Low-Carbon Economy for the West Midlands: a synthesis report

Date of the report

15 May 2009

Author of the report

West Midlands Regional Observatory

Purpose of the report

In December 2007 Advantage West Midlands (AWM) produced the West Midlands Regional Economic Strategy (WMES) ‘Connecting to Success‘. It has been recognised as the UK’s first low-carbon economic strategy.

Since summer 2008, AWM and West Midlands Regional Observatory have been working together on a three year programme that will enable the region to develop a stronger and more coherent evidence base around the low-carbon economy.  The aim of this report is to present a synthesis of the work produced during the first year of the programme. It presents a short summary of the research findings, provides overview of the various strands of work and individual summaries of the reports produced in year one.

Relevance to the region

The WMES defines a low-carbon economy as an economy that produces goods and services of increasing value while reducing the associated greenhouse gases in their production, use and disposal. Moving towards a low-carbon economy provides the unique opportunity to improve the region’s productivity whilst reducing the carbon emissions and tackling climate change. It also gives an opportunity to accelerate current progress on addressing the productivity gap.

However, the WMES represents only the beginning of the journey towards a low-carbon economy. With it come challenges that the region must overcome (e.g. change in individual and corporate behaviour to reduce emissions from businesses, homes and transport) and opportunities that open up (e.g. new environmental technologies).

The first year’s findings highlight that even though the West Midlands region has made progress in delivering a low-carbon economy, with improvement shown against several low-carbon indicators, more still needs to be done.

What SWM liked

We liked that this report presented an integrated view of the evidence developed during the first year about the low-carbon economy within the region. It also summarised the findings from the five main low-carbon economy reports completed as part of the Scale on the Challenge programme during the year. The research documents included ‘Understanding the West Midlands’ carbon gap‘, ‘Decoupling into a low-carbon economy‘, ‘West Midlands climate change action plan, targets & monitoring (TM1)‘, ‘Measuring the scale of the challenge: sustainable development indicators‘, ‘Analysis of the Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Well-being‘.  This synthesis report is useful for a quick reference and an overview of the evidence base around the low-carbon economy in the West Midlands.

Links and Contact information

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Downloads

Low Carbon Economy for the West Midlands: A synthesis report – May 2009 (pdf)