Scrap The Act
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By Paul Homewood
President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Agreement has brought to a head the arguments surrounding Britain’s Climate Change Act.
The UK is the only country in the world to commit itself by law to large cuts in emissions of GHGs. The Climate Change Act calls for a cut in emissions of 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.
According to government statistics, between 1990 and 2015 UK GHG emissions fell by 38%, from 797 to 497 MtCO2e. Therefore, to meet the 2050 target, emissions would have to fall to 159 MtCO2e, a cut of 68% from current levels.
One of the explicit aims of the Act was to demonstrate strong UK leadership internationally, in order to encourage other countries to follow our lead.
Patently, this has failed.
The Act should therefore be abolished for the following reasons.
COST
Official projections from the OBR show that by 2021/22 the cost of environmental levies and RHI will amount to £14.7bn a year. This equates to about £540 per household.
Unfortunately, part of this cost is already committed for Renewable Obligations and CfDs on existing projects. Efforts need to be made now to mitigate these costs.
In the meantime, an immediate stop needs to be put to all subsidies for new projects.
It is extremely likely that these cost of subsidies will continue to mount after 2020. Some estimates put the total cost at £319bn between now and 2030.
This is quite simply unaffordable.
Post 2030
Most official calculations and plans only take us to 2030. Thereafter, decarbonisation will become progressively more difficult and expensive, as the low hanging fruit will already have been picked.
For instance, a large part of the emissions savings so far made since 1990 have been due to:
- Loss of manufacturing base in the 1990s and 2000s, particularly following the financial crash
- The substitution of natural gas for coal in power generation.
Decarbonisation after 2030 will involve much more radical changes.
We have no way of knowing what technologies will be around in twenty years time, and it would be dangerous to commit the UK to further decarbonisation until we do know.
We are already committed to high cost low carbon technologies such as offshore wind and Hinkley Point. It would have been much more prudent to wait until either these technologies, or alternative ones provided much lower costs of generation.
Industrial Competitiveness
By the end of 2015, the UK had the second highest price of electricity for industrial consumers in the EU. Only Italy had higher costs.
Worse still, the UK had the highest price of all, excluding tax.
As we know, the price of electricity will continue to rapidly rise as a direct result of government climate policy.
Bear in mind as well that EU electricity prices are already high by world standards.
Unless the Climate Change Act is repealed, UK industry will be permanently damaged.
EU Commitments
The EU Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement specifically refers to:
a binding target of at least 40% domestic reduction in GHGs by 2030 compared to 1990 to be fulfilled jointly
Yet, under the auspices of the Climate Change Act, the Fifth Carbon Budget now commits the UK to a cut of 57% for the period 2028-32.
There is no justification for the UK having to make much larger reductions than other EU countries.
Regardless of Brexit or our pledges to the Paris Agreement, both the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets should be withdrawn immediately.
The Paris Agreement
As already stated, one of the objects of the Act was to demonstrate global leadership. In other words, by setting an example, the rest of the world would follow suit.
Despite much hype, the simple reality is that the Paris Agreement did nothing to reduce global emissions. According to their own data, as a result of all of the NDCs submitted, GHGs will rise to 55 GtCO2e in 2030, from 49 GtCO2e in 2010.
Whilst developed countries have promised reductions, most of the rest of the world has pointedly refused to. Instead they have only made vague promises such as reducing carbon intensity or installing more renewable energy capacity.
In particular, China and India, the biggest and third biggest emitters of GHGs, have submitted NDCs which are likely to see large increases in emissions by 2030.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, developing countries are under no obligation to reduce emissions:
Both China and South Korea are classified as “developing”, something which dates back to the formation of the UNFCCC in 1992.
Given both countries’ economic development since, this is clearly not justifiable today. It is also true that CO2 emissions per capita are now actually higher in China than in the UK.
Not only has Paris failed to reduce emissions, it has produced a lopsided and unfair balance of responsibilities.
Yet under the Climate Change Act, the UK is committing to go much further and faster than most other countries.
Trump
The decision to take the US out of the Paris Agreement should be the final nail in the coffin of the UK Climate Change Act.
It was introduced in the hope that other countries would quickly follow our lead, something that plainly has not happened.
Our policy should now be to decarbonise only at the rate that our competitors do, including China, the USA, and the EU.
If the Climate Change Act is not soon repealed, the effect on the UK economy will be extremely damaging.
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June 4, 2017 at 07:54PM
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