Glasgow has been chosen as the host city for the UK government's bid to host the crucial COP26 Climate Summit next year, in a decision announced today.

With 30,000 people from around the world expected to attend the high profile event, the UN meeting would be the largest summit the UK has ever hosted.

Global leaders, UN delegations, journalists, campaigners, and business leaders will all gather at the city's Scottish Events Campus (SEC) for a two-week period in late autumn 2020 to thrash out the next steps in the global strategy for tackling climate change.

COP26 President and former Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry said that as one of "the UK's most sustainable cities" galsgow would provide an appropriate showcase for the UK's decarbonisation progress.

"As one of the UK's most sustainable cities, with a record for hosting high-profile international events, Glasgow is the right choice to showcase the UK's commitment to the environment," she said today. "In 2020, world leaders will come together to discuss how to protect our planet and set the direction for the years to come. Where better to do so than Glasgow, at the state of the art Scottish Events Campus."

The UK is submitting a joint bid with Italy to host the crucial summit, which would see Italy host preparatory meetings and the UK host the main summit.

The meeting is viewed by many as the most important UN gathering since the 2015 Summit when the Paris Agreement was struck. It will mark both the full adoption of the climate treaty and the date by which countries are expected to come forward with strengthened national action plans to help bring their emission reduction efforts into line with the Paris Agreement's temperature goals. It is therefore being billed as the first major test of the international community's commitment to scaling up climate ambition, and the host nation will be under pressure to pull out all the diplomatic stops to ensure the meeting is a success.

The event will also be staged within weeks of the US election results, raising the prospect of the Summit being either overshadowed by the re-election of a climate sceptic US President or seen as a spring-board for US re-engagement with international climate talks under a new Democrat President. 

Hosting the 2020 Summit is seen by the UK government as a chance to boost its post-Brexit international profile and an opportunity to promote the country's progress cutting carbon emissions and the growing influence of its clean tech industries and green business community. 

However, the UK and Italian bid to host the conference still is not yet formally guaranteed. Turkey is also competing for hosting rights, although it is thought to have only an outside chance of securing sufficient backing from other nations for its bid.

The SEC is Scotland's largest exhibition centre and occupies a site 260,000 metres square. It was opened in 2013 and has previously hosted the Commonwealth Games.

Lang Banks, director at WWF Scotland, welcomed the news. "This will be a vital milestone in the global response to the growing climate crisis," he commented. "The fossil fuel era began in Scotland and in 2020 the global community must come to Glasgow and say that this will be the last fossil fuel generation and that we are ready to take on the climate and nature emergencies we face."

But he warned more must be done to speed the UK's progress on cutting emissions ahead of the summit, in light of the Committee on Climate Change's warning the UK is off-track to meet its interim climate targets and that the UK must bring forward new policies to address this ahead of the summit to avoid "embarassment".

"This would be a huge event and the Scottish and UK governments must be ready to show that we have our own houses in order and have strong climate emergency plans in place," Banks said. "Scotland is already generating 75 per cent of its electricity needs from renewables and aiming to end the sale of fossil fuel vehicles by 2032. COP26 in Glasgow would be an opportunity to put our leadership and our zero-carbon economy on the world stage but we also need to put in place more concrete actions at home."

Trade body Energy UK said Scotland's hosting of the Summit would be both historically resonant and provide a huge opportunity for green businesses.

"Scotland, and the wider UK, is world-leading in the deployment of low carbon and zero carbon technologies, with the first wind turbine built in Scotland by Professor James Blyth in 1887 so hosting COP26 in Glasgow is a great opportunity for the UK to showcase its progress and plans for making a zero-carbon economy a reality," said chief executive Lawrence Slade. "The UK energy industry strongly supports the government's bid to host COP26 and Energy UK's members are taking the lead in decarbonising the UK economy - by leading on low carbon generation and investment in technology and innovation. We look forward to working in partnership with the Government to deliver our shared ambition of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050."