In 2007, the Bristol Partnership launched the Green Capital initiative in order to invite organisations in the city to play their part in helping tackle climate change and contribute to Bristol's ambition of becoming a leading UK green capital. Bristol aims to build on its strengths in the environmental technology and services sector, its ‘green' knowledge capital (Centre for Sustainable Energy, Sustrans, Soil Association, BBC Natural History Unit and many others) and the readiness of many of its citizens to adopt greener lifestyles.

The Bristol Partnership is the city's local strategic partnership that brings together leaders across the public, private and voluntary sectors. The initiative has been funded by Bristol City Council. The Council has adopted its own Green Capital Action Plan and is required as part of its Local Area Agreement to measure and report on national indicators for carbon emissions (NI185) and climate change adaptation (NI186).

Whilst there is no recognised standard for what constitutes a green capital, in the UK Forum for the Future produces an annual Sustainability Index which ranks cities against 3 criteria: environmental impact, quality of life and future proofing. During 2008, the EU launched a Green Capital competition to find Europe's green capital for 2010 and 2011. The EU competition set out a performance framework which it used to evaluate and benchmark applicants - download the technical evaluation to see how Bristol performed.

The Green Capital Momentum Group was set up in 2007 as a steering group for the Green Capital initiative. Its role is to steer the green capital initiative, on behalf of the Bristol Partnership.

A small project team based in the CREATE centre provides policy and programme support.