Yesterday evening, 10^th June, 2014, I attended the “Manchester, A Certain Future AGM”. MACF is the name for Manchester’s climate change action plan that 5 years ago ambitiously set out to reduce Manchester’s direct greenhouse gas emissions by 41% over the 2005 levels.

This was the first such AGM, more in fact the public presentation of its first Annual Report, available HERE. This is a welcome step as was the frank and honest presentation of the achievements to date. The new chair, Gavin Elliot pulled no punches and the responses to questions from him and the panel of Steering Group members and chairs of working groups was similarly open and non-defensive.

The headline news is that while there have been a number of positive developments, well summarised in the report, the city is falling behind its target emissions reduction. The data are somewhat difficult to interpret, depending…