Manchester Climate Change Agency with Manchester City Council: Creating an Update of the Manchester Climate Change Framework

Manchester Climate Change Partnership (MCCP) is a cross-sectoral partnership of organisations that are engaged in helping the city become zero carbon and climate resilient.

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Introduction

MCCP is a cross-sectoral partnership of organisations that are engaged in helping the city become zero carbon and climate resilient. It includes representation from across the city’s communities and its private, public, health, faith, culture, sport, property, social housing, and academic sectors.

Manchester Climate Change Agency, established in 2015 works on behalf of MCCP to develop the city’s Climate Change Framework a high-level strategy towards making Manchester a thriving, zero carbon and climate resilient city. The Agency has undertaken a 2022 update of that Framework to inform the city on progress and outline the scale of action needed for Manchester to stay within its carbon budget.

The Partnership and Agency are responsible for championing, coordinating and facilitating the implementation of this Framework. Their activities are focused on working with partners on the following headline objectives:

  • helping our city to set the right objectives and targets, in line with the Paris Agreement and the latest science
  • helping our city to establish the strategy, governance and partnerships needed to meet the targets
  • helping our city to take action
  • helping our city to understand its progress.

Working with Manchester City Council

Manchester City Council is a member of the Manchester Climate Change Partnership. This enables the other Partnership members to set out the barriers that are preventing them and their wider networks from fully delivering their climate change commitments. Where Manchester City Council has the powers and/or the resources to respond to these barriers, they will work collaboratively with the rest of the Partnership to deliver on them. Where they don’t they, will work to secure the necessary support from the relevant body, including Greater Manchester Combined Authority and/or Government.

Working with Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Many of the projects and programmes and the work we need to do with Government will be best delivered in partnership with Greater Manchester. The relationship between Manchester City Council, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the other nine local authorities will be key to enable this to happen. Working with UK Government There will be activities which require additional powers and/ or funding from Government to enable them to be delivered. For example, changes in Government legislation to enable the Mayor of Greater Manchester to re-regulate the buses and deliver the planned improvements to bus services.

The challenge

In 2018, Manchester set a science based Zero Carbon date of 2038.

Manchester is not currently on track to stay within its carbon budget. We have not been reducing our direct emissions by 13 per cent per year as targeted and are at risk of missing the city’s first milestone: to reduce our direct emissions by 50 per cent by 2025.

There is a role of everyone to take action and to understand what they can do - the Update sets out over 175 recommended actions

Awareness raising of the scale of action and confidence in the solutions is a huge challenge we hope to address through peer-to-peer MCCP learning, city challenges and a city-wide communications campaign.

One of the greatest challenges posed by the cost of living crisis is that climate action gets ignored so in the Update we have highlighted throughout the co benefits of climate action for adaptation, resilience, health and wellbeing and the economy.

The solution

This Update sets out in more granular detail the scale of action needed to reduce our direct emissions by 50 per cent using an evidence base provided by the SCATTER model developed by Anthesis.

Alongside these targets, the Update presents over 175 detailed, specific recommended actions, co-created with a wide range of stakeholders, that focus on where there is agency to act; that is, where there is direct control to deliver, affect or influence the required level of emissions reductions.

Four categories have been identified for the recommended actions:

  • to be delivered locally, where direct control lies in Manchester
  • to work on at city-region level, with Greater Manchester partners
  • to advocate for national government to do
  • to do differently, where there are opportunities to innovate.

The Update also shows the impact that our performance to date is having, and could have, on our overall carbon budget. It sets out a series of scenarios for the city – different pathways of emissions reductions – to show what needs to be done to stay within our carbon budget by 2038.

The Update also provides an overview of work carried out since publication of the Framework in 2020 on the objectives for Adaption and Resilience, Health and Wellbeing, and Inclusive Economy.

All of this is in line with commitments made in the original Framework, and with the objectives of the MCCP – to ensure the city has a robust strategy, targets, and plan, aligned to the latest science, policy, and technology development, to enable us to play our full part in tackling the climate crisis.

The detailed analysis was paid for by The Zero Carbon Cities project, funded by the EU’s URBACT initiative and administered by Manchester City Council, which allowed Anthesis to conduct a detailed assessment of Manchester’s carbon emissions, using their SCATTER carbon data tool. It shows that buildings are responsible for 76 per cent of Manchester’s direct emissions, ground transport for 24 per cent and that renewable energy for the city needs to increase significantly from today's levels.

The impact

Granular targets and actions within the Update which has a clearer call to action and has been supported by the MCCP.

Simple key messages in the Update are:

  • urgent action is needed to reduce direct emissions from our buildings and ground transport, and to increase renewable energy generation, if Manchester is to stay within its carbon budget
  • decisive action is needed to assess the city’s vulnerability to climate change and to ensure we are adapting our infrastructure, buildings, economy, and residents to be resilient to a changing climate
  • everyone has a role to play – individuals, organisations, local and national government – and there is a great deal we have the power to achieve locally, if we work collaboratively
  • the cost of transitioning to zero carbon cannot be borne solely by the public purse, so we need to find innovative ways to unlock private finance investment.
  • moving to a low carbon and climate resilient city brings opportunities to deliver wider strategic ambitions, including improving people’s health, reducing fuel and food poverty, creating new jobs and economic growth, and delivering a greener city for everyone.

How is the approach being sustained?

The core remit of the Manchester Climate Change Partnership (MCCP) and Manchester Climate Change Agency (MCCA) are:

  • Promote the 2022 Update of the Framework to raise awareness of the scale and urgency of action needed if Manchester is to meet its climate change goals.
  • Champion action that supports delivery of the targets and recommendations contained in the 2022 Update.
  • Include a wider diversity of voices and perspectives in Manchester’s climate conversation and positive action.
  • Expand engagement in climate action through convening and supporting new programmes and initiatives.
  • Work with partners outside the city to ensure Manchester has access to the latest best practice in climate finance, policy, technology, and practical delivery.
  • Position Manchester as a leader on climate action in the UK and internationally.
  • Share the city’s progress against our carbon budget and collaborative transition through Annual reports.

These core activities will continue, in addition, MCCP has asked MCCA to:

  • Explore options for tracking progress against the targets and recommendations made in the Update. Whilst acknowledging that data is not available for all measures, and that when it is available it is often time-lagged, incomplete and incompatible with other data, a more granular monitoring of progress would help to trigger corrective action as well as amplify success.
  • Enhance the city’s reporting of climate action, building on the existing Annual Reports and the targets and recommendations in this Update, to more regularly and in more granular detail highlight the progress being made towards the city’s goals for climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

Members of the Partnership and its independent Advisory Groups will support these actions.

Lessons learned

Manchester’s science-based Carbon budget has allowed us to track actual progress against the zero carbon 2038 target. It has shown we are not on track and identified areas to focus action on.

Despite having a Carbon budget and trajectory of a 13 per cent per annum reduction - without granular targets and specific actions it doesn’t mean anything. The Update sets out these targets and actions and is the first step towards a more detailed transition to a zero-carbon economy for the city.

Adaptation and mitigation need to be tackled together. A changing climate is showing us that unless adaptation is planned into our investments and activity there is an increased risk for the future.   

The cost of living crisis is affecting communities in Manchester. There has been wide support for the link to co benefits of climate action. Residents and communities want to take action now.

We know we need to do a lot more to work with national government to have the policy levers in place to enable local areas to move towards a climate resilient, zero carbon economy.

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