Armitt: Government is not addressing key net-zero targets

The chair of the government’s National Infrastructure Commission has said he is fed up with “warm words” from ministers.

Sir John Armitt told the Energy UK conference that the government had accepted 42 of the 45 recommendations issued by the arms-length advisory body since its establishment four years ago, but only delivered ten to date.

He said: “I am not interested in warm words and that’s what you get all the time. What we want is a plan with some deliverables – saying ‘here is the money’.

“We need a fundamental change and we need more than supportive words.”

While welcoming the commitment in this week’s Queen’s Speech to bring forward the National Infrastructure Strategy this autumn, he pointed out that the NIC had published the advice that will underpin more than a year ago.

In particular, Sir John said that the options for decarbonising domestic heating needed to be “very clear” within the next five years.

But “nothing” from the government gives encouragement that this will happen, he said, expressing concern that “far too little effort is going into addressing the issue”.

“We can’t just paddle along like we do in this country in the hope that something will come out in the wash.

“We’ve got to address this in a much more focused way to get to a point where we can get to a decision on whether CCUS (carbon capture use and storage) as a way of producing hydrogen is an option and how it should be effectively used.”

The former Olympics Games delivery boss said that within half a decade a hydrogen heating pilot, covering at least 30,000 homes, must be up and running.

Pressed on calls from bodies like Extinction Rebellion to bring forward the government’s 2050 target for net zero, he expressed concerns about setting “unrealistic” goals that would not secure buy in from householders and business.

“I don’t disagree with the objectives of Extinction Rebellion but I disagree with the timescales. We have to be realistic: 2050 is already extremely tight,” he said, adding that attracting investment into UK low carbon infrastructure also must be taken into account.

Meanwhile, Polly Billington, former advisor to Ed Miliband on environmental issues when he was leader of the opposition, expressed doubt over whether there are enough scaffolders in the country to carry out the retrofit work required to make all UK homes zero carbon by 2025.

She also expressed doubts over the extent of political will to achieve even the 2050 targets, pointing to the absence of climate change related legislation in this week’s Queen’s Speech.

Jo Coleman OBE, UK energy transition manager at Shell, said the debate over bringing forward the 2050 date was “almost irrelevant” because the UK is currently not on track to meet its statutory carbon reduction budgets from the late 2020s onwards.

She said: “We need to get back on track. When we are on track, we can look at whether we can accelerate.”

Baroness Bryony Worthington, executive director of Environmental Defense Fund Europe, said that the UK government should encourage the take up of low-carbon vehicles by introducing tighter emission standards for car manufacturers.

“This is not rocket science. We need to tell them to manufacture clean cars in known volumes so we can plan infrastructure upgrades,” she said, rejecting Sir John’s argument that infrastructure must be installed first in order to give would be buyers confidence that their vehicles can be charged when they need it.

The baroness said that decarbonisation of transport should be tackled before heat because the latter poses more technical issues to be resolved.