Climate change targets

Massive new investment in national energy and industrial infrastructure is essential to meet our ambitious climate change targets. All political parties support our legally binding targets to cut our CO2 emissions by one-third (34%) by 2020, and to double that effort to 60% by 2030. These challenging aims are based on recommendations from the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC). The CCC has also drawn up a strategy showing where the cuts need to be made, and, of course, trade unions are heavily involved in most of these sectors. The strategy focuses on:

• Reducing power sector emissions, with investments in renewable energy (wind, solar, biomass etc), new nuclear power; and developing carbon capture and storage technology to capture emissions from coal and gas fired power stations.

• Reducing energy use at work and in buildings: the two major policy lines involve (1) improving residential energy efficiency with investment in homes insulation, solar power and so on; and (2) industry, through developing new technologies to improve energy efficiency in industry, notably the energy intensive sectors like steel, cement, glassmaking and ceramics.

• Reducing road transport emissions, mainly through a green shift to manufacturing more low carbon cars and changing behaviour – encouraging cycling and public transport, for example.

By 2030, the targets mean that the UK should have reduced its total national greenhouse gas emissions from today’s level of 574 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) a year to around 310 MtCO2 (a 60% reduction since 1990). This implies a 46% reduction over the next 20 years.

The Committee on Climate Change’s advice takes into account the latest climate science, the evolving international framework of UN negotiations, feasible and cost-effective emissions reductions in the UK through the 2020s, and “plausible paths” to the 2050 target to cut emissions by 80%. The advice also discusses implications for Government policies required to ensure emissions reductions in the 2020s can be achieved, notably electricity market reform, carbon pricing, and support for technology development.

Investing in new technologies is vital, ranging from carbon capture technology in power generation and industry, electric cars and vans, to efficient electric heat pumps. Overall, about £200 billion is needed in new energy infrastructure (power stations, power lines, wind farms) over the coming decade. This implies doubling of the annual rate of energy investment over recent years.