The UK earns credibility ahead of the UN's COP 26 summit with a climate action plan that is the result of years of debate and engagement across society, writes Rod Oram
Just in the nick of time, the UK government has delivered a large suite of climate strategies and policies which will increase its credibility as president of the UN climate negotiations beginning in Glasgow next weekend.
It was a close-run thing, even for a government renowned for its love of ad hoc decisions and bold statements over actual action. Some of the delay was caused by internecine warfare between the Treasury and the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, revealed in their increasingly combative exchange of briefings and leaks in recent weeks.
Given the drama, there was palpable relief after the long-delayed raft of net zero policies, reports and papers was finally released this week.
“We didn’t have a plan before, now we do,” said Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee. “This is a substantial step forward that lays out clearly the government’s ambitions to cut emissions across the economy over the coming 15 years and beyond. It provides much more clarity about what lies ahead for businesses and individuals and the key actions required in the coming decades to deliver a Net Zero nation.”
A government advisory body which was the model for the creation of our Climate Change Commission two years ago, the committee had delivered a scathing report on the UK government earlier this year. It said existing policies would guarantee the UK failed to meet its carbon reduction budgets.
The committee remains vigilant. “The critical next step is turning words into deeds. We have begun to assess the strategy in more detail and the extent to which the policies proposed in this strategy deliver their ambition,” Stark said.
The UK’s climate commitment is broadly consistent with the UN goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C. It aims to cut emissions by at least 68 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, 78 per cent by 2035 and achieve net zero by 2050. But it needs all the initiatives announced this week, and many more, to achieve those.
Broadly speaking, the response from business leaders was enthusiastic, albeit with many caveats such as the lack of details on all projects, a shortage of programmes to help farmers reduce agricultural emissions, or any timetable for phasing out oil and gas exploration or managing the transition away from high carbon industries.
Some business leaders were also concerned a research paper on how to “nudge” changes in consumer behaviour, dealing with topics such as high carbon diets and frequent flying, was suddenly withdrawn two hours after its publication with the rest of the strategy. Prepared by the government’s “behaviour insights unit”, it offered nine principles for encouraging consumer change.
Instead Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed to voters they could carry on with their existing lifestyles with a clear conscience.
“In 2050 we will still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric, gliding silently around our cities, our planes will be zero emission, allowing us to fly guilt-free, and our homes will be heated by cheap, reliable power drawn from the winds of the North Sea.”
Even with this reassurance, the response from wider society was generally positive but more mixed, ranging from scepticism from trade unions and others worried about inadequate support for workers and citizens in the transition to a clean economy, to anger from the radical end of the climate movement.
The deep knowledge and divergent opinions reflected wide engagement on the climate crisis across society. The base was laid in 2008 when nearly every MP in the House of Commons voted for creating the Climate Change Committee. All-party support for the legislation endures, which has been crucial to its success. The committee has delivered a series of declining five-year carbon budgets for the country, identified pathways for policies to achieve them and is empowered to assess the effectiveness of government policy.
The UK’s gross greenhouse gas emissions fell by almost 50 percent 1990-2019, led by the rapid decarbonisation of electricity generation. Last year, fossil fuels accounting for only 37 percent of electricity generation. In this week’s announcements the government set a new target: A net zero electricity system by 2035 - "subject to security of supply".
In contrast, New Zealand’s gross emissions have risen 26 percent over the same period across all sectors except the waste stream; and our electricity generation by fossil fuels has risen slightly, albeit from a low level.
Announcing the net zero initiatives, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “our strategy sets the example for other countries to build back greener too as we lead the charge towards global net zero.”
The government said its extensive programme of plans and spending commitments will unlock £90 billion ($175bn) of private sector investment by 2030 and secure around 440,000 jobs while ensuring the UK meets its emissions targets in the 2030s and beyond.
Promises include new support for nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen projects, two zero carbon industrial hubs, increased funding for electric vehicle infrastructure, heat pump installations, sustainable aviation fuels (with a goal of them meeting 10 percent of the UK’s aviation needs by 2030), and natural carbon sinks, among many other measures.
