Since outlining its Climate Change Action Plan a year ago, Manchester City Council has made progress in its efforts to tackle the issue
The plan aimed to halve the Council’s direct emissions by 2025 and make Manchester a zero carbon city by 2038.
The Council’s achievements over the past year include:
- Investing in 27 electric bin lorries to replace more than half the refuse collection fleet, thus saving 900 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.
- Initiating Tree Action MCR, a programme which will plant thousands of trees over the next two years.
- Replacing 56,000 street lights in the city with low emission LED alternatives.
- Beginning the work on the 6.5 acre Mayfield Park, the first new city centre park in decades
- Nearing completion of Civic Quarter Heat Network, an environmentally-friendly shared heating system to reduce emissions across prominent city centre buildings such as the Town Hall extension, Central Library and Manchester Central Convention Centre. When completed, this system will save 1,600 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.
- Supporting the electrification of Council vehicles by installing electric vehicle charging points at the three biggest Council depots.
- Completing and opening West Gorton’s ‘sponge park’, designed to help prevent flooding.
- A proposal to retrofit 10,500 social homes over four years to cut carbon emissions is included in the city’s post-coronavirus Economic Recovery and Investment Plan.
- Delivering carbon literacy training to around 1,000 Council staff.
- Opening the UK’s first ‘Cyclops junction’, optimised for cycling and walking, in Hulme as part of the development of Manchester to Chorlton cycle route.
As a result of actions taken by the Council, the decarbonisation of the National Grid and the impacts of the pandemic, there has been a 25% reduction in the Council’s emissions compared to the same period in 2019-2020.
The Council aims to cut emissions by 13% each year in order to achieve 50% reduction by 2025.
Councillor Angeliki Stogia, Executive Member for Environment, said: “The benefits of success will not simply be the city’s contribution to combatting climate change, as important as that is.
“They will include more pleasant and healthier places, cheaper fuel bills and jobs in the green economy – a real win-win for Manchester people.”
Main Photo: West Gorton Community Garden, the ’sponge park’. Image via Groundwork
