A new Zero Carbon Britain report published today by CAT shows how the UK could cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero using only proven technology, and so do its part in addressing the climate emergency.
The report, Zero Carbon Britain: Rising to the Climate Emergency, models the changes to energy, buildings, transport, industry, diets and land use that could reduce energy demand by 60%, provide 100% renewable energy, and cut emissions from agriculture and industry whilst creating natural carbon capture through reforestation and peatland restoration.
This combination of ‘powering down’ energy use through increased efficiency and behaviour change, ‘powering up’ clean renewable energy supplies, and transforming land use could allow the UK to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions without relying on as yet unproven technologies, such as carbon capture and storage or direct air capture.
Project Coordinator Paul Allen said:
“Relying on speculative future technology to get to net zero risks overshooting the remaining carbon budget, resulting in the very real possibility of global temperature rises of 2°C or more.
“By modelling a zero carbon scenario using only technology that is ready to be rolled out at scale, CAT’s research shows that there is no good reason to take this risk. We have the technology to combat climate change, and we can start today.”
Powering down energy use
Changes to buildings, transport and industry could help to reduce UK energy demand by 60%. Key features of the Zero Carbon Britain model include:
Buildings: having high ‘Passivhaus’ standards for new buildings, retrofitting all existing buildings, and improving internal temperature control could reduce energy demand for heating by around 50%.
Transport: reducing how much we travel, and changing how we travel – with more use of public transport, walking, cycling, switching to efficient electric vehicles and two thirds less flying – could reduce energy demand for transport by 78%.
Powering up clean energy supplies
The report shows how it is possible to supply 100% of the UK’s ‘powered-down’ energy demand with renewable and carbon neutral energy sources, without fossil fuels or nuclear.
In the Zero Carbon Britain energy scenario:
Many different renewable energy sources suited to the UK – solar, geothermal, hydro, tidal and others – are used to produce electricity and heat, with wind energy providing around half of the energy supply.
Most of the energy in the scenario (around 66%) is provided as electricity.
Carbon neutral synthetic fuels play an important role where it is not possible to use electricity – for example, in some areas of industry and transport, and as back up for the energy system.
Matching supply and demand
To ensure that energy is available at all times, CAT researchers looked at 10 years of real weather data to examine how much energy could be captured by renewable energy systems. By matching this to 10 years of energy demand patterns, adjusted to take account of the modelled energy savings, researchers were able to plan for possible shortfalls.
The hourly modelling shows a surplus of energy 74% of the time, with energy provided at other times by shifting demand using smart appliances and by storing energy.
Batteries, pumped storage and heat storage can be used for short-term energy storage over hours or days, whilst hydrogen and carbon neutral synthetic gas (which can be dispatched quickly into the electricity grid when needed) can be used for long-term energy storage over weeks or months.
Transforming land and diets
The report explores how dietary change (particularly switching from meat and dairy to plant-based proteins), food waste reduction and improved agricultural practices could help with the transition to zero whilst providing a healthy diet for the whole UK population.
Key features include:
Reducing ‘on-farm’ greenhouse gas emissions by 57% from 2017 levels.
Reducing UK food imports from 42% to 17%, and so reducing the impacts elsewhere in the world of food production for our consumption.
Repurposing 75% of the land currently used for grazing livestock, freeing up space for a range of other uses, including doubling UK forest area and restoring 50% of UK peatlands to help mop up residual emissions.
Additional benefits
The report highlights the multiple additional benefits that these changes offer, including improvements to health and wellbeing via better diets, more exercise, improved air quality and a reduction in fuel poverty. Other benefits include the creation of green jobs and an increase in biodiversity both through tackling climate change and through freeing up land to allow nature to thrive.
CAT Chief Executive Officer, Peter Tyldesley said:
“CAT’s research shows how the UK could achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in a way that also helps improve our quality of life and enhances biodiversity. What’s now urgently needed is a UK Zero Carbon Action Plan with policy frameworks and large-scale investment to support the roll out of these solutions as quickly as possible.”
