Date of the report
March 2009
Author of the report
West Midlands Regional Observatory
Purpose of the report
The report aims to help policy makers in the West Midlands understand how implementing the key international, national and regional policies will affect CO₂ emissions in the region. It outlines the scale of the challenge for the region to meet its targets by 2020 and how much of the reduction will need to be driven by regional policies. It critically examines the contribution individual strategies can make in closing the carbon gap and asks what the region needs to do above and beyond the existing policies to achieve the targets outlined by them.
Relevance to the region
Work has been carried out to assess the region’s potential to reduce its emissions by a regional implementation of the principle national and international reduction measures. The region needs to meet the goal of reducing CO₂ emissions by between 26 and 32% by 2020. In order to close the gap that existing policies have not able to fill, areas not normally covered by main national policy such as road traffic reduction, behaviour change, a shift to low carbon public transport and waste reduction, should be targeted. The biggest area of potential impact in the West Midlands will come from behaviour change. This applies to the individual and also to business practice. Forecasting the impact that potential policy implementations will have is of great importance, in particular the impact they will have on the West Midlands business base and vice versa. The report emphasises that sectors that will either close or widen the carbon gap will need to be identified
What SWM liked
We liked the simplification of the carbon gap message, showing the 1.75 million tonnes gap equated to a value per person for the region, making quite an abstract and specialist concept much easier to understand.
Links and contact information
For more information, contact john.walker@wmro.org
