Plans for a £5 million research centre at Cardiff University to explore new ways of tackling climate change have been announced.

The Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) will work closely with industry, local and national governments and charities to explore how the UK can achieve rapid and far-reaching emissions reductions to address climate change.

The collaboration will also include Manchester, York and East Anglia Universities and will be funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The Centre will focus on four challenging areas of everyday life that contribute to climate change: consumption of goods and physical products, food and diet, travel and heating and cooling in buildings.

It also aims to develop responses to climate change that emphasise parallel benefits in other areas of life, for example, through promoting wellbeing and cleaner air by moving away from a reliance on cars.

Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh from Cardiff University and Director of CAST said: “While there is now international momentum on action to tackle climate change, it is clear that critical targets, such as keeping global temperature rise to well within 2°C relate to pre-industrial levels, will be missed without fundamental transformations across all parts of society.

“At the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, we recognise that climate change is an emergency that requires action on a far greater scale than has been seen so far. We will address the fundamental question of how we can live differently and better, in ways that meet the need for these systemic, deep and rapid emission reductions.”