Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, has signed a historic four city deal in order to develop green energy. This deal will be carried out in collaboration with the leaders of Liverpool, Belfast, and Dublin.
The green deal will look to deepen collaboration between the four cities concerning green energy. Making the four cities world leaders in sustainable energy.
They will share knowledge and innovations, intensify cooperative research and development, and collaborate on investment, business, and the organisation of related events.
Burnham, with the Mayor of Liverpool Steve Rotheram, recently returned from a trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland. They met Kate Nicholl, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, and Alisons Gilliland, the Lord Mayor of Dublin.
Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham said to the PA news agency that the deal “had come at the right time to deal with challenges being faced in energy markets”.
Given that Manchester receives 150,000 tourists from Ireland annually the deal entails collaboration on tourism as well.
Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham said that the deal “had come at the right time to deal with challenges being faced in energy markets”.
Burnham added, “The deal is a starting point … [it] puts forward the idea that the first tangible outcome might be a four-city conference in Liverpool or Manchester, particularly focused on this issue of green energy”.
UoM students’ reactions to the four cities partnership are diverse. Lucia and Millie, second year Physics students, say that they “don’t really understand the purpose nor the scope of this deal.” Meanwhile, Alex, a third year Economics student, said that he believes that it will encourage “green progress”.
Alex said that “we’ve been waiting for this kind of inter-city agreements for ages”, and therefore that “if we don’t support it, there’s no point in trying to make things change”.
Like many people in England, Alex declared not being satisfied with PM Boris Johnson’s national measures regarding sustainability and climate change. The four cities agreement could therefore, in Alex’s view, represent a concrete starting point in this direction.
