Large UK cities like Leeds and Sheffield still have a long way to go on net zero - Andrew Carter

Despite this good progress, large UK cities such as Leeds and Sheffield still have a long way to go. The decisions that people in Yorkshire make will be crucial to meeting national climate targets.

Comparison with cities in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world show us what the UK’s large cities need to do more of to be leaders in the net zero space.

The examples show that we need to change the way cities build, the way they encourage people to move around, and the way they heat and power homes and buildings will be central to meeting the UK’s global climate commitments.

To be successful we are going to need our cities to build up.

Density is vital to enabling people to heat their homes more efficiently and use public transport networks to move around.

Flats and terraced homes typically emit half as much carbon as detached homes, and building at density provides the scale to implement alternative ways of collectively heating and powering homes, as well as making public transport use more convenient.

Density is a key theme that runs through most of the case studies that Centre for Cities has considered in a new report published this month – ‘Accelerating net zero delivery: What can UK cities learn from around the world?’. It underpins and supports all other efforts to reduce emissions.

The good news is that there is plenty of scope for British cities to increase their density and still provide attractive and liveable places that people want to live in. Large UK cities rank below European equivalents on this measure: for example, London is only half as dense as Barcelona; Sheffield is a third as dense as Seville. Despite being dense, both Spanish cities are renowned for their liveable attributes.

This means that, perhaps surprisingly, planning policy – an area over which metro mayors are set to have increasing responsibility – is the key tool that cities should be using to help bring down their emissions.

And examples from cities across the globe demonstrate what cities can do. As well as building at density, cities like Melbourne in Australia and Montreal in Canada have legislated to build new homes whose energy efficiency standards exceed national requirements.

To power our cities differently, we can look to Japan, where Tokyo’s city-level statute books require all new developments to be fitted with solar panels.

Or to the Netherlands, where Rotterdam has taken the initiative and mapped the cost-effectiveness of alternatives to natural gas by district in its Heat Transition Map.

In Paris and Lille, France, tax rules shape how people get around. A regional tax on employers’ payrolls helps to finance public transport maintenance and upgrades. This keeps the local public transport networks in a condition where they are an attractive option compared with getting around by car.

Building better, ensuring homes are well-served by public transport and switching to lower carbon heat sources are all pieces of the same puzzle.

The first difficulty for UK cities is making sure that all these pieces happen at the same time. This is why metro mayors are crucial for coordinating them.

Metro mayors’ leadership is essential. And they can make a considerable difference if they focus on the areas that they have control over – planning and transport.

They have already been promised powers to draw up spatial development strategies for their areas within wider changes to planning by the new Government.

It’s vital that they use them, so they can plan the location and type of new homes in tandem with improvements to transport services and infrastructure upgrades.

This will enhance the positive environmental impacts of the policies they are already pursuing, for example bringing buses back under public control in West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire.

The other difficulty faced by UK cities is their lack of powers and resources, compared to their city counterparts across the globe. They have very few options to raise money for new public transport upgrades that could incentivise people to reduce car use, for example.

In contrast to the perception, cities like Leeds and Sheffield are good for the environment and central to achieving the country’s net zero targets. They’ve achieved a lot over the last 20 years, but this progress needs to be matched over the next 20 years. This requires the government to give them greater powers over transport, planning and investment, and the metro mayors of these places to use them.

Andrew Carter is chief executive of Centre for Cities.