Assessing Carbon Flow at The Local Scale

Greater Manchester, an urban conurbation in the UK, was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Recent restructuring and the potential for increases in economic growth place a requirement on the city to consider its future energy strategies if it is to keep its CO 2 emissions to responsible levels. Reducing the carbon intensity of economies is an essential element of combating the threat of global warming, and although the problem is global in nature, effective remedial action has to be instigated at a variety of spatial scales. Inventories that are based at the city level allow the intensity and distribution of local carbon flows to be calculated and therefore have considerable potential in many planning and decision making processes. The CO 2 inventory constructed for this paper is the first stage of prioritising carbon reduction strategies for Greater Manchester, providing an indication of carbon flows specific to the region. The inventory has been developed from the knowledge and experience of other city-scale energy studies which have taken place to date, and although the methodology has been developed for application to the Greater Manchester region the approach can be replicated for other urban areas. (Research project funded by the EPSRC - 'Towards Sustainable Cities' program, GR/K61647).