ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the development of debates around low carbon futures in Greater Manchester. The context of a provincial, northern cityregion without elected metropolitan governing arrangements makes it a very different case to that encountered in Greater London. The chapter's focus is at the intersection of two sets of issues. The first issue is the relationship between the city-region and energy system in a period of conflicting economic, ecological and political pressures, and the search for a low carbon future. The second is the social interests, institutions and actors who seek to reshape such a relationship and the ways in which they are organised to act in doing so. In that sense our concern in the chapter is with assessing the ‘intermediary’ contexts constituted for the purpose of governing low carbon futures in Greater Manchester, and understanding the politics of whose priorities are dominant in Greater Manchester; as well as the implications of this for embryonic low carbon transitions at a metropolitan scale.
