BEIS director of clean growth replaced

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)’s director of clean growth is leaving to take a new role working with Tony Blair.

Utility Week has learnt that Tim Lord, who currently leads BEIS’ work on delivering emissions reduction and the transition to a low-carbon economy, is quitting the government to head a new sustainable development unit at the former prime minister’s Institute for Global Change.

Lord will be replaced in his current role by fellow BEIS official Chris Thompson, who is currently director of labour markets.

Prior to becoming director of clean growth, Lord was involved with delivering the industrial strategy green paper and leading key elements of the Electricity Market Reform programme.

A BEIS spokesperson confirmed that Thompson is replacing Lord as director of the clean growth policy team.

The senior civil servant’s departure has emerged following the publication of a heavyweight report last Friday by the National Audit Office into how the government should handle the delivery of its 2050 net emissions target.

The public spending watchdog describes the new target of net zero as a “colossal challenge”, which is “significantly” greater than government’s previous target to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Achieving net zero means all parts of the economy, including those that are harder to decarbonise and where there is uncertainty over how this can even be achieved, must reduce emissions “substantially”, it says.

It warns that departments, which take the lead on cross-government objectives like net zero, have often struggled with implementing them.

Ensuring other departments play their role has been complicated by cross-government goals not being given sufficient priority by all departments when allocating budgets, it says.

The NAO recommends that the Cabinet Office should ensure the next iteration of Single Departmental Plans, which set out each department’s objectives and how they will achieve them, creates a cross-government plan for achieving net zero.

It should also use its programme to modernise and reform the civil service to increase the emphasis on net zero and developing skills, such as in climate science and systems thinking, that will be necessary to achieve decarbonisation.

The report says the government still needs to work out how to manage the links between different aspects of achieving net zero and how it relates to other government priorities.

Ministers should ensure that the main interdependencies within the achievement of net zero are understood by the relevant departments, it recommends.

And the NAO says that BEIS should prepare contingency plans if it is not possible to publish a full net-zero strategy before the COP26, as it has committed to do, given the ongoing uncertainty around the impact of Covid-19.