What is the UK doing about it?
The UK is signatory to the Paris Agreement, which is an international climate treaty set in 2015 to limit global warming to 'well below 2C'. The UK also has a national Climate Change Committee which publishes an annual report to Parliament on the government's progress in reducing emissions [1].
Under the Paris Agreement, countries have to state how much they plan to reduce their emissions by, and also publish 5 year plans for how they will do that. The UK has publicly pledged to reduce its emissions by 68% compared to 1990 levels by 2030 and has also set legislation to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050 [2]. These are some of the most ambitious emission reduction targets in the world. The UK Government also says it has reduced its emissions by 42% since 1990, and that more than half of the electricity currently generated comes from low emissions sources, including renewables.
Billions of pounds have also been committed to developing technologies that may help limit emissions, as well as an additional several billion to help decarbonise many sectors of the economy. A central plank of the government's net zero target is also carbon capture and storage, with 20 billion pounds being committed to research into these technologies.
The UK is also on target to reach its goal of phasing out coal by 2024. In 2010 around 40% of the UK's electricity came from coal, but by 2020 this was down to almost zero.
In the transport sector, the government says that no more fully petrol and diesel vehicles will be sold from 2035, and that by 2028, 52% of car sales should be electric, up from 17% in 2022.
Whilst these achievements are impressive, despite all of this, the Government's own advisory body on climate change, the UK Climate Change Committee, has called the UK's efforts 'worryingly slow'[3], and expressed strong concerns on the achievability of its plans, highlighting the following:
A lack of urgency. While the policy framework has continued to develop, this is not happening at the required pace for future targets. Action is needed in a range of areas to deliver on the Government’s emissions pathway.
Over-reliance on technological solutions. The Government’s current strategy has considerable delivery risks due to its over-reliance on specific technological solutions, such as carbon capture and storage.
Promoting individual behaviour change. A coherent public engagement strategy on climate action to encourage behaviour change is long overdue.
The continued investment in fossil fuel production is not in line with Net Zero. A Net Zero target makes it necessary to end all new licenses for fossil fuel developments.
The need to tackle aviation. There has been continued airport expansion in recent years, counter to our assessment that there should be no net airport expansion across the UK.
In addition, many environmental organisations have questioned the government's claims about having reduced emissions by over 42% since 1990, saying this is a case of 'outsourcing emissions' to other countries rather than an accurate assessment of the emissions that the UK is responsible for.
This is because the claim of a 42% reduction does not include the UK's consumption of imported goods and services, which if included would add an additional 50% to the UK carbon footprint. The UK Office for National Statistics, for example, has said that the growth in emissions from imported goods from overseas since 1990 has cancelled out any emissions reductions made at home up until 2007 [4]. Since that time, however, the ONS considered that both the UK domestic emissions and its overseas consumption based emissions have genuinely declined. One independent analysis has also suggested that since 2007 both the terrestrial emissions and the embodied emissions associated with imports have both declined, leading to a genuine reduction of 38% based on 1990 levels [5], although this is disputed by a WWF analysis which puts the overall figure at a 15% reduction [6].
There are several significant areas of UK greenhouse gas emissions that are not included in the official figures, such as:
A significant amount of our electricity generation now comes from 'bioenergy', which is considered to be emissions free and 'renewable'. For example, Drax, the largest power station in the UK and the UKs single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, is not included in the government's figures as it is considered as zero carbon 'bioenergy'. However, many environmental organisations have pointed out that in fact virgin forests in the southeastern United States are being clear cut and shipped to the UK where they are burned in Drax's incinerators to generate electricity for the UK. This is far from being low carbon or emissions free, and may even be worse than burning coal, yet none of this is included in the UK's figures. Scientists around the world have also warned that large-scale burning of forest wood for energy increases carbon emissions for decades if not centuries and is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
The UK's greenhouse gas figures do not include the UK's contributions to international aviation and shipping, which are ignored, despite the fact that they add further 20% to the UK's existing greenhouse gas emissions from transport [7].
The UK's financial industry continues to massively invest in fossil fuels, and is the cause of huge greenhouse gas emissions across the world, none of which are accounted for in the UKs figures. A recent WWF report [8] estimated that the net emissions from investments made by UK financial institutions alone were almost double the UK's domestic emissions (which do not account for imports).
So whilst the UK has made genuinely impressive achievements in emissions reduction at home, it continues to be responsible for a huge amount of overseas emissions which more than cancel out any reductions made domestically, emissions which are not taken into consideration in the carbon accounting. Its plans for net zero domestic emissions by 2050 are also heavily reliant on breakthroughs in 'miracle technologies' like carbon capture and storage, and the UK continues to invest in new fossil fuel production. According to the UK's own Climate Change Committee, none of these factors are consistent with genuine intentions to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.
[1] https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/2023-progress-report-to-parliament/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-go-further-and-faster-to-tackle-climate-change
[3] https://www.theccc.org.uk/2023/06/28/better-transparency-is-no-substitute-for-real-delivery/
[5] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-38-since-1990/
[8] https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-05/uk_financed_emissions_v11.pdf
