UK election: How can the next government get its climate strategy back on track?

More than 400 climate scientists from UK institutions attended this week. published an open letterHe has appealed to UK political parties to commit to stronger climate action in the next parliament ahead of the July 4 general election.

Their demands included a “credible” carbon reduction strategy for the country during an election campaign with little in-depth discussion of the UK’s net zero transition.

Why are scientists worried? After all, the UK has one of the world’s most ambitious climate goals – a legally binding goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 – and has halved its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.

But the truth is that the UK’s race towards net zero has slowed in recent years, with annual emissions falling by 50%. Half of the percentage needed to achieve the interim goal.

Although great progress has been made in decarbonising our electricity supply, with around half of our electricity now generated by zero-carbon energy sources, other sectors are lagging. The Climate Change Committee, the UK government’s climate adviser, said emissions reductions outside of the electricity sector would need to quadruple over the next seven years for the UK to meet its commitment to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030. said in october. Britain warned it was “unlikely” it would get there as currently planned.

“There is a really strong sense of frustration in the climate science community,” he says. Emily Schackberg I am a researcher at the University of Cambridge who jointly compiled the scientists’ letters. “We just didn’t see the level of response that was needed.”

Slow progress means problems have arisen and are waiting for the next government to fix them.

transport and buildings

By the end of the decade, emissions from land transport (road, rail and shipping) will need to reduce the equivalent of almost 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, four times the rate over the past decade. Electric vehicle sales may be growing strongly, but sales of electric vans and trucks are lagging, and the number of public charging stations is not growing fast enough to keep up with the amount of electric vehicles on the road. Meanwhile, public transportation use has decreased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has not returned to previous levels.

They say getting the transport sector to net zero will require more than convincing everyone to buy electric cars. michael pollitt at the University of Cambridge. Fewer cars, smaller cars are an important piece of the puzzle. “We need more radical thinking about intercity transport, including lane prioritization of smaller vehicles and drastic reductions in vehicle size and vehicle weight,” he says. “If people can essentially travel in smaller vehicles or public transport, that’s how you get to net zero in transport.”

When it comes to buildings, heating your home is your biggest headache. Around 23 million homes in the UK are heated with gas boilers. All of these homes will need to be heated by zero-carbon energy sources by mid-century, and most are expected to switch to heat pumps.

But the transition is moving too slowly. In 2022, there were just 69,000 heat pumps installed in UK homes, well short of the 2028 target of 600,000 installations per year. Part of the problem is financial. Heat pumps cost much more to install and often cost more to run than gas boilers. A surcharge is imposed on the cost of grid power. “We absolutely have to lower the price of heat pumps,” says Pollitt. “Unless heat pump prices fall significantly, this represents a major obstacle to decarbonizing heating.”

They say it is urgent to address these issues. nick air Oxford University signed an open letter. A gas boiler installed in 2035 will still heat your home in 2050. “Heat pumps and vehicles will most likely be broken by the early 2040s. “This means thinking very seriously about this in the 2030s,” he says.

That is why it is so worrying that the UK government has taken no action during this decade when it should be focusing on preparing the industry for mass deployment. “We know what to do,” says Eyre. “But especially the last few years have been a period of inaction.”

Agriculture and Aviation

Beyond heat, power and transportation, even more difficult choices await. For example, emissions from agriculture and land use have changed little over a decade but must fall by 29% by 2035. Realizing these reductions will likely require measures to change people’s diets. Likewise, reducing aviation emissions requires measures to control demand, such as taxes on frequent flyers.

“The biggest challenge is to start imposing policies and regulations that affect people’s daily lives,” he says. leo mercer at the London School of Economics. “If policies aren’t communicated well, people push back very strongly.”

Alongside domestic challenges, Britain needs to restore its reputation on the international stage. Under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the UK hosted the COP26 climate summit and led an international coalition on deforestation, methane and electric vehicles.

But progress on the UK’s domestic climate agenda is slowing. Cut international aid and climate diplomacy; It undermined its international reputation. The UK government’s decision to approve new domestic fossil fuel projects and its call for low-income countries to “switch” away from fossil fuels has also been problematic.

Convincing low-income countries to reduce their emissions will be an uphill battle unless countries like the UK demonstrate that net zero is achievable and desirable as a national strategy. He said it was therefore important for the UK to re-establish its reputation as a climate leader in the next parliament. Katerina Brandtmaier at Imperial College London.

Next year, countries will submit new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 under the Paris Agreement. “So this is a very important moment for the global community,” she says. “This council will be important not only to ensure delivery in the UK, but also to raise ambitions globally.”

What the Parties Provide

So is there any political party that will deliver the scale of action needed to get Britain back on track? All major political parties agree that we must reach net zero by mid-century. And there is striking agreement between Labor and the Conservatives on the need for more renewable power, especially offshore wind.

But Labor has an eye-catching commitment to deliver a fully decarbonised power grid by 2030. Adam Bell A former UK government energy official at British consulting firm Stonehaven said the target was “very, very ambitious” and would push civil servants to the limits of what they could deliver. “It’s hard to find a way around power. [Labour] “Maybe we could be more ambitious.”

But for Eyre, any credible statement on climate must also have ambitious targets for areas where the UK is seriously off track: home energy efficiency, heat pump deployment, industrial emissions, land use, solar power and electric vans. “It’s not a problem to do one or two of them,” he says. “We have to do them all.”

Privately, many experts doubt whether the major political parties have policy programs of the speed and scale needed to achieve net zero by 2050. In its absence, finding enthusiasm for the challenges ahead may be the next best indicator of a party’s credibility. In Eyre’s eyes, the next British government is embarking on “a ten-year process on the same scale as the introduction of the steam engine”. “If you don’t have a positive vision yourself, you can’t sell it to the rest of us,” he says.