Professor Andy Gouldson of PCAN will be giving evidence on place-based climate action to a virtual round table with parliamentarians, civil servants and representatives from industry and the third sector today (Monday 8 June 2020).

Prof Gouldson is one of four academic experts from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds who are partnering with MPs to put together an essay collection addressing climate change and meeting the UK’s target of net zero emissions by 2050. 

Organised through Policy Connect’s sustainability team, the collection will focus on how to deliver climate policy within energy, construction, industry, transport, consumption, and land use, with a consideration of local, national and international contexts. 

Each essay will take a sectoral or cross-cutting issue and examine the challenges and opportunities for delivering solutions in that area. 

Andy Gouldson, who is a co-investigator for PCAN and Chair of the Leeds Climate Commission, has been partnered with Conservative MP Theo Clarke and will be contributing to an essay on 'Delivering Net Zero on the Ground'.

The other Leeds academics and their parliamentarian partners are: Dr Cat Scott (ICAS, LEAF) and Daisy Cooper MP (Lib Dem), who will be looking at the contribution of tree-planting;  Professor John Barrett (CREDS) and Bill Esterston MP (Labour) will be writing about consumption emissions, and Dr Mark Sumner (School of Design) and Lisa Cameron (SNP) on sustainable fashion. The University of Leeds is one of four university partners in PCAN, along with the University of Edinburgh, Queen's University Belfast and LSE.

The essays will be jointly authored by the MPs and the academic experts and are informed by a series of roundtable events, organised through the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group. The roundtables, which are closed sessions, bring together civil servants and parliamentarians with industry, academia and third sector representatives to discuss a range of perspectives on each issue. 

Due to the impact of coronavirus, all the sessions apart from Cat Scott’s have had to be held virtually. 

The essay collection will be launched in autumn 2020 and seeks to bring attention to the policy challenges that lie ahead if the UK is to adhere to achieving Net Zero emissions.