When Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street on July 20 as the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, he promised to act as a “circuit-breaker for Britain”. Burnham is the first UK premier to come straight from running a major city region. Used well, that experience could transform the UK’s response to the climate and nature crises.
As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham brought buses back under public control for the first time in 40 years through the Bee Network, with a commitment to a zero-emission fleet by 2030. He backed the city region’s target of carbon neutrality by 2038, 12 years ahead of the UK’s national goal, and in 2025 Greater Manchester signed a five-year partnership with the manufacturer Daikin to scale up heat pumps across the city.
Now he says he wants to apply the Greater Manchester governance and economic model – often dubbed “Manchesterism” — to the entire UK. Our research suggests that cities can play a vital role in delivering national climate goals.
Working with the C40 cities network (a global group of 97 cities that have signed up to climate crisis goals) and the engineering consultancy Arup, we have published two reports on how cities can trigger positive tipping points in the shift to clean technology.
A positive tipping point occurs when a clean technology becomes more affordable, accessible and attractive than the fossil-fuelled option it replaces. Adoption then becomes self-propelling: creating a domino effect whereby more sales bring more visibility, falling costs and better infrastructure, which bring even more sales.
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Cities, responsible for more than 70% of global carbon emissions, are where these interventions bite hardest. In Norway’s capital Oslo, electric vehicles rose from under 14% of new car sales in 2015 to 96% in 2025. Shenzhen in China became the world’s first city to fully electrify its bus fleet in 2017.
The pattern across these leading cities is consistent: national governments make clean technology affordable through grants and tax breaks, while cities make it accessible and attractive – building charging networks, streamlining permits, electrifying their own fleets and buildings, and creating clean-air zones. In the UK, for example, the national plug-in car grant works alongside London’s congestion-charge exemption for electric vehicles.
Sequencing matters too. Successful cities “pull” first with incentives, then “push” with regulations announced well in advance. After London’s ultra-low emission zone was announced in 2013, the original scheme came into force in 2019, giving people and businesses time to adapt.
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Our second report, published in June 2026, applies this thinking to one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonise: road freight. Heavy-duty trucks make up less than 10% of commercial vehicles but produce a quarter of transport emissions.
Modelling truck adoption and costs in London and 44 other world cities, we found that regulation consistently has greater impact than pricing. Initiatives such as zero-emission zones and vehicle sales targets increased electric truck uptake several times more than carbon taxes on non-electric trucks.
It’s not that taxes are useless, but price signals on their own can’t trigger the positive tipping dynamics needed to accelerate the transition to electric freight and other zero emissions transport.
Increasing the taxes on fossil fuels increases the pain of driving vehicles with an internal combustion engine each year, whereas a zero-emissions mandate makes electric inevitable. This gives everyone – firms, city planners, consumers and investors alike – the certainty they need. With greater certainty, manufacturers can invest at scale – and the more they build, the cheaper and better each electric vehicle becomes. This increases demand.
The UK currently has an escalating mandate for new electric cars and vans, with goals to reach 100% electric cars sold by 2035, and by 2040 for HGVs.
But our modelling finds coordinated action by the largest UK cities could bring forward the point at which electric trucks become cheaper to own than diesel by up to 2½ years. Globally, electrifying freight could displace nearly 5 million barrels of oil a day by 2030 – roughly India’s entire daily consumption.
After the oil-price turmoil that followed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, this represents energy security policy as much as climate policy.
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A national mission
So, what should a mayor-turned-prime-minister do? We believe he should treat cities as the delivery arm of a national mission.
That means deeper devolution: long-term funding and real powers over transport, planning and energy for mayors. It means backing cities when they introduce clean-air and zero-emission zones, rather than leaving them exposed to political backlash – something Burnham knows about first-hand.
It also means pairing national incentives for electric vehicles and heat pumps with phase-out dates announced years ahead, giving markets certainty. And it means a street-by-street home retrofit and clean heating programme, delivered through local authorities, with electricity grid investment to match.
Climate leadership in cities is not only about cutting emissions. Cities sit on the frontline of flooding, heatwaves and storms, and the poorest neighbourhoods are hit hardest. Making them nature positive – more trees, parks, green roofs and sustainable drainage – cools streets, absorbs floodwater and improves everyday life. Funding for adaptation (the practical steps to prepare for the consequences of a changing climate) should be devolved alongside everything else.
The prize is bigger than any one city. Our modelling shows that if the C40 cities – home to 920 million people – jointly required all new car sales to be electric by 2030, they would bring forward national tipping points in major markets by up to nine months. Britain’s cities, acting together with the government behind them, could do the same for the UK.
Burnham described his new government as a circuit breaker, but tipping points may be a better metaphor – making modest interventions at the right moments to set off self-reinforcing change. He has spent nine years lining up the dominoes in one city region. As prime minister, he can tip them across the whole country.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.