Fewer cattle and ‘speculative’ CO2 removal tech: How can Northern Ireland meet its 2050 net zero ‘mega-target’?
Climate Change Committee presents advice to Northern Ireland Executive on how to meet its ‘very tough’ net zero by 2050 target
Northern Ireland may need to pursue “speculative” carbon removal technologies and accept the need for a “further significant decrease” in livestock numbers if it is to meet its legally-binding 2050 net zero target, according to the UK’s climate advisory body.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) yesterday published official guidance on how Northern Ireland can deliver on its climate goals, warning that even with “radical” actions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere through a significant expansion in tree cover and the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, the country may still not be able to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
Previously, the CCC recommended an “ambitious” climate pathway for Northern Ireland that would see it achieve an 83 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 against 1990 levels, with carbon removal efforts then required across Britain for the UK as a whole to achieve its net zero by 2050 target.
But after Northern Ireland passed its first Climate Change Act last year setting a new legally-binding target for net zero emissions by 2050, the CCC yesterday updated its advice for the devolved administration, warning it now faced a hugely challenging task to deliver on the new goal.
The CCC said it had developed a new “stretch ambition” pathway for achieving net zero by 2050 in Northern Ireland, but the committee counselled that it would require urgent, rapid, and concerted decarbonisation action on all fronts, and that even then the devolved administration would need to consider more “speculative” carbon cutting measures to reach the goal.
“We applaud Northern Ireland’s ambition, but our key message is: we must see immediate action,” Chris Stark, CEO of the CCC, wrote on Twitter yesterday. “Northern Ireland now has the greatest ambition in the whole of the UK, but it won’t be credible without ambitious delivery of change following this. We’ll be watching closely.”
As previously recommended by the CCC, to put the province on a pathway to net zero emissions all new cars, vans, and home heating appliances would need to be zero emissions by the early 2030s, while livestock numbers would need to fall by almost a third alongside a major increase in peatland restoration and afforestation if climate goals are to be met.
But even after these efforts, it said there would still be a significant chunk of residual emissions in 2050 largely due to Northern Ireland’s sizeable agricultural sector, which is a major supplier of food and produce for the rest of the UK and as such continues to present a major decarbonisation challenge for the country as a whole.
“Even with all these ambitious actions, Northern Ireland would fall well short of net zero emissions,” the CCC said. “More radical action will be required to reach the 2050 target.”
Specifically, the CCC recommends ramping up annual afforestation rates in Northern Ireland to reach 3,100 hectares by 2035, rising to 4,100 hectares by 2039, so as to create more natural carbon storage.
But expanding tree cover to such an extent would also require a reduction in cattle and sheep numbers of around 18 per cent by 2030 in order to make more land available for tree-planting, it warned.
At the same time, Northern Ireland would need to significantly expand its capacity for engineered carbon removals by pairing CCS systems with biomass and anaerobic digestion energy plants in order to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than is emitted through the energy generation process.
Building out sufficient CCS capacity would require “significant investment and infrastructure development”, the CCC said.
Yet even after taking these “radical” measures, the CCC estimated Northern Ireland would still be 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions short of its net zero goal in 2050, and that it would therefore need to consider a further set of more “speculative options”.
These might include investing in nascent greenhouse gas removal technologies such as direct air capture (DAC) and enhanced weathering technologies, as well as further reducing cattle and sheep numbers over the next three decades. “It is up to Northern Ireland to determine the exact details of the actions to reach net zero, considering the benefits and challenges of these options,” the CCC’s report states.
The CCC reassessed its advice to the Northern Ireland Executive after the devolved administration passed its own Climate Change Act last year, setting a target to achieve net zero by 2050, which brings the province into line with the rest of the UK.
As part of Northern Ireland’s new climate law, the Executive is now in the process of establishing interim emissions goals and carbon budgets for the remainder of the 2020s and beyond, which it is required to complete before the end of this year.
In its updated advice, the CCC recommends the Executive target average annual emissions reductions of 33 per cent against 1990 levels during the first carbon budget period from 2023-27, before then working to deliver a 48 per cent cut during the second carbon budget period from 2028-2032. For the third carbon budget period, it suggests a 62 per cent average annual reduction in emissions.
