We’ve joined the World Resources Institute (WRI) and WWF to form a 5-year partnership. Together, our aim is to help climate solutions become commercial reality and have an impact on the world. The Climate Solutions Partnership is powered by USD100 million of philanthropic funding from HSBC. With a network of local partners, it aims to scale up climate innovation ventures and nature-based solutions in the UK. Find out more about the Climate Solutions Partnership.
Our climate partnerships
Find out more on what we’re doing with our climate partnerships.
Creating carbon-rich habitats with the National Trust
Together with the National Trust, we're planting 2 million trees over the next 4 years. This is part of an ambitious plan to increase access to nature, tackle climate change, attract more wildlife and protect landscapes prone to flooding by 2025. The project represents a major step in the fight against climate change. It will create 2,000 hectares of new woodland habitat - roughly the size of Worcester - and lock in the carbon equivalent of removing 15,000 cars from the road each year.
The project will enable the creation of woodland and carbon-rich habitat in Wales and Northern Ireland, where sites are being chosen at the moment. It also covers areas in England including:
- Killerton, Devon
- Wallington, Northumberland
- Dunham Masse, Cheshire
- Buscot and Coleshill Estates, Oxfordshire
- Wimpole, Cambridgeshire.
Careful consideration goes into the selection of trees for different sites, with 10 different native species being planted, including oak, hazel, beech, sweet chestnut and hawthorn. As well as mitigating the climate crisis, woodland creation will also help reverse the decline in wildlife.
Restoring the wetlands of Scotland with the National Trust for Scotland
We've teamed up with the National Trust for Scotland to support the pioneering Threave Landscape Restoration Project. This will transform 81 hectares of land at a disused dairy farm into rich wetland and woodland habitats for flora and fauna and create new carbon stores. This former intensive agriculture land is surrounded by some of the richest ecologically protected habitats in southern Scotland, along the River Dee in rural Galloway. It will become a fully restored ecosystem, self-sustaining and self-adapting to Scotland’s changing climate.
Over the coming months, more than 4,000 redundant fence posts will be removed, opening up the site visually.
A new 125m boardwalk will allow people to explore the area’s wetlands in a whole new way.
A herd of Belted Galloway cattle fitted with GPS will graze the site in a trial to explore how sustainable livestock management can be balanced with nature recovery.
Threave will become an established centre of excellence in landscape restoration, providing visitors, partners and the National Trust for Scotland with best practice methods and approaches.
Read more about the restoration project.
Supporting businesses with the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London
Our partnership with Imperial College London and the University of Birmingham is helping 150 UK start-ups to develop services or technologies with potential for impact on climate change. The partnership runs until December 2024 and will offer the ventures:
- research expertise
- collaboration opportunities
- intensive coaching to help redesign business and technology models
- funding and educational workshops to attract commercial investment for ventures to scale
Businesses will have the chance to stimulate innovation, develop and demonstrate new technologies and create commercially viable solutions that positively contribute to communities while reducing CO2 emissions.
The accelerator programme can be for:
- entrepreneurs with an idea they want to develop
- established businesses developing cleantech
- companies that need to innovate and make themselves low-carbon to stay in business
Find out more about the Imperial Greenhouse.
Get more detail about the UoB Energy Systems Catapult.
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Social partnerships
Learn more about the partnerships that can make a real impact on people's long-term financial health.
Sustainability in the UK
Join us in supporting local sustainable projects as part of the journey to a net zero economy.
Our global strategy
Find out more about what we're doing to protect our planet from the damaging effects of climate change.