The UK’s Committee on Climate Change has opened up the debate on how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and effectively eliminated over the next 30 years. The question is whether the approach the CCC proposes is the most efficient means of achieving the objective of averting the serious risk of global climate change.
The independent adviser to the government lists a raft of steps that could enable Britain to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050 through regulation or changes in the way we live our lives. These include developing the use of hydrogen, using carbon capture and storage, riding bicycles, driving electric vehicles and eating less beef and lamb.
Strangely, the report neglects to argue for the simplest and possibly most effective means of changing the energy mix: a carbon tax.
Introduced at a level designed to alter behaviour (perhaps £50 a tonne), a carbon tax would encourage consumers of all kinds — from manufacturers to domestic customers — to switch to lower-carbon energy supplies and encourage the development of technology to make that possible.
Charged at this level a tax would be far more effective than the current EU-based measures and would allow energy users to identify low-cost alternatives, or where necessary develop them. In the process, it would demonstrate whether the most expensive options, such as carbon capture and the reconstruction of the way we heat buildings, are really necessary.
Ideally, a carbon tax should be applied internationally. That seems highly unlikely to happen on a useful timescale, but Britain could set an example of how a levy system could work and its value.
A second omission is serious discussion of the potential for science and engineering to answer the climate change challenge. Technology has provided much of the progress made in the past 20 years — for instance in reducing the cost of renewables and improving the efficiency of energy consumption in vehicles. Despite that, the CCC has stuck rigidly to technologies that are already available and made no allowance in the 2050 projection for further technical advances.
The committee estimates that its measures will cost 1 per cent of UK gross domestic product in 2050. But it is not clear that the proposals represent the best value for money. Why not invest a part of the total — say a third or even 50 per cent — on research and development of the technologies most likely to reduce the cost of reaching the objective? The public sector could take the lead and give business incentives to follow.
The members of the climate committee must be aware of the work already being done on batteries, for instance, and other energy storage technologies and on the potential of advanced materials, such as graphene.
Then there is grid technology, which improves access to low-cost energy supplies and is already helping China to improve efficiency, and the potential for a new generation of simpler and cheaper nuclear facilities. These and similar advances hold the real key to resolving climate change.
A commitment to such R&D would address the greatest weakness of the report — the “Little Britain” tone that pervades public policy thinking in London in the age of Brexit. Would eliminating all emissions in the UK really make any material difference on the global scale?
The report repeatedly stresses that Britain can set an example to the rest of the world. That is a laudable objective but it would mean more if it were focused on the science and engineering advances that could help emerging economies deal with the problems they face as, on UN projections, the global population rises to 8.6bn by 2030 and more than 11bn by 2100.
For those countries, the challenge is to combine basic economic development with the transition to lower carbon economies. That requires technology that the UK with its strong research base could help provide.
As the new British international development secretary Rory Stewart said this month: “We need to think about what we can personally change in Britain but we must recognise that the air we breathe could be polluted by China or the United States even if we were to shut down everything in this country.”
No doubt we should all start riding bicycles and cut out the lamb chops, but if we want to go beyond gestures and really make a contribution to removing the risk of climate change we should use our skills to make a difference at the global level.
The writer is an energy commentator for the FT and chair of The Policy Institute at King’s College London
