The GoZero Index – designed by The Young Foundation – is a new, interactive tool that maps how ready different places across England are for the transition to a fair and equitable net zero future.
The GoZero Index brings together more than 30 datasets – spanning housing, transport, health, employment and social data – to build a clear picture of the unique challenges and strengths that shape each local area’s journey to net zero. It highlights not just where we must decarbonise faster, but also where communities need more support to participate fully in the green transition.
At a time when the UK is struggling to meet its climate targets, this tool provides vital insight into how national and regional policy can better reflect local realities – ensuring that no place or community is left behind as we move toward net zero.
As the first tool of its kind, the GoZero Index challenges the highly technical and top-down approach to net zero policies, which have leant heavily on blanket decarbonisation approaches to infrastructure, energy, and technology.
Instead, recognising the deep spatial and social inequalities that the UK experiences, the Index helps to build a more rounded picture. It considers the local challenges and strengths that shape each place’s journey to net zero – providing both an overall picture of current ‘readiness’ for transition, and benchmarking readiness in four areas: agency, inequality, infrastructure, and economy. The Index can thereby help changemakers, funders and policymakers offer more targeted support to help people and places participate in and benefit from net zero policies.
Explore your journey to net zero
Use the map below to explore your own local area’s journey to net zero, and compare it with other places. Take a look at the overall readiness, or explore some different combinations of the datasets underpinning the Index, to understand what ‘readiness’ looks like in terms of the economy and jobs market, the state of local infrastructure such as transport or buildings, existing inequalities, or people’s agency to make change where they live.
How to use the map:
- Select a local authority (or multiple authorities to compare) in the top search bar.
- Select the information you are interested in using in the ‘Indicator’ drop-down menu – either overall readiness for transition to net zero across all evaluated datasets, or readiness for net zero transition connected to a specific dataset, choosing from agency, economy, inequalities, or infrastructure.
- Hover over neighbourhoods within a local authority, or use the colour scale to see how ready for net zero transition a place is – either overall or in the context of a specific dataset (blue is less ready and yellow is more ready).
Climate change Community Community needs and priorities Education and employment Environment Housing and regeneration Inequality Just transition Net zero Places
Posted on: 30 October 2025 Authors: Samanthi Theminimulle, Jenna Fowler, Emily Morrison, Julie McLaren,