A new report from the Committee on Climate Change (the CCC), 'Net Zero – The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming', published on 2 May, says the UK can end its contribution to global warming within 30 years ‘by setting an ambitious new target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050’
The report was produced after the ‘Governments of the UK, Wales and Scotland’ asked the Committee to reassess the UK’s long-term emissions targets; the new emissions scenarios set out draw on sources including 10 new research projects, three expert advisory groups, and reviews of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The CCC says Scotland has greater potential to remove pollution from its economy than the UK overall, ‘and can credibly adopt a more ambitious target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 2045’, while Wales has slightly lower comparative opportunities, and should adopt a target for a 95% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, ‘compared with 1990 levels’.
The CCC says its recommended targets, covering all sectors of the UK, Scottish, and Welsh economies, ‘are achievable with known technologies, alongside improvements in people’s lives’, and should be put into law as soon as possible.
The report’s key findings include:
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‘The foundations are in place throughout the UK’, and the policies required to deliver key pillars of a net-zero economy are already active or in development. These include: a supply of low-carbon electricity (which will need to quadruple by 2050), efficient buildings and low-carbon heating (required throughout the UK’s building stock), electric vehicles (‘which should be the only option from 2035 or earlier’), developing carbon capture and storage technology and low-carbon hydrogen (‘a necessity, not an option’), stopping biodegradable waste going to landfill, phasing out potent fluorinated gases, increasing tree planting, and measures to reduce emissions on farms. ‘However,’ the Committee says,’ these policies must be urgently strengthened and must deliver tangible emissions reductions – current policy is not enough even for existing targets’.
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Policies will have to ‘ramp up significantly’ for a ‘net-zero’ emissions target to be credible. The Committee’s conclusion that the UK can achieve a net-zero GHG target by 2050 and at acceptable cost is ‘entirely contingent on the introduction without delay of clear, stable and well-designed policies across the emitting sectors of the economy’, with Government setting the direction and provide the urgency. The public will also need to be engaged if the transition is to succeed, while ‘serious plans are needed to clean up the UK’s heating systems’, to deliver the infrastructure for carbon capture and storage technology, and to ‘drive transformational change in how we use our land’.
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While the overall costs of the transition to a net-zero economy ‘are manageable’, but must be fairly distributed. Rapid cost reductions in essential technologies such as offshore wind and batteries for electric vehicles mean that a net-zero greenhouse gas target can be met at an annual cost of up to 1-2 % of GDP to 2050. However, the CCC says, the costs of the transition must be fair, and perceived as such by workers and energy bill payers. The Committee recommends the Treasury review how the remaining costs of achieving net- zero can be managed ‘in a fair way for consumers and businesses’.
Among ‘the multiple benefits’ of the transition to a zero-carbon economy would be: improving health via better air quality, less noise thanks to quieter vehicles, more active travel thanks to increased rates of cycling and walking, healthier diets, and increased recreational benefits from changes to land use. The UK could also ‘receive an industrial boost’ as it leads the way in low-carbon products and services, including electric vehicles, finance and engineering, carbon capture and storage ,and hydrogen technologies with potential benefits for exports, productivity, and jobs.
Lord Deben, the CCC’s chairman, said: “We can all see that the climate is changing, and it needs a serious response. The great news is that it is not only possible for the UK to play its full part – we explain how in our new report – but it can be done within the cost envelope that Parliament has already accepted. The Government should accept the recommendations and set about making the changes needed to deliver them without delay.”
A ‘net-zero’ target would require a 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It is referred to as ‘net’ as the expectation is that it would be met with some remaining sources of emissions which would need to be offset by removals of CO2 from the atmosphere – by growing trees, for example.
The CCC argues that ‘now is a crucial time in the global effort to tackle climate change’, with global average temperature having already risen by 1°C from pre-industrial levels, ‘driving changes in our climate that are apparent increasingly’. In the last decade, it says, pledges to reduce emissions by the countries of the world have reduced the forecast of global warming from above 4 °C by the end of the century to around 3 °C. The CCC added: “Net-zero in the UK would lead the global effort to further limit the rise to 1.5 °C.”
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) added: “Ten years after the Climate Change Act became law, now is the right moment to set a more ambitious goal. Achieving a ‘net-zero’ target by the middle of the century is in line with the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement; the pact which the UK and the rest of the world signed in 2015 to curb dramatically the polluting gases that cause climate change.”
