Analysis, not propaganda:
If Boris’s green agenda is to fly, it must deliver UK jobs and growth
A UK green revolution is ambitious, but suddenly the geopolitical backdrop makes the venture less risk, more reward
First to approve a vaccine to counter the pandemic, and now ahead of the pack too in the scale of its ambitions to tackle climate change.
Is the apparent largesse of Britain’s so-called “Nationally Determined Contribution” - the emissions reduction commitment announced last week for the COP26 UN Climate Change summit in Glasgow next year - just more vacuous, nationalistic boosterism, primarily designed to stir the patriotic juices by seemingly making Britain more environmentally saintly than anyone else, or is this a genuine show of world leadership in tackling the other supposed great global crisis of the age?
A bit of both seems to be the answer.
An unkind joke about Theresa May’s premiership is that her legacy is precisely zero - the legally binding target to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, that is.
Yet it is a goal that Boris Johnson seems equally keen to embrace. The manifesto promise to increase offshore wind to 40 gigawatts by 2030, the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel powered cars and vans from 2030, and now the pledge to lead the way globally by slashing emissions by 68pc by the end of the decade - thick and fast the environmental commitments keep coming.
On this front at least, there would be no need for the level playing field provisions demanded by the EU in free trade agreement negotiations; the UK is already some distance ahead of Europe.
To some it looks insane. At a time when the UK economy needs to become more economically competitive to meet the challenges of Brexit, the Prime Minister seems intent only on ramping up the scale of the UK’s climate change obligations.
It’s all very well to adopt a world leadership role in saving the planet, yet if it destroys the economy in the meantime, he’s unlikely to get much thanks for it at the ballot box.
But here’s the point; it’s not going to destroy the economy. Much more likely is that it is end up part of the economy’s salvation.
A little context. The more ambitious “Nationally Determined Contribution” is in fact only what is needed to keep the UK on track to meet the wider net zero by 2050 target.
The pre-existing NDC had been set at a time when the overall 2050 target was less ambitious - an 80pc reduction in emissions by 2050, not today’s 100pc. So in order to meet the new target, the NDC has to be more ambitious too.
All Boris Johnson is doing is rubber stamping what was in any case going to be the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation on how to update the NDC. As a serious advocate of the need for radical action on climate change, he would have been in some trouble had he rejected it.
All the same, the new commitment, which is to ramp up emissions reduction from 57pc of 1990 levels to 68pc within a decade, is a huge ask. As yet, there is still little in the way of clarity on how to get there. Nonetheless, it is good to see the UK take the lead on a matter of such global significance.
I have to admit to feeling a little ashamed of the national triumphalism on display last week at being the first to approve a Covid vaccine, a “Britain is best claim” made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the vaccine in question was developed by Turkish immigrants in Germany and is manufactured in Belgium.
Full marks to June Raine, head of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the body that authorised the vaccine, for moving so swiftly. In doing so she helps sustain Britain’s reputation as a home for trustworthy pharmaceuticals regulation and expertise now that the European Medicines Agency has been lost to Amsterdam.
But as with climate change, this should never be seen in terms of a global race. Commendably, the Prime Minister stayed out of the childish gloating among some of his ministers.
“These are global efforts, you’ve got scientists around the world coming together to make this possible. It’s a truly international thing and very, very moving to see,” he said. Quite so.
I doubt whether fast tracking the vaccine is going to give the UK much of a heads start in terms of economic recovery. Any “heads start” looks in any case as if it will be foiled by teething problems in supply.
The US and Europe are at most only weeks behind. For the UK economy to prosper, the global, and yes the EU, economies need to prosper too.
In pushing the boundaries on climate change commitments, the UK perfectly captures the global dimensions of today’s economic challenges.
It was always possible to argue that there was little point in the UK making the effort as long as China and the US, the world’s two biggest emitters, refused to take the issue seriously; whatever Britain did would be like spitting against the wind.
But now China has committed to net zero by 2060, and Biden’s America to 2050. South Korea and Japan similarly so. Indeed, Biden has gone a step further than the UK in also committing to making the power network carbon neutral by 2035.
There is generally reckoned that to be carbon neutral by 2050, the power system has to get there at least 10 years beforehand.
We can therefore expect the UK to follow Biden’s lead shortly. In the spirit of international co-operation on these issues, the UK will also shortly be announcing plans to mirror the European Emissions Trading Scheme with its own independent, but linked, trading scheme for post-Brexit Britain. For the time being, this will be sold as an alternative to more overt carbon taxes.
As for the US, don’t assume that its renewed commitment to climate change goals is greenwashing flam. Biden’s nominated Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, supports the idea of both revenue neutral carbon taxes and carbon border adjustment taxes on imports from countries that refuse to make the switch. She’ll be pursuing these goals with vigour.
Ambitious targets are one thing; for the UK economy, the important thing is to tap into their economic potential. The explosive growth of offshore wind is already an outstanding British success story, neatly substituting for the expertise and jobs in offshore engineering that used to be occupied by now semi obsolete North Sea oil. Yet many of the components are still foreign made. A strategy for promoting local content is urgently required.
“The more specific you are about your targets”, says Adair Turner, co-chair of the international Energy Transitions Commission, “the more certain industry can be about the future, and the higher its investment in local innovation, manufacturing and supply”.
Efforts to stem climate change have developed seemingly unstoppable global momentum. Whatever the merits of their case, climate change sceptics have lost the argument.
They have become no more than faintly eccentric, lone voices crying in the wilderness, as irrelevant to the future as Extinction Rebellion, with its focus on impoverishing life-style changes, is to pragmatic pursuit of a carbon free world. That goal will only command majority support if it also offers a plausible path to economic prosperity.
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