If the government is serious about hitting its 2050 net-zero targets, why can’t it get its strategy straight?
EXCLUSIVE COLUMN
The UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) published its 2023 progress report to parliament at the end of June and it’s fair to say that it has given this government a D minus. Lord Deben, its departing chair, describes how ministers, while championing the UK’s stringent 2050 net-zero targets, have no real clue, and no detailed roadmap of how to get there. There is no sense of urgency and the CCC’s confidence in the government being able to deliver its 2030 and 2035 targets is quickly ebbing away. All this from a body of scientific experts who enjoy admiration from their peers around the globe as international leaders in their field. All this from a committee set up by parliament.
The only details that have been produced emerged under duress when the courts demanded the government publish some form of delivery strategy. This is pretty woolly and places far too much dependency on future technological advances, such as carbon capture and storage, and splitting cheap hydrogen from water, which are currently hypothetical at scale.
The government also has in place a planning structure which the CCC says needs overhauling in order for it to place net zero as its core guiding principle. And this government has, dotted through its legislation, both new and inherited, all kinds of regulations, laws, requirements and guidance which are obsolete and at odds with the objective of keeping our climate under control and keeping this planet suitable for human beings to live on.
One of these horrible discrepancies involves an act of parliament, a written ministerial statement, some guidance and a great deal of confusion – and it centres around our homes. According to the CCC, the buildings we live in are responsible for about 19 per cent of all UK carbon emissions – or their equivalent. What is shocking is that only about 5 per cent of all emissions are related to construction while 14 per cent are estimated to come from the day-to-day running of our homes.
So it was surely good news that local authorities were, in 2008, granted powers to be able to set their own standards for the thermal performance of domestic buildings. This meant they could start demanding that developers construct properly insulated new homes and set the architectural and technical bar high. It would lead to more Passivhaus construction, help create technical expertise within planning departments and push at the quality of our built environment.
This was all in the gift of the Pl
