiatives transform large-scale policy goals into tangible, shared action.
Letter
Dear friends at Zero Carbon Headingley,
I am writing as part of One Letter a Day: a year-long civic experiment to reopen grounded conversations about the climate emergency, starting here in Leeds. Each day I write to someone whose work shapes how we think and act on this crisis, and publish both letters and replies to encourage wider dialogue.
After a week writing to academics and reflecting on adaptation and resilience, I turn now to the neighbourhood communities that make those ideas real. Over the past year I have joined a few of your meetings — small circles of residents, volunteers, and occasionally councillors — and have seen how your work combines patience with purpose.
The Retrofit Advice Fair you are organising at HEART this Saturday 8 November captures that spirit perfectly. By creating space for people to ask questions, compare experiences and imagine their own next step, you turn abstraction into agency. You show how climate action becomes credible only when it feels local, shared, and possible.
Yet the scale of what you are addressing is immense. In West Yorkshire alone, roughly half a million homes need major energy upgrades to meet the region’s 2038 net-zero target. Retrofit is often treated as a technical or policy problem, but its success ultimately depends on something profoundly social: trust, shared knowledge, and the reassurance that neighbours are not acting alone.
I ask because I believe many climate-concerned citizens still hesitate to join organisations like ZCH. They may not yet see the tangible impact that neighbourhood groups can have, or understand what they themselves could bring — skills, experience, energy, simple presence. Bridging that gap between concern and participation feels essential if civic action is to scale from dozens to thousands.
So my question is this: given the scale of the retrofit task, where do you see an organisation like Zero Carbon Headingley making the most meaningful contribution — and where could climate-engaged citizens best lend their support? Is it through example, coordination, advocacy, or in sustaining the patient social ties that make all three possible?
With gratitude for your work and your constancy,
Vivien Badaut
Founder, One Letter a Day
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Tomorrow’s letter continues Week 3’s focus on neighbourhood resilience — turning to Climate Action Armley and its work on inclusion, justice and local empowerment.