Chris Stark, the chief executive of the UK government’s independent statutory adviser (known as the Committee on Climate Change), says the cost of reaching net-zero carbon emissions in the UK is probably much lower than previously thought, and much more straightforward. He criticized the government’s absence of a plan, saying it can be devised in a way that quickly improves the lives of millions of people.
When the UK passed the Climate Change Act in 2008, the government estimated that it would cost about 2% GDP to meet an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. However, costs have fallen much faster than expected in recent years (and should fall further yet), so past estimates that transitioning to a low-carbon economy would cut trillions from GDP were wrong.
Stark said:
Overall, the cost is surprisingly low – it’s cheaper than even we thought last year when we made our assessments. Net-zero is relatively low-cost across the economy. But that rests on the action now. You can’t sit on your hands and imagine it’s just going to get cheaper by magic.
Renewable energy prices are at record lows, plummeting over the last decade. Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of electricity in many countries. The trend has sparked a global boom in clean power. According to the IEA, 2020 has seen record growth in renewable energy installation despite the coronavirus pandemic. Solar has reached a point that it’s the cheapest electricity in history.
Stark told the Guardian:
I don’t particularly see problems [in decarbonizing the economy] – what I see is an absence of a plan. We have to get to the point by about the start of the next decade where all new investments, every new car, every new van, every new boiler, every new bit of plant and machinery for a business – that needs to be zero carbon by then, or at least have a plan in place to become zero carbon. The biggest challenge that I see at the moment is that we haven’t got a plan that looks anything like that for the UK at the moment.
There is a lovely opportunity for the Treasury to put some good policy around this so that we get that kind of fair and cheap transition that we all want to see. The flip side of that is if we don’t put those steps in place, this is going to be quite a hard transition. Lumping costs on to the electricity bill is a regressive step, so we need to think about broader mechanisms to drive the investment that we need to get to net-zero, and we need to think about who we recover those costs from.
To help the government develop a coherent strategy, the Committee on Climate Change will outline the costs and benefits of reaching net-zero. It will present its findings, along with advice, at the UK’s next carbon budget in December. The advising should also help the UK better prepare for the next UN climate summit (COP26), which it will host in Glasgow in November 2021.
Ministers are under pressure to present a net-zero plan as the time to COP26 inches closer. Many say the event is the world’s last chance to get on track to meet the 2015 Paris agreement goals. Every country must develop nationally determined contributions for making stringent reductions in emissions over the next decade.
The Paris agreement requires each country’s plan to have one core purpose: to hold global temperature rise to no more than 1.5-2°C. The commitments presented in 2015 would take the world to 3°C of heating, so they all have to be revised. The new plans are to be delivered at COP26 next year.