Half a century ago, faced with the threat of nuclear catastrophe, the world came together and agreed the nonproliferation treaty. Andrew Simms and Peter Newell argue that we now need to take the same approach to fossil fuels.
As we transition away from an economy based on fossil fuels towards zero carbon there is the potential for the creation of hundreds of thousands of new green jobs. Anne Chapman and Jonathan Essex of Green House Think Tank explore the opportunities for areas across the UK.
This September, people across the world will join a global week of climate action in support of the school strikers. Clean Slate Editor Catriona Toms urges you to get involved.
Jeremy Corbyn MP visited CAT last week, along with Christina Rees MP, Eluned Morgan AM and Joyce Watson AM, to discuss practical, proven solutions to the climate emergency.
During the visit we gave an overview of our environmental research and education work, including a tour of the centre to see solutions in action.
CAT’s Paul Allen presents our Zero Carbon Britain research to Jeremy Corbyn
CAT Chair of Trustees Michael Taylor said: “Climate action requires ambitious targets and a clear plan for how to get to net zero as quickly as possible. We welcome the chance to discuss our research and education work with politicians from all the main parties, and we were pleased to have the chance to brief Mr Corbyn in person.”
Gardener Petra Weinmann gives Jeremy a taste of some of CAT’s home grown veg.
Later this year, CAT will launch a new Zero Carbon Britain Hub and Innovation Lab, which will support policymakers, political parties, industry leaders and community groups in turning climate emergency declarations into Zero Carbon Action Plans, helping to accelerate the transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Eileen Kinsman, CAT Head of Development said: “Over the past six months, we have seen a surge in requests for CAT’s expertise in helping train and advise communities and organisations in planning for zero carbon. We shared with Mr Corbyn our ambitious plans for expanding this work and for scaling up our education and training programmes to provide people with the skills, knowledge and networks to make a real difference in tackling the climate emergency.”
Eileen Kinsman presents plans for the Zero Carbon Hub and Innovation Lab.
Jeremy got hands-on experience of low impact building, practicing rammed earth techniques with our school holiday activities leader, Holly Owen and visiting families.
CAT is a registered educational charity and is politically neutral.
One in five UK buildings dates to before 1919, and they are often poorly insulated and difficult to keep warm and dry. We talked to conservation builder and CAT course tutor Nathan Goss to find out his top tips for making improvements to traditional buildings.
Why do pre-1919 buildings need to be treated differently from more recent builds?
Most traditional builds (pre-1919) were designed with solid wall construction of stone, brick or cob/clom, with no impermeable membranes or moisture barriers.
They rely totally on the breathability of materials and design, where moisture is soaked up by the structure then any excess moisture would be expelled rapidly avoiding any damage or decay to the building.
Not all pre-1919 buildings are given the protection afforded to a listed building but whether you are repairing a terrace house or a vernacular cottage the rules of traditional maintenance and repair are the same.
What are the common problems that people encounter with traditional buildings?
Damp is the most common problem I come across in traditional buildings; this varies in severity, from a damp patch on a wall to dry rot throughout a building.
The first step in assessing any suspected moisture damage in a traditional building is to examine the nature and distribution of the damage. Different moisture sources generally result in different patterns and types of damage. Broadly speaking, damage associated with liquid water is localised and severe, while that caused by microclimatic factors is more widespread and evenly distributed.
With some basic investigation, liquid water damage can be identified with a careful study of the building and its moisture drainage routes. The design of any successful building should enable rainwater deposited on the outer shell to be transported away to a safe location. If there is water damage on the internal surfaces, it suggests that either the design itself is faulty or the system is damaged. Signs of damage are not always internal; sometimes they are easily seen whilst examining the external envelope of the building.
Microclimatic investigation is more in-depth and scientific than liquid water investigation. In short, you need to understand the relationships between cold surfaces, humidity and condensation to control the indoor climate of a building. These can be measured using a thermal imaging camera and hygrometer.
Roof joist rotted due to a leak
So what’s the best way to keep a traditional building warm and dry?
It is possible to maintain old buildings, provided that excessive air infiltration and heat loss are reduced and reasonable ventilation is maintained.
