Climate Change Part Two

I attended the launch of Labour's Green Industrial Strategy yesterday in Scarborough. The meeting was addressed by Rebecca Long-Bailey, our Shadow Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary, who gave a good analysis of how we need to plan a green economy which is both green and delivers social justice. Too often in the past we have focused on the latter at the expense of the former. I had a chat with Rebecca afterwards, and as a result I have sent a brief analysis of the Climate Change Committee's report on achieving a net zero carbon UK by 2050. Thankfully, Rebecca indicated that a Labour government would seek to advance the year by which net zero carbon is achieved.

Here's my take on the report, some of which I looked at in my last blog post.

1. The report was written before Parliament (with government acquiescence) declared climate change an emergency. The CCC should be immediately tasked with revising its report in the light of this. As Rebecca indicated, Labour will probably seek an earlier target date for achieving net zero carbon. This surely, along with Parliament’s decision, requires the CCC to reconsider its proposals.
2. The report on page 176 notes a number of areas where action has not matched ambition. Yet there is no analysis on why that is so. I realise the CCC operates within certain (unwritten) political constraints, but it’s time to take the kid gloves off. Unless we can learn from past mistakes, they will be repeated.
3. Government policy has shifted somewhat over the last decade from Labour’s oft-stated ‘we don’t pick winners’ (let the market decide) to the current situation where we have chosen a winner (offshore wind) which has drained the incentives for other action, whilst allowing the government to crow about its success. The report could have promoted other near-to-market technologies much harder – e.g. tidal power (which would probably be the most predictable renewable energy source of all).
4. Considering policy failures, little is said of the Green Deal or the Northern Ireland renewable heat scandal. Both of these policies incentivised action, but led to the gaming of those incentives, or more in the case of the Green Deal led to miss-selling. Such abuse of green investment brings considerable negative publicity for such incentives, and considerably increases public cynicism. Public acceptability is one of the political constraints governing the content of the CCC report, so it is surprising that more wasn’t said about this.
5. As I mentioned when I spoke to Rebecca, I didn’t find a single reference to the role of local authorities in the report. Even after and with austerity, councils have a huge role to play – it deserves a separate chapter.
6. I only found two very short references to public transport. It appears to be a premise of the report that individual private car ownership is a given. There need to be clear pathways to alternatives, and modal shift to better and cheaper public transport. None is suggested.
7. The report suggests that new nuclear could play a part in hitting the net zero target by 2050. I dispute this – it seems unlikely that any new nuclear power station would be operational before 2040 (I point to e.g. the Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland. The contract was signed in 2003, and it ‘may’ come on stream in 2020). The report acknowledges that the costs of nuclear probably will not reduce, whereas the costs of renewables have already dropped dramatically. I would also want us to consider the negative opportunity costs of choosing nuclear as a continuing option.
8. I suppose the CCC would not want to comment on existing, approved infrastructure projects. But in the context of climate change, where e.g. the report suggests there (perhaps) needs to be a bit less flying, there is no mention of the obvious consequence, which would be no need for new runways. I think HS2 also needs to be looked at again. My view is that the existing rail network in the north could do with that level of investment, rather than spending huge sums on what increasingly looks like a white elephant. This is surely another example of ignoring opportunity costs.
9. I would like to have seen more emphasis placed on interim targets. One could theoretically continue business as usual up to the target date and then suddenly slot everything into place. I understand the CCC’s remit to publish regular budgets, but it would surely place a significant and clearly understood obligation on the government to have interim targets. This would also contextualise the contribution of policies such as tree planting, which have time lags before they can fully deliver on their expectations (this applies to new nuclear too and many other long term contributors to a low carbon economy.
10. I welcome the report’s acknowledgement of the UK’s global leadership role, and especially its contention that the UK has a moral obligation to move as fast, and indeed faster than other countries, considering for example our historical responsibility for carbon emissions. The CCC has looked at various frameworks for establishing how we should calculate this function, but doesn’t seem to settle on any particular one. I would recommend the Labour Party commits to the Contraction and Convergence framework which was, after all, that which in an unacknowledged way underpinned the Climate Change Act 2008 and has very wide international support. Doing so would make our metric very clear, and our carbon emissions counting and reductions fully accountable and transparent.

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