The UK economy needs to go through a sea change to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Carbon intensive industries will have to go green, cutting emissions and restoring nature in line with the government’s environmental targets. Doing it in a fair way means upskilling those workers in high carbon jobs for new, low carbon roles while training the next generation to work in the green economy of the future.
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The government’s plans for farming in England have taken a kicking. In October, the NFU opposed reductions to the Basic Payments Scheme, and called for delay to the roll out of the new Environmental Land Management scheme (ELM). But many environmentalists see the first tranche of this new scheme, the new Sustainable Farming Incentive announced in December, as basic payments reheated. It was condemned by the National Trust, RSPB and Wildlife Trusts for ignoring “the important links between farming, climate and nature”.
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One of the most intriguing stories of 2021 concerned Boris Johnson’s conversion from climate scepticism.
“He said his “’road to Damascus’ moment came in the early days of his premiership when he was given a climate briefing by scientists.
“‘I got them to run through it all, and if you look at the almost vertical kink upward in the temperature graph, the anthropogenic climate change, it’s very hard to dispute. That was a very important moment for me,’ he said.”
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One of the biggest challenges of plotting a route to net zero for the whole economy is ensuring everyone pulls their weight at the right time. It’s like an orchestra, where different instruments have to play different parts at different times to create a harmonious symphony.
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This post is by Councillor George Duggins, the leader of Coventry City Council.
After months of anticipation, the UN climate change conference finally got underway in Glasgow this weekend. After the strategies and the speeches, the endless media briefings, the crunch meetings between No 10 and the Treasury and the chancellor’s budget announcements, it remains to be seen whether COP26 will be quite the turning point it should be.
After watching the chancellor’s autumn spending review, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the UK public was more concerned by the price of a pint than by the looming threat of climate change. Changes to alcohol duties dominated the tail end of Sunak’s speech in which he mentioned wine twelve times, cider ten, and alcohol nine. The words “net zero”, on the other hand, were only mentioned three times, while he did not utter the phrase “climate change” once – and the only mention of “environment” came in relation to the pub.
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This post is by Amy Norman, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation.
Over the next three decades, the pursuit of net zero will transform localities throughout the UK. This will bring opportunities for creating businesses and jobs in new green technologies like hydrogen, carbon capture and renewables on land and at sea. The good news is that many of these projects are already underway, like the recent approval of major decarbonisation plans for six industrial clusters from South Wales to St Fergus.
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This post was originally published by Business Green.
The government is right. The way we heat our homes needs to change if we are to reach net zero.
Over 85 per cent of UK homes are currently heated using fossil gas and this accounts for around 16 per cent of total UK emissions. But getting those emissions down to zero is shaping up to be one of the most politically difficult parts of the government’s decarbonisation agenda.
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This post was originally published by City A.M.
Some truisms are worth repeating: the Treasury is powerful. Unlike its counterparts overseas, the Treasury in Britain is able to set policy for economic development and control government spending. This power, however, is also an impediment on progress. It is one of the slowest Whitehall departments to change its ways and is holding back the government’s green agenda.
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Green Alliance is tracking the UK’s net zero policy progress in key areas of government throughout this year. This week we are featuring a series of daily blogs in which we hear from the chairs of five parliamentary select committees, who answer our questions about the progress being made in their committee’s area of interest. This post is by Huw Merriman MP, chair of the Transport Select Committee.
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