Unfortunately, many people equate pre-1919 houses with memories of living in draughty, unheated cold spaces with no insulation and with sash windows that rattled in the wind and suffered from condensation in the mornings.
If this is your memory, then you were 100% correct but sadly you left one small detail out – the houses were not damp!
As air flow around the house was fantastic, moisture could move freely and evaporate at speed. When we start damp proofing, sealing up draughts and over-insulating buildings we begin to trap incoming and self-generated moisture within the structure, and this can lead to a number of problems.
It is possible to find the right harmony between air flow, heat loss and ventilation but every building has to be treated on its own merit. There are so many variables to take into consideration, like the size and use of the building, direction of prevailing weather, materials used in construction, window size, roof design, and so on. Generally, there is always a solution to be found; whether this is effective is usually down to whether the custodian of the building adheres to the changes.
You’ve been involved in restoring a lot of old houses – what are some of the common mistakes people make?
Over the past 30 years I have seen everything you can imagine from damp proof course injection to cement rendering and, worryingly, I can say that most of the problems stem from ill-informed home owners or unqualified contractors.
If I was to compile a top five list it would look something like this: 1. Cement pointing; 2. Cement rendering; 3. Damp proof course; 4. Non-breathable paints; 5. Non-breathable felt.
All of these can cause untold damage to your building. If a combination of these mistakes is found within a building then it’s not a question of ‘if’ the problems are going to start, it’s a question of ‘when’ and at what severity and scale.
What’s the first thing you would recommend to an owner of a traditional building that’s struggling with cold and damp?
My best advice for anyone that lives in or has just moved into a traditional building is to get to understand your home. It is essential to understand where the cold spots of the house are to reduce any chance of damp, to monitor the ventilation of the house and identify where heat loss may be occurring, and to keep an eye on the weather to see where the prevailing rain is coming from.
A great place to start is with maintenance – with all traditionally built structures there will be issues to deal with annually. Because these buildings rely on the evaporation of moisture to maintain their breathability then keeping all your gutters, downpipes and drains clear of foliage will help matters considerably.
One tip – if you see small white spots on your internal wall, then this may be the first sign of your building depositing ‘effervescent salts’, which usually occurs when a wall is holding moisture and cannot breathe. The heat within the house pulls the moisture inwards and as it dries beneath the internal paint surface it deposits salts, which eventually break through the paint.
Where can I find out more information on traditional materials and methods of use?
There is no excuse these days to use inappropriate materials on pre-1919 buildings as there are so many different options on offer from various sources around the UK, from lime mortar to more modern technologies like cork for insulation.
There is also a plethora of information available on the internet and from professional organisations such as Historic England, CADW, SPAB, IHBC and ICOMOS UK.
You will also find there are some really good material suppliers, such as ‘Ty Mawr Lime’ in Brecon, who will be more than happy to accommodate any questions and give out unbiased solutions to problems or point you in a direction where you can achieve the answers you are looking for.
Many old buildings have draughty windows leading to wasted heat energy – what solutions would you recommend?
One enduring myth is that old windows account for 20 per cent or more of the heat lost from a building.
Historic England has carried out a series of tests on historic buildings to determine heat loss. In all cases, the windows were of historical interest and none had been repaired or particularly well maintained. But when the tests were completed it was apparent that the amount of leakage from the windows was a lot lower than expected (10 to 15%). The real problem areas were often not visible to the eye and occurred in quite obscure parts of the building.
If you are adamant on change then firstly repair, refit or adjust the windows that you already have to minimise heat loss, then either look at replacing your curtains with a heavier material or introducing shutters or blinds.
You can save up to 10% of heat loss carrying out the methods above before contemplating double glazing.
If you really want to go for double glazing then try the slimline version, which may fit within your old window sashes or – in the worst case scenario – you may need to have new windows.
About the author
Nathan has over 30 years’ experience working in a variety of roles, all of which have involved carpentry and joinery, historic building surveying, project management, conservation and the restoration and consolidation of old buildings. He is currently working as a conservation buildings adviser for the Strata Florida Trust and restoring a wooden palace in Ethiopia.
