Climate change: Is the UK on track to meet its targets?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is attending the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, having previously said he would be staying in the UK to focus on “domestic challenges”.

He tweeted: “There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.”

The UK has pledged to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Net zero means a country takes as much of these climate-changing gases out of the atmosphere as it puts in.

But the UK Committee on Climate Change (UKCCC), which advises the government, has criticised the UK’s climate plans.

So, what progress is the government making?

In 2021, Boris Johnson set a target for all of the UK’s electricity to come from clean sources by 2035.

UK governments have been relatively successful in cutting emissions from energy. These fell by 73.4% between 1990 and 2021, largely as a result of closing coal-fired power stations, and by spending more money on solar, wind and nuclear energy.

However, the UKCCC says the lack of a clear strategy in this area means the government risks not reaching its 2035 target.

Mr Johnson’s government gave planning consent to construct a new nuclear reactor – Sizewell C – and he expressed a wish to build eight more.

The UK is already a world leader in offshore wind. It currently has capacity of about 10GW, which Mr Johnson’s government promised to increase to 50GW by 2030. This would generate enough energy to power every home in the UK.

The UK has made significant progress in scaling up its offshore wind production. In March, the industry body Renewable UK announced there was capacity for 72.5GW of wind planned or under construction in the UK.

But the UKCCC warns the country needs more and better energy storage for times when the wind doesn’t blow.

In April 2022, the government published its UK Energy Security Strategy, which aims to move away from “expensive fossil fuel prices set by global markets we cannot control”.

However, it included a promise to issue new licences in the North Sea for oil and gas, despite the UN warning against new fossil fuel projects. The North Sea Transition Authority is expected to issue 100 new licenses.

The ban on fracking was lifted by Liz Truss and then brought back by Rishi Sunak.

Housing accounts for about 14% of the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions, mostly because of gas-boiler heating systems and poor insulation, according to the UKCCC.

Mr Johnson’s government committed to installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 to replace gas boilers. These transfer heat from the ground, air or water around a property into its heating system, and use electricity rather than gas.

Grants of £5,000 are available to help homeowners install a heat pump. The government revealed that fewer than 6000 vouchers had been issued between April and September 2022.

Environmental groups have questioned how the government will meet its 600,000 heat pumps target: only 55,000 pumps were installed in 2021. By comparison, about 1.7 million gas boilers are sold in the UK each year.

Insulation is one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from housing. It prevents the loss of heat, meaning less energy is wasted trying to maintain the house’s temperature.

The UK has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe, but installations of insulation “are too slow” and have “stalled”, according to the latest UKCCC report.

Transport accounted for 31.5% of UK emissions in 2021. In a bid to cut this, the government says no new petrol and diesel cars will be sold from 2030.

By 2028, it wants 52% of car sales to be electric. In 2021, 11.6% of car sales were electric, and the UKCCC says the market is “currently growing well”.

But on 14 June, the government announced it was ending grants for electric cars, saying the payment was having “little effect on rapidly accelerating sales”.

Instead the funding will be used to test and trial zero-carbon HGVs, taxis and motorcycles – and to boost public charging infrastructure.

The government wants 300,000 publicly-accessible charging points by 2030 – a ten-fold increase.

The government has also promised to double cycling rates from 2013 levels by 2025, and build a “world-class” cycling network by 2040.

It has spent £338m on walking and cycling infrastructure in England, but while the Covid pandemic increased cycling rates, it is not clear whether the effect will be permanent.

Before the pandemic, flying made up about 7% of overall emissions, and shipping about 3%.

The UK published its strategy for delivering net zero aviation by 2050 in July 2022.

It was criticised for relying too much on technologies such as sustainable fuels and zero emission aircraft that do not yet exist and also on the development of ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to make up for remaining emissions in 2050.

The UKCCC said that given the uncertainty about whether the new technology will be commercially available in time, the government should be looking at how to manage demand and not allow it to grow 70% from 2018 levels by 2050.

A legal challenge has now been launched by climate campaigners on the basis the strategy breaches the Climate Change Act of 2008.

In his 2021 Budget, then chancellor Rishi Sunak halved the taxes on domestic flights, which is expected to lead to an extra 400,000 passenger journeys a year.

He also increased taxes on flights of more than 5,500 miles (8,851km).

The UKCCC says emissions from agriculture need to be cut by 30% between 2019 and 2035.

This would require:

The government has yet to publish the part of its food strategy about the environmental impact of people’s diets, or a clear, wider approach for agriculture and land use across the UK.

The UKCCC says current plans “largely rely on the willingness of farmers and landowners to undertake measures”. It says there are signs consumers would be willing to change what they eat.

A study published by the National Food Strategy independent review shows daily meat consumption in the UK has fallen by 17% in the last decade.

A government research paper recommending people shift towards a more plant-based diet was deleted shortly after its publication.

Trees play an important role in removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

At the global climate summit COP26 in November 2021, the government agreed to end deforestation in the UK by 2030. It has an ambitious target to plant 30,000 hectares of trees a year by 2025 (a hectare is a bit bigger than a football pitch).

However, annual tree planting has not risen above 15,000 hectares UK-wide since 2001, and current planting rates are lower than they need to be to meet the government’s targets.

Tree-planting is a devolved issue, and Scotland has nearly twice as much coverage as England.

Hydrogen is a low-carbon fuel that could be used for transport, heating, power generation or energy storage. The government wants to have a capacity of 5GW of hydrogen production by 2030.

But the industry is in its infancy, which makes this ambition hard to assess, although there is now a pilot project underway by British Gas to use hydrogen in an emergency gas-fired power station for the first time

The government admits the industry will need “rapid and significant scale-up” in the coming years.

It is also promising a decision on the role of hydrogen in heating by 2026.

But there seems to be some reservations about hydrogen in the UK from major energy providers. Shell has closed all its hydrogen fuelling stations in the UK

The ability to capture carbon before it is released – or take it out of the atmosphere and store it – is essential if the UK is to reach net zero.

The government is aiming to capture and store between 20 and 30 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030.

But this technology is still emerging and is very expensive.

There are some projects planned, including one in north-east Scotland that can extract as much CO2 from the air as 40 million trees.

Two areas have been chosen to have priority access to government funding for carbon capture projects: the Hynet Cluster covering the North West of England and north Wales, and the East Coast Cluster in the Humber and Teesside.

North-east Scotland is on the reserve list and is expected to be part of the second phase of the programme.

Climate Minister Graham Stuart pledged in October to accelerate the roll out of the second phase.

The government says it will cut emissions from manufacturing by about two-thirds from 2018 to 2035.

It hopes carbon capture and the switch to hydrogen will both play a big role but considerable progress is needed in these technologies.

The government also plans to cap the amount of emissions allowed by individual sectors each year, which will reduce over time.

But it is unclear how the scheme will prevent companies shifting production and emissions to other countries.