Cities produce more than half the world’s carbon emissions and are home to more than half the world’s population. So what role might cities play in tackling the climate emergency and how can their inhabitants be inspired to help design their own solutions? Des Fitzgerald asks Nicole Metje and Andy Gouldson how engineering, finance and local projects might combine to make city living greener and more sustainable.

Professor Nicole Metje is Head of Enterprise, Engagement and Impact and Head of the Power and Infrastructure Research Group in the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham. She is also Deputy Director for Sensors of the UKCRIC National Buried Infrastructure Facility at Birmingham.

Professor Andy Gouldson is one of the directors of the Centre for Climate Change, Economics and Policy at the University of Leeds and founder of the Place-based Climate Action Network.

You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.

The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2

For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.

Producer: Marcus Smith