CAT course
Nathan teaches CAT’s ‘Fix your Damp House’ course, which gives you an in-depth understanding of how to spot signs of damp and make the necessary improvements to your building. The course includes practical DIY sessions as well as classroom-based learning.
The next course takes place 21-22 September.
For details and to book your place, see our website or call us on 01654 704966.
A new Zero Carbon Britain Hub and Innovation Lab is being launched at CAT later this year to help communities, local authorities and policymakers to create Zero Carbon Action Plans, and to provide support for the development of innovative solutions.
In the past few months, as awareness of the urgency of action on climate change has grown, we have been inundated with requests from governments, political parties, councils, community groups and businesses, all wanting CAT’s help with drafting policies and plans that will turn climate emergency declarations and targets into on-the-ground action.
In July we secured a substantial gift from the Moondance Foundation that will allow a step-change in our ability to respond to these requests through the creation of a new Zero Carbon Britain Hub and Innovation Lab.
Support for climate emergency action planning
The Zero Carbon Britain Hub will provide a programme of support aimed at increasing the confidence, competency and effectiveness of policymakers, communities and organisations in developing Zero Carbon Action Plans tailored to their needs.
We will be offering participative training courses and events at CAT and in venues across the UK, as well as online training. These will include ‘train the trainer’ courses to allow people to share knowledge with their colleagues and communities.
Mentoring programmes and access to expert advice will help guide people through the process of developing and implementing Zero Carbon Action Plans, whilst an online platform will provide tailored digital resources to help support the journey to zero carbon.
A living laboratory for environmental solutions
Alongside this, a Zero Carbon Britain Innovation Lab at CAT will help unlock sustainable solutions to specific challenges.
From technical innovations to social and economic solutions, CAT’s new living laboratory will open up opportunities for researchers, entrepreneurs, businesses, governments, citizens, councils and foundations to work together to create innovative, proven, effective climate solutions.
In order to tackle complex problems like climate change we need solutions that work across a complex range of interacting areas; solutions that not only offer technical fixes but also help overcome political, cultural, economic and psychological barriers.
The Zero Carbon Britain Innovation Lab will: respond to key issues, priorities and tasks identified by the Zero Carbon Britain Hub; test and prototype solutions; and create routes into larger scale impact or systems change.
The Zero Carbon Britain Hub and Innovation Lab represents a real step-change in CAT’s ability to provide support, advice and solutions to help in the transition to zero carbon. Keep an eye on our website for announcements as the project gets underway – and make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter to receive updates.
For a 100% renewable electricity system to work, we need reliable storage to cover days when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Paul Allen looks at how power-to-gas back-up could transform the energy grid. (more…)
This time we interviewed Christian Breyer, Professor of Solar Economy, to find out what insights he could share.
These interviews open up the black box of how decisions were made, what processes they went through and, in some cases, the modeller’s personal feelings about the work.
We will be publishing interviews at regular intervals on this blog, so stay tuned…
Interview with Christian Breyer, Professor for Solar Economy at LUT University
by Isabel Bottoms, October 29th 2018
Christian Breyer, Professor for Solar Economy at LUT University
1. What and who was the catalyst for you doing all of your 100% Renewable Energy (RE) studies?
The background for the series of work was that academic colleagues were interested in more specific topics of the sustainable energy transition, for example a specific technology, and then a group of researchers became interested in understanding how an entire energy system would work. So my role at LUT was created to build on this existing work and create added value through doing holistic energy transition studies.
It is a personal research interest of mine to understand how a global energy transition to fully sustainable energy system can work. I have a background in general business, I worked for an accounting company 20 years ago, but I am also a physicist and an energy systems engineer. Maybe as a physicist I am more interested in holistic views, and as an engineer I am interested in real practicalities of the transition. In the end, we have to achieve this for all of us on our planet, if Europeans have a nice solution but countries like India or China choose a different (non-renewable) solution, we still all die! So we have to understand it with a global – local resolution.
