Energy has taken centre stage at Greater Manchester’s Green Summit as Mayor, Andy Burnham, moves forward with plans to make Greater Manchester one of the leading green cities in Europe.

We were proud to speak at the event which was attended by more than 600 delegates including Transport for Greater Manchester, Greater Manchester Low Carbon Hub, The Environment Agency, United Utilities, the University of Manchester, and the BBC.

The summit saw the Mayor, along with local leaders, set out an ambition to make Greater Manchester carbon neutral by 2040, ten years ahead of the original plan. Doing this will improve the health and quality of life for millions of people while protecting the environment for future generations.

But how are we going to achieve this? As well as a focus on making Manchester the UK’s first plastic-free city, other proposals put forward included an emissions-free bus fleet, doubling the provision of charging points for electric vehicles, and building zero carbon homes.

These are areas in which we at Electricity North West are already heavily active. Ahead of the event, we put forward our pledge to ensure that Greater Manchester's power network keeps ahead of the region's needs as we all use more electricity to lower our carbon emissions.

We’ll do this by making sure we invest in the right areas for the city, helping make sure there’s enough network capacity in the network for our region, and investing in infrastructure and innovation projects.

Using renewable electricity instead of using petrol or diesel for our transport, or gas for our heating, will bring down our region’s carbon footprint massively. But if we’re all using more electricity, we need to ensure that the power network develops to meet this increased demand.

Through our work with the GM Energy Group Electricity North West is going to lead a workstream to assess the whole energy system and the decarbonisation of electricity and gas supply together with managing and reducing future demand from transport and heat. This will feed into the Greater Manchester Smart Energy Plan which will be produced by September this year.

We’ve long been committed to ensuring our customers across the North West have the power they need when they need it, and we’re already working on several projects that deliver real energy efficiency benefits that will help to achieve Greater Manchester’s targets.

As stated at the Green Summit, the adoption of electric vehicles, along with solar generation and battery storage, isn’t just advantageous, it’s essential.

The number of electric vehicles on Britain’s roads is predicted to reach nine million by 2030, up from around 90,000 today. Results from our recent YouGov survey revealed that 27 per cent of respondents expect to own an electric car by 2050. With this is mind, it is critical to start planning for the smarter use of energy now, which is something we’ve been driving for some time.

Back in December, we hosted an interactive stakeholder event in collaboration with Carbon Co-op where we asked our stakeholders to help us shape our thinking and plans regarding the future of the local energy system.

Stakeholders tell us that a hyperlocal approach is the way forward, with more power being generated and distributed sustainably and locally. We’re also calling on government to ask network operators like ourselves to drive energy efficiency messages, rather than suppliers. It’s important to our network and to the area we serve that we’re all conscious about the energy we’re using.

The enthusiasm of the people and the organisations at the Summit was incredible and we were proud to have taken part in it, but we now have a crucial part to play in keeping up this momentum.

While the North’s time as a coal-fired powerhouse is over, the region still has the attributes and natural advantages to lead in the take-up of new innovative approaches, infrastructure and resources that will underpin a sustainable, low-carbon future.

It’s an exciting time of change and with the developments and plans we’re working on now, we look forward to taking an active part in transitioning ours to a high quality, healthy and low carbon region ahead of the next Green Summit .

Paul Bircham

Commercial Strategy and Support Director