Shocking Revelation: Rishi Sunak Drops Bombshell on UK Emissions – Here’s What You Need to Know!

Get free updates on climate change

We will send you a myFT Daily collection email with the list of the latest news Climate change news every morning.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced a policy review aimed at helping the UK meet its legally binding target of reducing its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

The prime minister rejected a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, relaxed targets to persuade households to abandon fossil fuel boilers and abandoned plans for tougher energy efficiency rules for the owners.

Justifying his move, Sunak he said the UK had reduced its emissions faster than any other G7 country since 1990 and insisted that the policies he was changing were not necessary to meet emissions targets.

Let’s evaluate these statements and observe the effect of the changes.

The UK has historically been one of the largest emitters

Sunak said on Wednesday that because the UK accounts for less than 1% of current annual global greenhouse gas emissions, its citizens should not be forced to “sacrifice even more” than those in other countries in the effort to combat climate change.

China is the world’s largest producer of annual emissions, having overtaken the United States. But critics argue that, as the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the UK is ignoring its role as one of the world’s largest historical contributors to emissions.

Britain has cut emissions rapidly since 2015

Since 1990, the UK has made the most progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions among the seven major industrial countries.

But Germany has cut emissions faster than the UK since the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally to 1.5°C .

Germany’s emissions fell by 17% between 2016 and 2022, while the UK’s emissions fell by 14% over the same period, official data published by each country shows.

Wind and nuclear energy have been key to the UK’s emissions cuts

Most of the UK’s emissions cuts have come from the electricity sector, thanks to the replacement of coal-fired power stations with renewables, biomass and gas.

In 1990, coal-fired power stations generated around 80% of the UK’s electricity. Last year, however, they provided less than 2%, with wind turbines providing nearly a quarter, nuclear power about 15% and solar power about 4%.

However, progress in other areas has been stubbornly slow, partly due to technological difficulties and the impact on consumers.

In its progress report to parliament in 2023, the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s independent advisers, said the lack of a strategy particularly on warming was contributing to “worryingly slow” progress.

Drafty homes make it harder to reduce emissions

The UK is home to Europe’s most leaky homes, with residential buildings accounting for the majority of the country’s emissions from the property sector. Last year, before Sunak relaxed plans to phase out gas boilers and scrapped measures requiring homeowners to make homes more energy efficient, academic research found that the UK was way off course in efforts to decarbonise the sector.

“We were not on the right track [to] meeting net zero obligations in the sector and pushing back deadlines on boiler bans or energy efficiency measures is just a step in the wrong direction,” said Hadi Arbabi, a lecturer in the built environment at the University of Sheffield.

Delaying the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars could prove costly in the long term

Sunak justified his measures by saying he did not want to pass on additional costs to consumers. However, the CCC estimated that phasing out sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 would be the best option financially for the company, with delays reducing the cost benefits of the switch.

The committee also estimated that the cost of a typical new electric vehicle would equal the cost of buying a new gasoline or diesel car by 2030, although some in the industry expect this to happen even sooner. Electric vehicles also offer additional fuel cost savings because they are more energy efficient.

Sunak’s decision to postpone a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars until 2035 will make it very difficult for the UK to meet its interim emissions reduction targets, said Christian Brand, professor of transport, energy and climate change at Oxford University. .

The CCC estimated in 2020 that phasing out traditional car sales in 2032 could lead to cumulative emissions reductions of nearly 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) over the period to 2051 compared to the planned phase-out in 2035. Doing so in 2030 could save an additional 20 MtCO2e.

Climate consultants are concerned by Sunak’s measures

As well as reaching the target of net zero emissions by 2050, the UK Government must meet interim “budgets” along the way. Ministers are yet to finalize important details of Sunak’s policy changes – such as exactly which households could be exempt from having to ditch fossil fuel boilers – so the impact on emissions is difficult to calculate at this stage.

The CCC said the changes are “likely to further distance the UK from being able to meet its legal commitments”, but it needs time to do the calculations.

However, Carbon Brief, the climate science website, looked at the emissions savings expected from UK policies before Sunak’s announcement, and found that the changes could affect his ability to meet his targets. climate objectives.

“It is not yet clear how much of these emissions savings will be lost due to the rollback,” Simon Evans told Carbon Brief. “But we are off track and these setbacks will take us even further off track.”

Baroness Kate Parminter, chair of the House of Lords climate change committee, said it was “difficult to imagine” how legally binding carbon targets will be achieved, given that “a third of all emissions reductions required by 2035” it must come from individuals choosing new technologies or changing their behavior.