Why? It’s very simple if you look to what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is publishing, or the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The modelling should not be done by researchers in a Finnish forest planning for a long winter on their own with a desktop computer. It should not to be divorced from the context being modelled as country nationals can better understand the local constraints. In our international research team and with international students from various countries, we can effectively model energy transitions with local context, and students can take this back home to contribute to their country’s development in this field.
2. How did you secure funding for your work?
Funding does not work, it’s a real problem and I do not receive the funding I need.
The problem is that this kind of energy systems research is not a field of its own with funding. There are ‘old boys networks’ which Governments prefer to use and you can’t find a way in. Research packages have been good opportunities in the past.
PhD studentships working on scholarships for 1-3 years to do a specific piece of research work well, in combination with a mixed team, including a master’s student for half a year etc. Collaborations with companies add value here and there, it is always a fight for resources though, as for all parts of a university.
Challenge no.1 for me as a researcher is conservative reviewers, who know full well that our innovative approach cannot be computed or compared to daily research proposals which are less ambitious. In the process they kill lots of ideas and proposals that we have, and as such, they are a key bottleneck for us in creating new research. They are part of the funding system, and are lagging behind in enabling state of the art research.
3. What model did you use and why?
We have built a linear optimisation model, with full hourly resolution. It’s important to me that we have a cost-optimised model to create attractive results and connect to policy-relevant questions. It should also be flexible enough to be adapted for different regions and country contexts – but the price we pay is that it has to be run by highly trained programming experts!
We use our own model, created from scratch, because we couldn’t find one 4-5 years ago which fulfilled my quality criteria, and it’s also been helpful for adapting over time with changing research focuses.
A particular problem for global models is annual energy balancing rather than an hourly resolution so they still don’t know if they can balance the power system at all times of the year.
4. How did you decide which sectors/boundaries to work within?
Always start with the power sector, because it will be the platform for everything in future. Then heat (highly interconnected to power), then transportation, then industrial feedstocks (chemical industries, steel, metal refining, cement) because they are very energy intensive.
At LUT we have developed a speciality in including seawater desalination, not relevant for Europe as much, but in the Middle East it’s a very big issue. Then at the very end, we need negative emission technologies (NETs) – even the Integrated Assessment Models need to do a better job on this, they are not on the level they should be.
By the end of year we will cover the power, heat, transport sectors and desalination. By this point we’ll have a 90-95% modelling solution. And the next step in the following 12-18 months will be industry and negative emissions. But it will be a few years to get this right, and it will never end because we will keep adjusting.
5. Did you consider the inclusion of land use in your modelling?
We touch land use as ‘resource potential’, because the model is defined by what land resource is available to a country or region. There we have the maximum resource potential for wind and solar technologies which is linked to the land.
Of course biomass is fully linked to the land as we don’t allow energy crops in the model, or no more than are present today.
Desalination touches land use, because we do not model the land use but we model the desalination demand as a function of irrigation efficiency for each region.
When it comes to NETs then for sure we have to go to the core of land use, but when it comes to BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage) from my point of view, the entire discussion in the last 8 years is 90% wishful thinking by the illusion one could have huge areas covered by energy crops, to be burnt for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, while ignoring that CO2 direct air capture based on very low cost renewable electricity will be much more area efficient, finally lower in cost and technologically scalable.
We will include BECCS, but it violates everything of what makes sense for a future energy system, for NETs direct air capture is by orders of magnitude more area-efficient than BECCS.
But we don’t have the intention to do detailed land use modelling, we want to keep land use on the level of constraints to the energy system we are interested in, but not as an integral part of the model.
6. What process did you use to develop the scenarios the modelling is shaped by? (e.g. what trends did you decide to use? What assumptions did you make?)
For the fundamental assumptions we start from the reality of today, look at the major drivers and trends of today, then move to our 2050 milestone of a zero emissions energy system.
Boundary conditions and constraints are included as we go. We do not vary cost for efficiency of process, we use a realistic now – 2050 estimate for costs, only making edits to technology costs every 2-4 years for consistency of results, to ensure cost assumptions are comparable across studies.
