Prime minister Boris Johnson has set a new climate target of a 68 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
The announcement, made today (Friday 4 November) comes ahead of the UN COP26 climate talks, to be hosted by the UK government in Glasgow next year; and the Climate Ambition Summit on 12 December, co-hosted by the UK and coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement.
PM Johnson said the UK will be ‘taking the lead’ with the ambitious new target to reduce emissions faster than any other economy, but stressed that the effort must be a global one, urging world leaders to bring forward their own plans to cut emissions and set net zero targets at the summit next week.
Britain’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement sets out the level of action the UK will take in order to achieve the goal, set at COP21 in 2015, of holding the global temperature rise to well below two degrees with best efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.
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Business and Energy secretary and COP26 president Alok Sharma described tackling climate change as ‘one of the most urgent shared endeavours of our lifetimes, demanding bold action from every nation to prevent catastrophic global warming’. He added: “The UK’s emissions target is among the highest in the world and reflects the urgency and scale of the challenge our planet faces. I hope other countries join us and raise the bar at next week’s UN Climate Ambition Summit, and ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow next year.”
Earlier this month, the PM announced the UK’s ten point plan for a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’, which promises to create and support ‘up to 250,000’ British jobs by 2030, in support of our net zero targets.
Alistair Davies, chief executive at SSE, commented: “This target provides a clear, long-term signal for businesses like SSE to get on and deliver. With a £7.5bn low-carbon investment programme, including building the world’s largest offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank, we’re playing our part and want to do more to demonstrate the UK’s international leadership as we build towards COP26 next year – from pioneering carbon capture and storage technology to building the network infrastructure needed to accommodate the coming surge in renewables, electric vehicles and heat pumps.”
Mark Maslin, professor of Climatology at University College London (UCL), said that 2021 will be a ‘turning point’ for the planet, and emphasised that while these new plans are ‘ambitious and world-leading’, we must hold the government to their rhetoric.
“We need 100 per cent renewable electricity, we need all vehicles to be electric, we need to switch away from gas central heating, we need sustainable agriculture, we need to reforest and rewild the UK and we need a global transparent system of carbon offsets to help companies get to net zero as soon as possible,” he commented.
It matters not what politicians say, only what they do.
Johnson’s aspirations will come to nothing when his chancellor is hell-bent on spending £27B to increase carbon emissions by building more roads. That sum makes the amounts committed to green project seem like peanuts.
Have all the countries economists left? The parliamentary principle of the “Green Book” which requires major projects to be cost/benefit assessed has been totally bypassed in the name of saving the world from itself. The UKs massive investments will not alter the trajectory of rising CO2 one jot . In fact the 10 point plan includes revising the Green Book, an alarming development indeed, as it will reduce the already insufficient scrutiny of mega-projects even further.
It is all very well for a well-paid professor to tell us that we need all renewable-based electricity, his job is safe and he can afford the damage costs that will follow making the UK have the world’s most expensive electricity.
This is another bout of grandstanding designed to deflect criticism of other failings within government under the present administration. The green plan announced previously made much of renewables. For the past week renewables have contributed less than 5% of aggregated national demand. Renewables reain intermittent and solar is only effective for a maximum of ~50% of the time. Without gas, nuclear and coal (remember that?) we would have been in a mess with brown outs, black outs etc. Is this the sort of future we want?
Estimates to produce a fully renewables base for generation suggest the capex required would be trillions (not billions) and it is doubtful kit could be installed fast enough before the first installations required replacement. Hole digging to bury a pile of earth again. The vexed question of payment for non-generation and grid connections gets conveniently overlooked but the consumer pays for this.
Some of the rhetoric surrounding the latest weasel words from HMG are tantamount to eco-fascism and would not stand forensic scrutiny.
The big question is: “is the stated 68% reduction in greenhouse emissions based in any part on carbon offsets, exemptions, emissions trading or cross channel electrical interconnectors ?”
If so, IMO, the stated reduction is inaccurate and misleading and all smoke and mirrors.
To be meaningful and to be taken seriously we need to be making real reductions in our actual emissions.
I agree and he is cutting upgrading the railways budget by £1 billion.
These statements from our government are a prime example of the lack of appropriate STEM education available at private/public schools and Oxbridge. Too many of these establishments appear more interested in conforming to the ‘woke’ agenda than ensuring our ‘future leaders’ have the appropriate skills to understand and be able to analyse technology and environmental issues.
Maybe spend a little less time on Mesopotamia and a little more on the mess we’re in !!