Shaping a Low Carbon Economy

The Greater Manchester Climate Change Strategy was approved by the AGMA Executive Board on 29 July 2011 and the commitment to the ambitious 48% reduction in direct carbon dioxide emissions has now been adopted city wide. This target is aspirational and above compliance with the current UK government target of 34%, competitive with international best practice. An implementation plan for the strategy 2012 -2014 is being developed to provide a context for current work. The Strategy can be found on the AGMA website:

The Greater Manchester Environment Commission, with support from Department for Energy and Climate Change, has commissioned a study to estimate the carbon emissions of Greater Manchester (GM) residents and businesses. This considers not only those resulting directly from energy use but also those resulting from the supply chains of the goods and services that we buy and use. We call this the ‘Consumption-based Carbon Footprint’, or the ‘Total Carbon Footprint’.

The consumption-based approach includes supply chain emissions associated with the production of goods and services used and consumed by residents, wherever those emissions actually take place. For example, emissions from the production and transport of food purchased by GM residents lie within the scope, whereas the footprint of food produced in GM but exported beyond GM’s boundaries is not included in this analysis. To give another example, in our analysis, the carbon footprint of residents’ driving includes not only the direct emissions from their burning of vehicle fuel, wherever that takes place, but also emissions resulting from the extraction, shipping and refining of the fuel, as well as a component for the manufacture of the vehicle itself. It does not, in contrast, include vehicle emissions from non-GM residents who visit the city by car.

Using this approach, we estimate that the annual carbon footprint of GM residents is estimated at 41.2m tonnes CO2e. This makes the footprint of the average resident 15.7 tonnes, roughly in line with that of the average UK resident.

Why should we measure and act on the total footprint?
Until now, official place-based carbon metrics have taken a production-based approach, including only direct emissions and those resulting from electricity use. This has had policy implications, since what we measure tends to be what we manage. As a result, central, regional and local government have concentrated on carbon policies concerned almost solely with transport, household energy, energy generation and on-site business emissions.

The adoption of a consumption based metrics alongside production-based accounting opens up a wealth of both opportunity and challenge. Doing so is particularly important when seeking to understand and manage the impacts of lifestyles and of service economies, since in these cases, supply chain emissions often dwarf the direct emissions that would be included in an assessment of only direct emissions.

The spreadsheet below is the data model behind the total carbon footprint of Greater Manchester. This model has been established by quantifying the consumption patterns of residents in each District of Greater Manchester and using this information to disaggregate national data. We would be happy for people to take this data and explore how it could be improved, or broken down further, to help us to use this information to improve people's understanding of the carbon impacts of the way they consume goods and services.

Greater Manchester has been designated the UK's first Low Carbon Economic Area (LCEA) for the Built Environment by the government.

The Low Carbon Economic Area in Greater Manchester, which is the fourth LCEA to be announced by the government overall, is expected to save 6 million tones of carbon, pump an additional £650m into the economy and support 34,800 jobs.

Initial work on the design of the programme has been carried out by teams from Greater Manchester's commissions for the Environment and the New Economy alongside those from government including Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Treasury, Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

A partnership delivery plan for 5-year programme of work can be downloaded from the link below.

This document is now completed in draft and is currently out for consultation. Developed by the GM Housing Retrofit team in partnership with URBED and other housing retrofit working groups, this ambitious strategy attempts to set out the overall path for retrofit activity within Greater Manchester to 2050.
Comments and feedback on the draft are most welcome and should be submitted before 04 November 2011. Comments can be made through the link below. For any further information please contact Anne Parkes on 0161 600 7975.

In March 2010, a study commissioned by the Commission for New Economy and delivered by Innovas Solutions was released, which focused on the Low Carbon Environmental Goods and Services Sector.

The study was designed to understand the potential scale of increasing demand for green industries, how local businesses can take advantage of the opportunities they provide and which sub sectors are most likely to generate new jobs for the region.

The report found that Greater Manchester is a leader in the UK in carbon capture and storage technology, additional energy sources such as biofuels and contaminated land remediation. It is also strong in alternative fuels and environmental consultancy, and above average in wind energy, low carbon building technologies and energy management.

The report shows that Greater Manchester has the potential to be a world leader in low carbon building technologies, generating additional jobs and revenue from what is a fast growing sector both in the UK and internationally.

The region is also well placed to develop its strong research capabilities, particularly in low carbon aerospace and aviation technologies and services, and could become a centre for commercialising and developing new energy technologies.

The Innovas report recommends that this growth be supported by a wide-ranging integrated public sector procurement strategy, providing cost effective access to low carbon technologies. The first stage would be to speed up the procurement of building and energy management technologies for public sector building and housing stock in the region.

Dowload a copy of the report below.

In 2008, Greater Manchester commissioned a study to examine the economic effects of new and existing climate change legislation. Entitled the 'Mini-Stern for Manchester', the report identified that the city region stands to lose £20 billion is the business fails to adapt to this new legislative environment.

For more information on Greater Manchester's work on the low-carbon economy see the Commission for New Economy's web pages.