We also operate with an assumption of bringing power to people and creating PV prosumers (i.e. consumers who also produce energy). We are an exception in this, nearly all models ignore PV prosumers but that ignores an existing reality.
We consider how the country wants to develop its system, does it want to be completely self-sufficient, or develop connections with its neighbours and work reciprocally? We typically nowadays compare current policy scenarios (from in-country studies) to zero by 2050 policy scenarios, with and without CO2 pricing.
7. What surprises have you came across?
It really surprises me that the global models others use are on such a limited methodological level, there is no massive outcry that these limited models are used for these important questions and why are they not improved? This really surprises me that people are happy with insecure, limited and outdated methodologies.
The key of a future energy system is its basement on variable renewable energy technologies, mainly solar photovoltaics and wind energy. This requires modelling of this variability and also flexibility so that for least cost, a new energy system can be evolutionarily created.
Flexibility can be described best in hourly resolution, and it has to comprise the resource complementarity of solar, wind but also hydropower in rivers, the match with dispatchable renewables, mainly bioenergy and hydro reservoirs, then the hourly, diurnal, mid-term and seasonal balancing with storage options, the balancing function of grids and finally sector coupling.
All these flexibility options cannot be described by annual energy balancing models, also models with so-called time slices have their challenges, since they are typically not precise enough. Therefore we have decided to go for full hourly resolution, so that we can better represent a renewable energy based system
8. What would you have done differently given the chance?
From today’s perspective I would do it exactly the same as we’ve done it. When you have to survive all these challenges, it’s better not to know what the pathway has in store: everything is more painful, more complex, but in the end you deliver. If I had known 5 years before how difficult it would be, I’m not sure I would have made the same decision.
Our role is to be a pioneer, and that has been a painful journey because we always have to tell the inconvenient truths, and we are not welcomed with resources. You have to overcome a lot of challenges, but financial resources are really the worst of the challenges. We could do more and better with secure financial resources.
9. How best do you feel modellers can make their work influence policy without compromising the laws of science?
First of all you need policy makers who are interested in changing something. Those with vested interests in fossil fuels create a very challenging space for discussion.
Politicians’ weak point is the economics, showing the least cost pathway is extremely difficult to argue against.
If they don’t like the outcome, ask them to find the weak point in the research, where’s the error in the research? This makes them face their blind spot, which they don’t like!
Compromise is always part of engaging with policy makers.
Showing multiple different scenarios is helpful to show how choices impact directions of travel, and to create societal discourse amongst different stakeholders with different interests and real-life constraints. We want the model to represent the system as closely as possible and then to have societal discourse on the scenarios – from companies, to religious groups to NGOs and farmers.
The local and national results need to coherently connect to a global model in an aggregated way, through a build-up of local pieces (typical global models have generic regions, which create a problematic heterogeneity.)
Needs to be as close as possible to reality for policy makers, and broad enough to enable discussion on different possible solutions. It’s a challenging balance.
11. What traction or response has your work had?
At a recent conference in London by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the world market leader in PV – a company in China – which has 20-30% of the global market for PV wafers, and the largest Research and Development budget in the industry, the company Founder and President had 8-9 mins to talk, for 2 mins he talked about LUT’s global 100% RE study! He’s maybe one of the most powerful leaders in the renewables industry for a technology which will be the largest part of our energy transition.
Finnish company Wärtsilä this summer announced a 100% RE strategy, and they clearly said that said that LUT’s research results encouraged and confirmed them in their new corporate strategy.
And then for the first time in history the IPCC 1.5C report has included scientific references to 100% RE scenarios, in competition with IEA’s and other conservative energy scenarios. This was because reviewers in the process challenged the authors off the report in a hard way to include the full scope of scientific literature, including 100% RE.
12. What are you optimistic about?
That we can show that 100% renewable energy works for all regions in the world for everyone, and that it is technically feasible and economically viable makes me very happy.
Cross-party consensus on ambitious targets, and a clear roadmap for effective climate action is urgently needed. That’s the message Paul Allen has been taking to politicians from across the political spectrum, most recently at a meeting with Energy Minister, Claire Perry.
