The Guardian view on the UK’s net zero targets: time to walk the walk
Last summer, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) delivered a 600-page assessment of the United Kingdom’s journey towards net zero targets. The scathing conclusions could be summed up in a single sentence: Westminster continues to talk the talk, but a lack of follow-through means the country is failing to walk the walk.
In too many areas, the CCC found, goals were being undermined by failures in delivery programmes. There was a “shocking gap”, it reported, in policymaking to drive better insulation of homes. Progress on reducing farming emissions had been “glacial”. The bald conclusion was that the “current strategy will not deliver net zero” by 2050, as legally required.
Given Rishi Sunak’s failure to include the government’s net zero strategy in his five key priorities for this year – and the prime minister’s reluctance to turn up at the November Cop27 summit in Egypt – it is perhaps no surprise that the sense of drift continues. At the weekend, it emerged that cabinet ministers have been warned they risk court action over the failure to produce policies to meet binding targets. Civil servants at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – the worst laggard of all – are reportedly pleading with the current environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, to publish a viable decarbonisation plan for farms. The CCC has been calling for one since 2018; but successive ministers have shied away from radical change in a sector that is a traditional bastion of Conservative support.
Across the board, the evidence is of inertia, short-termism and a reluctance to use the state to drive a transition that is imperative for the environment and the economy. The future of Britain’s electric car industry, for example, has been jeopardised by a failure to sufficiently incentivise leading battery manufacturers to build gigafactories in the UK.
The absence of clarity and certainty in planning is startling. Last week, the National Audit Office criticised the ab
sence of any long-term government strategy to meet its pledge to deliver low-carbon electricity by 2035. The government has failed properly to invest in a mass housing retrofit, and an aspiration that 600,000 heat pumps would be annually installed in households by 2028 has proved to be for the birds; last year the number was 50,000.
On wind, the chief executive of ScottishPower, Keith Anderson, on Monday condemned the protracted planning process required to build offshore farms. Those now coming online, he pointed out in an interview, had originally been given the green light when Gordon Brown was in Downing Street. An effective ban on onshore wind is, absurdly, still largely in place after a recent public consultation. This despite huge public support – including among Conservative voters – for onshore farms and solar projects, in order to lower bills and speed the move away from fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the race to use the green economy to create new jobs and stimulate growth accelerates elsewhere. Across the Atlantic, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has unleashed a gamechanging $369bn worth of federal subsidies and tax breaks to drive clean energy investment. In response, the EU is planning a new package of financial assistance and incentives. Yet, other than criticising Mr Biden over the IRA’s “protectionism”, Britain’s new business and trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, does nothing and sits on her hands.
The high court has ruled that the government must clarify, by the end of this month, how its net zero strategy targets will in fact be met. A blizzard of figures and projections will no doubt be forthcoming. Given the track record, it will be hard to give them any credence. On climate policy, the government is demonstrably failing to make good on its promises to the world.