Plant more trees: one of the report’s recommendations
Government backing of new oil and coal, airport expansion plans and slow progress on heat pumps show the UK has lost its lead on climate issues, a government watchdog warns.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) described the government’s efforts to scale up climate action as “worryingly slow”.
He was “significantly” less confident than a year ago that the UK would meet its targets to reduce carbon emissions.
The government said it was committed to its climate goals.
The committee chairman, Lord Deben, a former Conservative environment minister, was particularly critical of the government’s policy on new coal and oil projects.
The decision to approve the UK’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years in Cumbria last December was “utter nonsense”, he told the BBC.
Lord Deben was also critical of plans for a major new oil field off the coast of Scotland. Approval of Rosebank, which could produce approximately 300 million barrels of oil over its lifetime, is expected soon.
“How can we ask the countries of Africa not to develop oil?” said Lord Deben. “How can we ask other nations not to expand fossil fuel production if we start doing it ourselves?”
The UK has set legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, meaning the country will no longer contribute additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
At the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to reduce emissions by 68% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
The CCC report warned that “continuing delays in policy development and implementation” meant that reaching them was “increasingly challenging.”
The Committee highlighted a “lack of urgency” across the government and a “worrying hesitancy” on the part of ministers to lead on the climate issue.
‘No magic button’
The Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Graham Stuart, said in response to the report that the government had met all its carbon targets to date and was confident of doing so in the future.
Responding to criticism over continued support for oil and gas projects, he stressed that despite the unprecedented role of renewables, the UK will continue to rely on these sources for power generation for the foreseeable future.
“There is no button you can push tomorrow, and since we will be dependent on oil and gas for decades to come, even when we hit net zero, it makes sense that we produce it here,” he told reporters.
Regarding the new coal mine in Cumbria, he stressed that it would produce coking coal for steelmaking, not for power production and that there was currently no alternative.
Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace UK’s head of policy, called the report “a pitiful catalog of Rishi Sunak’s climate failures.”
“This report exposes the catastrophic negligence shown by this government that has left Britain with higher bills, fewer good jobs, our weakened energy security and the unaddressed climate emergency,” said Ed Miliband, Labor’s Shadow Climate and Net Zero secretary. .
COP26 chairman Alok Sharma agreed that the UK risked losing what he called its “international reputation and influence on the climate”.
He said the country risked being left behind without a response to initiatives such as large US subsidies for green industries.
“Resting on our laurels is definitely not the answer the industry is looking for,” he said, one of the Conservative MP’s sharpest criticisms of the government’s climate policy.
More needs to be done to encourage us all to install heat pumps, insulate our homes, reduce the amount of meat we eat and fly less, the Committee said.
At the same time, he said, the shift to renewable energy needs to be accelerated, the industry needs more help to decarbonise, and there needs to be a big increase in the number of trees planted and the speed of peatland restoration.
The report acknowledged that glimpses of the Net Zero transition can be seen in rising electric car sales and the growing renewable energy sector.
But he cautioned that the government continues to rely on unproven technological solutions rather than “more direct” encouragement for people to reduce carbon-intensive activities.
The Committee says the government should do more to encourage us to fly less rather than rely on developing sustainable fuels to reduce carbon emissions from aviation, for example.
He noted that many UK airports are planning to expand capacity despite the CCC’s recommendation that there should be no net airport expansion. Seven of the top 10 UK airports have expansion plans, according to a BBC investigation.
Lord Deben, whose second and final term as CCC chairman ends this month, said one of the government’s biggest failures was failing to put net zero at the center of the UK’s planning system.
“If you pass laws to do something and then don’t provide the means, then you are failing,” he told the BBC.
He said he was sad that his final report “does not show satisfactory progress.”
UK greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 46% from 1990 levels, says the CCC, largely thanks to a massive reduction in the use of coal for electricity and growth in the renewable energy sector.