Government progress on meeting its net zero commitments is “worryingly slow”, a new report from the independent Climate Change Committee has found.
In its 15th annual progress report to parliament, the committee said its confidence in government being able to achieve its 2030 emissions reduction target has “markedly declined from last year.”
The report said that slow progress on targets, coupled with “backtracking” on fossil fuel commitments such as on the new Cumbria coal mine and new oil and gas licensing, had cost the UK its “clear global leadership position” on climate change.
The UK, the committee said, is sending “confusing signals” to the international community with such initiatives.
“A key opportunity to push a faster pace of progress has been missed”, the report states, adding: “Time is now very short to achieve this change of pace”.
“Glimmers of the net zero transition can be seen in growing sales of new electric cars and the continued deployment of renewable (power) capacity, but the scale up of action overall is worryingly slow.”
The report also cites a lack of progress on decarbonising heat in homes with technology like heat pumps, too much reliance on untested technology like carbon capture and insufficient tree planting are among the policy areas singled out for criticism.
Committee chairman Lord Deben said: “We’ve slipped behind. The government has lost the leadership role it did have and carried through in the Glasgow COP26 summit.
“There’s no doubt that Britain was leading the world… since then we’ve done a number of things which have run counter to that. We are still dithering about onshore wind, we haven’t got the (electricity) grid even on its way to being right.
“We are still building homes that are not fit for the future. Right across the political spectrum, there is an unwillingness to lead”.
This is the final annual report to be published by Lord Deben, and the former Conservative environment secretary said he was “sad” that his final pronouncement had to be so gloomy.
“Everything we hold most dear is threatened by climate change… we can’t let these chances go… because they won’t come again and our children and grandchildren will ask us how it was that we let them down”, he closes.
Shadow climate and net zero secretary Ed Miliband was scathing, calling the annual update evidence of “catastrophic negligence” from ministers and “by some distance the most damning indictment of a government since the CCC was established in 2008.”
Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, said: “This report could hardly be more damning.
“We’re going backwards more than we are forwards. This government’s dangerous dither and delay has driven a coach and horses through the UK’s previous reputation as a global climate leader.”
Defending the government’s record, energy minister Graham Stuart said: “About 76% of the energy of the most decarbonized major economy in the world, us, comes from fossil fuels today.
“There is no button I can press that turns that off tomorrow. And as we will be dependent on oil and gas for decades to come, even as we move to net zero, it makes sense that we should produce it here”, he continued.
Philip Dunne, the Conservative MP and chair of the environmental audit committee, said: “The CCC’s latest report makes for concerning reading and should serve as a wake-up call to Ministers. While the Government has indicated the ‘what’ it intends to deliver, there remain gaps in the ‘how’ to achieve through policy levers”.
He added: “Snappy, soundbite intent of ‘installing 600,000 heat pumps annually’, or ‘planting 30,000 hectares of trees a year’ sound impressive, but the detail on delivery and progress remains lacking”.
