‘Green Day’: Government admits UK’s climate policies still not on track to meet Sixth Carbon Budget
Carbon Budget Delivery Plan notes existing policies do not put UK fully on track to meet 2030s Carbon Budget, but insists upcoming measures can close emissions gap
The government has acknowledged that existing climate policies will not enable the UK to meet its Sixth Carbon Budget, as it today published its long-awaited response to the legal challenge to its 2021 Net Zero Strategy.
Setting out how various green policies announced since 2021 tally against the emissions reductions required to meet its Sixth Carbon Budget and the 2030 climate goal it submitted to the UN, the government acknowledged emissions are projected be roughly 32Mt CO2e higher that the legally required limit for the period between 2033 and 2037.
However, it said it was confident the Sixth Carbon Budget could still be met, noting that it expected to close the emissions reduction gap with policies and proposals that were yet to be announced, or had been unveiled but not yet quantified.
Last summer, the government was ordered by the High Court to publish a revised climate strategy by the end of March this year, after environmental campaigners successfully argued Ministers had breached their legal obligation to produce detailed climate policies that show how the UK’s legally-binding carbon budgets would be met when they published the Net Zero Strategy.
Today’s Carbon Budget Delivery Plan complies with the court’s deadline with a day to spare. It sets out how the government envisages existing and promised policies – including some announced just today as part of its raft of ‘Green Day’ announcements – will play out in the real economy and deliver quantifiable emissions reductions towards the UK’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Carbon Budgets which run through to the mid-2030s.
“Whilst the savings deliverable from the proposals and policies are likely to exceed Carbon Budgets 4 and will substantially overdeliver against Carbon Budget 5, there is a judgement to be made whether the policies identified at this stage are sufficient to enable Carbon Budget 6 to be met,” the report notes. “We are confident that Carbon Budget 6 can be met through a combination of the quantified and unquantified policies identified.”
The document also measures how the UK’s policy proposals fare against the UK’s official 2030 climate target submitted to the UN as part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement, otherwise known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in the UN jargon.
The government calculates that its current “quantified” policies will deliver 92 per cent of the emissions reductions required to honour the UK’s NDC, which promises to reduce emissions by 68 per cent by 2030 on 1990 levels. It stresses the gap can be closed largely through “unquantified policies”, as well as through further measures that are yet to be announced.
Shadow Climate and Energy Security Secretary Ed Miliband described the government’s confirmation that it was not fully on track to meet its 2030 NDC climate target was a “disaster”.
“For all these thousands of pages, the documents obscure in weasel words the startling admission that these plans do not meet the government’s 2030 NDC commitment – the centrepiece of their pledges at COP26,” he wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth – one of the three organisations to launch last year’s successful legal challenge against the government – has warned it is ready to take further action against Ministers if the various policy announcements and proposals announced today fail to show how the UK’s legally-binding climate targets will be met.
“It is deeply troubling that, by its own admission, the government’s quantified plans don’t fully meet legal targets for reducing UK emissions, let alone the deeper cuts that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised at international climate talks just four months ago,” said Mike Childs, the NGO’s head of policy. “One obvious area of failing is home insulation where deep emissions cuts could be made quickly if the government funded a rapid energy efficiency programme, as recommended by the government’s own climate advisors. Friends of the Earth lawyers will be scrutinising the 1000+ pages of documentation very closely and, if necessary, are ready to take legal action again.”
The annex of today’s document catalogues around 40 areas where the government foresees further carbon savings can occur so as to put the UK on track to meet its Sixth Carbon Budget.
Potential measures include the finalisation of the proposed Future Buildings Standard, the planned review of F-gas legislation, investment in R&D to refine emissions estimates and explore methane gas capture from landfill, further exploration of the potential for biochar, enhanced rock weathering, and other nascent carbon removal technologies, future development of more sustainable protein sources, and the enhancement of product standards in construction and enacting additional energy efficiency rules for owner-occupier homes.
The list is notable as it mainly highlights the need for action in policy areas that critics have today claimed have been largely overlooked in the government’s wave of ‘Green Day’ announcements.
Lobbying for high ambition aviation decarbonisation policies at international forums, expanding the Emissions Trading Scheme to more sectors of the economy, and the impact of investments made through the UK Investment Bank are also singled out as areas where further emissions reduction are likely. They form part of a longer list of 143 “unquantified” proposals and policies related to decarbonisation and the green economy, which the government said could help ensure the Sixth Carbon Budget is met.
BusinessGreen reached out the government for a response to the latest criticism, but had not received a response at the time of going to press.
In related news, the Office for National Statistics confirmed this morning that the UK’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.2 per cent in 2022, as carbon dioxide emissions fell by 2.4 per cent, largely becuase homes used less heating due to higher energy prices and temperatures.
However, carbon emissions produced by the transport sector increased by four per cent after traffic increased following 2021’s Covid lockdowns.
The UK’s greenhouse gas emission have fallen by 48.7 per cent since 1990 and carbon emissions by 45.1 per cent, largely due to the shift away from coal-fired generation and towards fossil gas and renewables.
