Since my appointment as Chair of the Greater Manchester Low Carbon Hub, I've been affiliating myself with the variety and scale of work that is being undertaken across Greater Manchester to ensure we have a healthy, climate conscious future to look forward to.  

The remit is expansive, fast-moving and innovative. It covers all aspects of life, from the energy used to heat your morning cup of tea, travelling to and from work by the most sustainable form of transport and exploring our green spaces and waterways, to a leisurely bike ride along one of GM’s many cycle routes – the ‘green’ agenda touches us all and often in ways that we take for granted on a day to day basis.    

The aim of this article is to provide you with an overview of GM’s environmental achievements over the last year including the challenges and many opportunities that we face.

You can also consult Greater Manchester’s Low Carbon Hub 2016 annual report, which explores all of our low carbon and environmental headlines and highlights. It aims to provide local, national and international stakeholders who are interested in climate change with a simple overview of Greater Manchester’s targets, performance, priorities and projects. The report also provides useful links to online resources that provide more information about Greater Manchester’s performance, activities and contacts.

With collaboration from academia, the public and private sector, our highlights for 2016 include:

• Publication of the Climate Change and Low Emissions Implementation Plan (2016-20)
• The commencement of the E20m Natural Course Life IP Project
• GM’s Green Deal Communities programme was completed on time and over output, winning the National Energy Efficiency and Retrofit Awards in the large project category.
• GM was one of only 50 global cities (over 600 who signed up in 2015) to achieve Compact of Mayor’s compliance after Year 1
• Ring-fencing of £2m of ECO funding from EON for energy efficiency measures focused on the fuel poor
• A number of significant non-domestic energy/energy efficiency projects have been completed, including Parr’s Wood school, the UK’s second largest single installation of PV on a school in the UK
• Successful completion of the Horizon 2020 funded DIMMER smart energy research project.
• The opening of the guided busway with higher than expected patronage
• The completion of the Metrolink second city crossing - record patronage levels
• The completion of the upgrades to the Oxford Road corridor, including first segregated cycling routes
• The Business Growth Hub successfully secured additional ERDF to deliver a carbon reduction project to support SMEs to improve their energy efficiency and the adoption of on-site renewable energy 

  
The most significant highlight must be that we are on track to achieve our 48% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, based on current assumptions and planned action from within GM.  

You can read the environment report and discover more here.

Main image: Flickr user Stacey MacNaught.