During 2010 the University of Manchester and Tyndall Centre undertook a series of workshops to explore public attitudes to the energy options facing our city-region.

Their report highlighted a “knowledge gap” between emissions reduction targets and those tasked with implementing such change. It re-enforced the results of other studies regarding uptake of emissions-reducing approaches and offered an insight into how differing groups within Manchester perceived their role in decarbonisation.

The work fed into the Greater Manchester Energy Plan and also highlighted the need for subsequent work to understand the relative contributions of different actions in delivering targets, work on promoting carbon literacy in Greater Manchester and a more evidence – based analysis of carbon targets and their implications. This work on strengthening the evidence base and contribution of actions to carbon targets was undertaken by URS on behalf of the Low Carbon hub during early 2014.