As we have witnessed in the past, changes in government can cause massive upheaval in our collective approach to the climate challenge. To help build strong cross-party consensus, CAT has been sharing our Zero Carbon Britain research with key thinkers and policymakers.
Paul presenting CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain research to Energy Minister, Claire Perry
Since the release of the IPCC 1.5C report, there has been a growing political consensus that to avoid really dangerous climate change we need to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050. But between now and then, there will be eight or nine general elections, and it has become crystal clear that shifts in government can cause massive shifts in our approach to rising to the challenge.
A stable plan is urgently needed.
Cross-party consensus on climate action
Building a cross-party consensus on a delivery plan requires giving decision-makers access to scenarios that show how existing technology can be used to provide a reliable energy supply for the UK with 100% renewable energy sources, grow the vast majority of the food needed for a healthy, low carbon diet, and to manage the land to capture carbon, nurture biodiversity and increase the health and resilience of UK ecosystems.
Driven by an inclusive process, such agreement on action would offer a long-term stable framework for municipal or business investment, training and skills, technology research and development, and job creation. It would also, of course, increase confidence from wider society that no one will use this urgent challenge as a political football.
Paul speaking to business leaders and policymakers at the North Wiltshire Sustainable Business Conference
Pushing for net zero
So, to help lay the foundations for cross-party consensus, CAT has been sharing our Zero Carbon Britain (ZCB) research with key thinkers and policymakers.
As the UK Committee on Climate Change is the body that has now been asked to scope out delivering net-zero for Britain, we have sent copies of ZCB to the committee’s chair, Lord Deben – the UK’s longest-serving Secretary of State for the Environment (1993 to 1997), to Baroness Brown of Cambridge, Chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) and to Professor Jim Skea, who is also Co-Chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Back in 2007, following the launch of our initial report in Parliament, our local MP Lembit Opik shared it with the Liberal Democrats, which within six weeks led to the launch of their policy ‘Zero Carbon Britain – Taking a Global Lead’. CAT has been sharing our work with them on a regular basis, as we have with the other political parties.
However, in the wake of the recent IPCC 1.5C report, both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have now adopted zero carbon as their end-goal, so now we have cross-party consensus on the target – which in itself is a great step forward.
Talking to policymakers
To help build a platform for a cross-party action plan, we have sent copies of our work to relevant Labour policymakers, including Rebecca Long Bailey MP Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Dr Alan Whitehead MP Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy).
Last weekend at the launch event for a Zero Carbon West Berkshire I gave a briefing to the local Conservative MP Rt Hon Richard Benyon, and have sent him copies of our research together with an offer for a detailed briefing.Zero Carbon Britain for the Energy Minister
The following Saturday, at the North Wiltshire Sustainable Business Conference, I briefed Rt. Hon. Claire Perry MP, Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth, and presented her with a copy of our energy model, which she promised to read.
This degree of consensus is reminiscent of the overwhelming cross-party support for the Climate Change Act, passed 10 years ago. And, just like 10 years ago, the opposition (now Labour, then the Conservatives) is pushing the Government to take a more progressive stance.
If the target is set, the UK would join Norway and Sweden, which have legislated net-zero or near-net-zero targets. New Zealand, Iceland and California are among growing list that have announced, but not yet enacted, net-zero targets.
Climate justice
The UK and other long-industrialised nations grew wealthy on the back of burning fossil fuels; climate justice demands that wealthier nations take ambitious action now, and provide both financial and technical support for less developed countries to help them with mitigation and adaptation measures. The sooner this is achieved, the better our collective chances of avoiding the really serious climate impacts.
CAT’s new Raising Ambition report looks at low- and zero-carbon scenarios from across the globe
Raising Ambition
To add weight to the Zero Carbon Britain findings, we are also offing a range of international scenarios. Launched in September 2018 our new report, Raising Ambition: Zero Carbon Scenarios from Across the Globe, brings together an international range of scenarios exploring climate-stable futures at global, regional, national and sub-national scales.