The heating and building sub-strategy will upgrade existing housing and commercial stock. It comes with £3.9bn of support, including a £450m three-year boiler upgrade scheme with grants of £5,000 per household to help the switch to heat pumps. No sales of new gas boilers after 2035 is the government’s “ambition.”
The Net Zero Strategy report argues energy efficiency measures and falling clean tech costs should ensure household energy bills will be lower by 2024 than if no action was taken, particularly given the current surge in global gas prices.
The strategy would unlock multiple economic and environmental benefits, while having a negligible cost impact on consumers and businesses, the government said.
"There is a global race to develop new green technology, kick-start new industries and attract private investment," Johnson said. "The countries that capture the benefits of this global green industrial revolution will enjoy unrivalled growth and prosperity for decades to come.”
Treasury's much-anticipated Net Zero Review identified multiple benefits from the transformation to a net zero economy but it made only a broad estimate of them.
It stated that an “economy-wide carbon price could generate additional revenues equivalent to around 0.5 percent of GDP initially”, creating a temporary increase in total receipts of around 1.3 percent. This, though, would lag behind the loss of tax revenues from fossil fuels. The net fiscal pressures would be about 1.5 percent by 2050, even with carbon pricing introduced.
The Dept. of Business estimates a net-positive impact of £0.5bn of economic benefits from biodiversity if the net-zero transition is delivered. Elsewhere, the Treasury notes that “improved air quality could deliver £35bn worth of economic benefits in the form of reduced damage costs to society, reflecting for example lower respiratory hospital admissions”.
Treasury noted the importance of the Government embedding climate considerations into budgetary and fiscal planning. Promoting renewables, for example, can deliver GDP multipliers for investment that are up to 2.5 times higher than current fossil fuel investment levels.
The government also released policy proposals for “greening finance,” a field in which the UK is already a leader.
This roadmap sets out a range of new Sustainability Disclosure Requirements designed to help green the UK economy. These go beyond the existing requirements under the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
Treasury said the government "expects to see the publication of transition plans become the norm". For example, it will introduce a legal requirement that "certain firms" within the financial and corporate sectors publish detailed and credible transition plans that align with the UK's net zero by 2050 commitment. Organisations failing to comply would have to explain why targets covering the whole economy don't apply to them.
Companies listed in the FTSE 100 stock market index, for example, are currently on a pathway to collectively deliver 3C of global temperature rise, more than double the 1.5C threshold recommended by the Paris Agreement, according to analysis by the World Wildlife Fund earlier this year.
Only 19 percent of the companies have established climate plans that will help keep the rise in global temperature to below 1.5C. More than a quarter of them have yet to commit to any form of climate target.
Ed Miliband, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business, attacked the Johnson government’s latest climate proposals in the House of Commons.
“This plan falls short on delivery. And while there is modest short-term investment, there is nothing like the commitment we believe is required.” For example, the money offered would nowhere near meet the need to retrofit the 19m homes in Britain which meet only Grade C energy efficiency standards.
“On heat pumps, the government’s own target says we need 600,000 homes a year installing heat pumps by 2028. But they are funding just 30,000 a year, helping just 1 in 250 households on the gas grid.”
Help for industry was also deeply inadequate. “Take steel, it will cost £6bn for the steel industry to get to net zero. If we want a steel industry, we will need to share the costs with the private sector. A £250m clean steel fund will simply not secure our industry’s future.”
Likewise, in many other sectors. For example, “Germany is offering £9bn for a new hydrogen strategy….the UK £240m.
“We see the same pattern across the board, including land use, industry and transport and because of this failure to invest, there remains a wide gap between promises and delivery.”
He concluded: “This plan will not deliver the fair, prosperous transition we need equal to the scale of the emergency we face.”
Labour’s annual party conference last month called for a big lift in the party’s climate ambitions to net zero by 2030, in line with the UK Green party’s long-standing goal.
Labour’s Green New Deal would, among many things, repeal all anti-union laws, ban fracking, take all public transport into public ownership and make it free to use, expand investment in rail electrification, high speed trains and rail freight, remove heavy goods vehicles from roads, zero-carbon retrofit social and council housing and public buildings, progressively tax wealthy people, work collaboratively with farmers to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, and welcome climate refugees to the UK.
In essence, this week in the UK showed what climate debate and action looks like in a country strongly committed to them.
