UK must ‘go much wider’ with climate action, warn advisers

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The UK’s 2030 target to cut greenhouse gas emissions is at risk unless the country can rapidly deploy renewables, ensure nearly all cars sold are electric and fit heat pumps in 10 per cent of homes, according to a report.

The Labour government urgently needs to reduce emissions across the transport, building, industry and agriculture sectors in order to meet its decarbonisation goals, the Climate Change Committee said.

In its annual report assessing the UK’s efforts to meet its climate ambitions, released on Thursday, the government’s independent adviser said only a third of the reductions required to do so were covered by credible plans.

The UK has set a target to cut its emissions by 68 per cent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, and to achieve net zero by 2050. 

Piers Forster, CCC interim chair, warned that the effects of climate change were already evident, with England’s most recent winter among the wettest on record.

The Labour administration had “done some quite good things” in the days since winning the election, he added, such as lifting the de facto ban on onshore wind projects and appointing former CCC chief executive Chris Stark to lead its efforts to deliver clean power.

But, he added, to reach the 2030 target, ministers would need to “go much wider than energy and we do have to see a lot of effort right across the economy”.

The CCC, which based its assessment on the former government’s policies, said existing plans would not deliver the cuts that were needed. It also accused the Conservative administration of confusing messaging that had hampered climate action.

A Conservative party spokesperson said: “As the CCC acknowledges, we have decarbonised more than any other G20 country whilst growing the economy by 80 per cent at the same time.”

“The climate lobby and the Labour party want to push to go ever further and faster, but if that comes at extra costs to struggling families or sends our businesses abroad to higher polluting countries, then it will cause more damage than good to global carbon emissions,” they added.

The report said emissions fell by 4 per cent in 2023, despite an uptick in releases from the aviation sector as air travel continued to return following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UK’s emissions have fallen by more than half since 1990, but this was largely because of a phaseout of coal-fired power and the rollout of renewables, the CCC found.

It said annual offshore wind installations would need to increase three-fold by the end of the decade, while onshore wind capacity must double alongside a fivefold increase in solar installations for the 2030 target to be met. Electric cars would need to account for almost 100 per cent of new sales, up from 16.5 per cent last year.

The report found that the rollout of public EV charging points was on track, but sales of electric cars were not strong enough to meet the goal. “We really need to ramp up sales of electric vehicles,” said Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the CCC. 

The CCC said the UK would rapidly need to address emissions from buildings and shift away from using gas as a household fuel. About one in 10 homes would need to be fitted by a heat pump, which extracts heat from a source such as the air, ground or water, by 2030, up from 1 per cent today.

The report’s recommendations to boost climate action included making electricity cheaper by removing green levies from bills that widen the price between electricity and gas; removing planning barriers for heat pumps and EV chargers; and boosting tree planting and peatland restoration.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband said the report “lays bare the failures of the previous government”, and added that Labour was “wasting no time in delivering our mission”, including establishing a national wealth fund to decarbonise industry.

“The good news is that this report confirms that a clean energy future is the best way to make Britain energy independent, cut bills, create good jobs, and tackle the climate crisis,” he said.