Report of the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer attached

The Executive received a report from the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer, which provided an update on the significant progress that had been made in delivering the Plan over the last 10 months despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. .

The Council’s Climate Change Action Plan 2020/25 set an ambition for the Council to reduce its direct CO2 emissions by 50% between 2020 and 2025 based on a 13% year on year reduction trajectory. The Plan also recognised the Council’s unique leadership role in supporting and influencing the city to reduce its emissions and in ensuring that the city’s residents were protected from the impacts of climate change.

Since declaring a Climate Emergency, the Council had set about transforming the way it worked to ensure that climate change was at the heart of the organisation and its work with partners, residents and with its young people. The Council’s Corporate Plan priorities had been refreshed for 2020/21 to reflect the city’s zero carbon ambitions, resulting in the inclusion of a new ‘Zero Carbon Manchester’ priority.  Policies, procedures and decision making had also been reviewed as well as work within procurement and commissioning, changes to the Capital Gateway approval process and the development of a new Manchester Low Carbon Build Standard.

The table below summarised the main actions that would deliver the 50% reduction in the Council’s direct CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2025.

It was reported that the Council’s direct CO2 emissions had reduced by 54.7% between 2009/10 and 2019/20.  The report then went on to provide a summary of the main areas of progress against the five sections of the Plan along with any challenges or delays.  An analysis of additional financial investment against each of the actions in the Plan had also been undertaken and the total investment figure was £92.5m which was made up of £89.2m of capital investment and £3.3m of revenue investment. The breakdown of this by funder was as follows:-

·                £23.5m Council funding;

·                £32.9m funding from UK Government;

·                £4.9m funding from the European Union;

·                £25.7m funding from Greater Manchester Combined Authority projects; and

·                £1.1m funding secured by the Manchester Climate Change Agency for community projects.

The activity delivered since March 2020 had put in place solid foundations for the delivery of the Climate Change Action Plan. A number of large scale projects had been progressed and funding bids had been submitted, however, COVID-19 had inevitably resulted in some delays to projects due to capacity issues. The Zero Carbon Coordination Group, workstream leads and the programme management team would ensure that progress continued to be made against all of the actions in the Plan. There were also a number of emerging priorities for 2021/22 centred around future project development and external funding, delivering on funded programmes and accelerating actions which had been impacted by COVID-19.

Following a question on the low level of city emissions reductions estimated for 2018 and 2019 and the potential impact these would have on future years emission targets, the Executive Member for Environment, Planning and Transport advised all projects would be progressing and a number of these large scale projects would deliver reductions in emissions higher than the required yearly target thereby delivering the overall five year reduction target.

Decision

The Executive note the progress that has been made in delivering the Climate Change Action Plan and the priorities for the next financial year.