Paris summit: Feeling the heat

The Paris terror attacks have cast an eerie mood on the UN Climate Change Summit, being held in the same venue - the Stade de France - as one of those hit by armed Islamic militants just three weeks ago. Some of the fringe events around the conference and parts of the first ever Buildings Day - which took place last week - have had to be curtailed in the service of the heightened security clearly required for such a high level meeting of heads of state, so soon after the attacks.

Nevertheless, hopes remain robust that the summit, which comes to a climax today, will still be able to choreograph the kind of global climate change treaty that has remained so elusive since the historic Kyoto Protocol was adopted nearly 20 years ago - albeit it is likely to be without the binding legal safeguards.

UK delegates will have additional reasons to view the summit with mixed emotions. This is because in recent years UK climate change negotiators have been used to being able to stand tall in international climate talks, confident that UK policies such as the 2008 Climate Change Act - which passed into law the requirement to meet carbon reduction targets - and the 2016 Zero Carbon target for new build housing, made the country a genuine leader on the world stage. But a series of policy U-turns since the election of a majority Conservative government (see U-turns box) in May - according to no less a figure than former US vice president Al Gore, who delivered an unprecedented tongue-lashing to the UK in September - have seriously dented this reputation.

While the new climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, who is a firm believer in climate change science, says the changes won’t jeopardise the UK’s ability to meet its targets, there is nevertheless huge concern over the direction of travel. As John Cridland, director general of the CBI, said at the same conference at which Gore was speaking, the moves “send a worrying signal about the UK as a place for low-carbon investment.” So, as the national leaders work to pull together a wider agreement at the climax of talks today, what is the evidence that recent government moves will undermine this bid, and what do the policies really mean for our ability to meet our commitments?

Progress

Trying to track the UK’s progress on its own carbon emission reduction ambitions is not an activity for the faint-hearted, such is the complexity involved. Overall, the number is clear and relatively simple - the UK needs to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 against the level emitted in 1990. To get us there, five “carbon budgets” have been produced, setting out annual emissions levels for the period up to 2031 and how to achieve it - with the most recent detailed just last month. The good news, according to the body set up to set the budgets and monitor progress against them, is that so far we’re on course to meet the 29% reduction needed by 2017, and the 35% reduction needed for the period from 2018 to 2022. After that, however, the body - the Committee for Climate Change (CCC) - says it all starts to get a lot more challenging, with a 50% reduction required for the 2023-27 period. Nevertheless in 2014 alone, says the CCC, greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 8% on the prior year.

These figures, covering overall carbon emissions, can, however, give a misleading impression of progress, as they are impacted by factors such as the weather (warmer winters mean fewer emissions, such as in 2014), and the amount of economic activity (a growing economy means more emissions). Moreover, the starting date against which UK carbon reductions are calculated flatters the UK - with the decision to turn away from coal-fired power stations in the 1990s making up a large proportion of our progress so far. Some say that has allowed the UK to avoid addressing some of the more difficult questions - such as those around that energy efficiency of existing buildings - that need to be tackled to meet later targets. “The reality is we haven’t made anywhere near the progress of other countries,” says former ACE president Andrew Warren. “We’re living through the sort of debates now that the Germans and Dutch went through 15 years ago.”

This issue led the CCC to conclude, even prior to recent policy changes, that despite the appearance of progress, “concerns remain about underlying progress, and about whether progress can be sustained through the 2020s. Significant action is required in the new Parliament in order to […] stay on track to the 2050 target.” Moreover, it adds, in a diplomatic rebuke to the government, that “the key risk to future progress is the current uncertainty over the long-term policy framework.”

The real problems, as the publication of the fifth carbon budget last month made clear, come after 2020, when the need to ramp up neglected areas such as renewable heat generation and building efficiency become much more acute.

While this is the overall framework for UK emissions, more tangible for the construction and infrastructure sector are the sub-targets for the sector published in the last parliament under the Low Carbon Transition Plan. According to the CCC, emissions from buildings make up 34% of UK emissions, with households accounting for two-thirds of that. The transition plan called for a 29% reduction in carbon emissions from homes by 2020 and 13% reduction in non-domestic buildings. Here progress has slowed considerably in recent years (see retrofit box) with the introduction, failure and cancellation of the Green Deal. This is despite the insistence of the CCC - whose remit is to plot the cheapest way to achieve the desired emission reductions - that activity has to ramp up.

Shortfall

Also more concrete for the sector than the 2008 Act’s overall emission targets are EU targets on renewable energy generation, under which the UK has signed up to see 15% of all power - electricity, heating and transport, produced from renewable sources by 2020. Under this overall aim are sub-targets that 30% of electricity should come from renewables, and 10% of transport fuel. Again, the UK has so far claimed to be “making progress toward these targets”.

However, a letter from Amber Rudd to other departments, leaked to the Ecologist last month, revealed that internal government forecasts paint a different picture, showing that DECC is considering a series of measures to address a looming shortfall. Hauled in front of MPs to discuss the disparity, Rudd admitted: “I recognise that we don’t have the right policies, particularly in transport and heat […] in order to make those 2020 targets.”

Rudd, however, claims that while there may be a shortfall against the target, the problem is in the area of transport fuel and heat from renewable sources, not electricity generation. And therefore that it wouldn’t be right simply to boost renewable electricity generation to solve the shortfall. In other words she contends that the U-turns on renewables - which the Renewables Energy Association says have caused a drop in investor confidence in the sector - have not caused the problem and shouldn’t be reversed. Of course all this is hotly disputed by those in the renewable generation industry who have seen their subsidies slashed.

Also, while missing these EU targets, as the leaked letter makes clear, would leave the UK open to being fined by the European Commission, it would not necessarily mean it had missed its broader legal commitments under the 2008 Climate Change Act.

Overall, then, the picture is one where progress on total emissions, made in large part through luck rather than dedicated policy design, is being undercut by reversals in individual policy areas likely to be fundamental to hitting more stringent targets in the 2020s and 2030s. The more immediate effect, though, is likely to have been felt in Paris this week, as UK negotiators tried to do their bit to persuade other countries to set similarly high aspirations. John Alker, policy director at the UK Green Building Council, says: “It definitely makes selling the case for carbon reduction to other countries much harder when you’ve got a policy environment in this country that appears to be heading in the wrong direction.”

Speaking in Paris last week prime minister David Cameron made the moral case for tackling climate change, asking “what we would have to say to our grandchildren if we failed? […] Instead of making excuses tomorrow to our children and grandchildren, we should be taking action against climate change today.” Those campaigning for greater government action in the UK would argue that this rhetoric is not matched by policy. As Gore said of the UK in September: “Words. Words. What about actions? The actions that have been taken here in the last few months are puzzling to me.”