A website featuring details of Manchester’s ambitious plan to tackle climate change has gone live.
The plan, entitled Manchester: A Certain Future, was officially launched with help from Ed Miliband, Secretary Of State For Energy And Climate Change, during a high profile rally attended by more than 500 people at Manchester Central on Tuesday December 8.
The event, organised by the Department of Energy And Climate Change (DECC) and Manchester Friends Of The Earth, was the minister’s last UK appearance before attending the Copenhagen climate talks, and he described the plan as an excellent example of how cities should respond to the challenge.
Details of the plan, which aims to cut the city’s carbon emissions by 41 per cent by 2020, have now been published on a website http://www.manchesterclimate.com.
Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese will also be travelling to the Danish capital where he will present world leaders with the document and call for them to make meaningful decisions at the summit.
The plan, which was coordinated by the City Council but written by nearly 100 organisations including Manchester Friends Of The Earth, outlines a range of actions such as:
Making improvements to at least 100,000 homes in Manchester. This will
reduce residents’ bills and save more than 350,000 tonnes of carbon
every year by the end of 2020.
Setting out an ambitious education plan to inform all residents and
employees in the city about climate change.
Radically producing energy using renewable sources such as biomass,
geothermal and combined heat and power, while adding small community
and business energy-generating schemes to this network.
Constructing new buildings that are energy efficient, helping create
around 15,000 jobs in the growing green economy.
Accelerate the ongoing work to create more green spaces, gardens and
green roofs, absorbing carbon and acing as a flood defence, while
aiming to double the amount of food grown locally.
Improving cycle ways, encouraging people to walk, increasing the use of
public transport, setting up street lights powered by renewable
energy and a network of charging points for electric vehicles.
The use of smart meters, enabling residents and businesses to carefully monitor their energy consumption by showing how much they are using, is also put forward. DECC has announced the meters will be in every UK home by 2020, and plans are already underway to create the first smart metering business district in the Northern Quarter.
Sir Richard Leese, City Council leader, said: “Manchester led the industrial revolution and we now intend to play a lead role in tackling the challenges which climate change presents.
"These plans will play a key role in Manchester’s economic recovery as we emerge from the recession, with the potential to create thousands of new jobs, as new green businesses are developed in the city.
“We are presenting this report to world leaders at Copenhagen as an example of the sort of ambitious targets that can be set when organisations work together. This is a visionary approach that will work for us in Manchester and we believe it will also work elsewhere.
“A low carbon future is in everyone’s interest and I am urging leaders to seize this critical opportunity to secure a binding agreement that sets ambitious targets for reducing global emissions, while also providing resources to developing countries.”