On top of that, the CCC’s advice suggests Northern Ireland should establish interim emissions reduction targets for an overall 48 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, rising to a 77 per cent cut by 2040, both against a 1990 baseline.
It also stressed that – like for other governments across the UK – the Northern Ireland Executive should not use carbon offsets to meet any of its targets, and the carbon budgets should be achieved through direct action to cut emissions and the ramping up of domestic nature-based and engineered removals.
The report warns that meeting the targets will require immediate action. Average annual emissions would need to be 16 per cent lower in Northern Ireland by 2025 compared to 2019 levels, and 35 per cent lower by 2030 to deliver on the proposed carbon budgets. But the province’s emissions have only fallen by an average of nine per cent per decade since 1990.
As such, the CCC said “a step change in action is needed across all sectors of the economy” if Northern Ireland is to stand a chance of achieving a 2050 net zero emissions goal that Stark described as a “mega-target”.
The CCC’s advice comes at critical moment for Northern Irish politics, after the UK struck a deal with the EU over the NI Protocol earlier this week that it is hoped will help end the political deadlock that has scuppered a power sharing government in Stormont.
“The news this week on the NI Protocol may pave the way to a return to a power sharing government that can implement the policies needed under this new target,” said Stark. “We’ll need that.”
But he conceded that the CCC had “struggled to model pathways to get all the way to net zero in Northern Ireland”. “The challenge of handling agricultural emissions has not gone away,” Stark said. “Once all other fossil-fuelled sectors have reached actual zero emissions, there are only so many options to take us further. So we continue to suggest the need for major action on farming and livestock emissions. We’ve also looked at how we can squeeze more ambition out of the use of land in NI (again, requiring ambition to change in farming). We’ve also considered engineered removals in Northern Ireland for the first time. With carbon capture happening in NI, transported to other places.”
The scale of the challenge faced by Northern Ireland in meeting its net zero goal underscores the difficulties faced by the UK as a whole in tackling emissions from farming and agriculture.
The government in Westminster, however, continues to face criticism over the lack of a clear strategy for decarbonising farming and encouraging dietary changes in line with statutory climate targets. It is under pressure to provide further guidance on how it envisages net zero targets being met in the updated iteration of its Net Zero Strategy, which the High Court has ordered the government publish before the end of March.
But Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs (DAERA) welcomed yesterday’s advice from the CCC, and promised to come forward with a draft Climate Action Plan for the country “in the coming months”.
DAERA Permanent Secretary Katrina Godfrey acknowledged the “size and scale of the challenge” for Northern Ireland to meet its near and long term climate targets on the road to net zero by 2050, which she said would in many cases require a “radically different” policy approach.
But she stressed that tackling climate change also presents “real opportunity to improve our natural environment, our air and water quality and our biodiversity”, and the importance of harnessing science, technology and innovation in order to “find new ways of reducing carbon emissions”.
“Our focus now, not only in DAERA but across all departments, is firmly on developing and refining proposals for returning Ministers that can deliver the 48 per cent reduction from 1990 levels of carbon emissions by 2030 while also protecting and promoting economic and societal wellbeing so that these can be captured and consulted on in a draft Climate Action Plan in the coming months,” she said. “Given the nature of evidence and analysis presented in the report, these proposals will not only have to be evidence-based and affordable; they will also in many cases have to be radically different than previous approaches.”
It is rare to hear the CCC suggest a UK administration’s climate targets are, if anything, potentially too stretching, rather than focus on rallying politicians to crank up their ambitions. Yet that appears to be the primary conclusion from the CCC’s advice to the NI Executive this week.
But while Northern Ireland’s net zero ambitions are undoubtedly challenging – more so than for any other part of the UK given the size of its agricultural sector – they also present an opportunity for the province to pioneer the development of much-needed carbon removals industry and detailed policies for tackling farming emissions, all of which will be critical if the UK as a whole is to deliver on its 2050 net zero goals. Indeed, an ambitious draft Climate Action Plan from the NI Executive later this year could well help to move the decarbonisation dial right across the UK.
