CCC calls for government-wide net-zero test to end ‘mixed signals’

All government policy should be subject to a net-zero test to help minimise the kind of confused messages created by the ongoing row over plans for a new coal mine, a senior Climate Change Committee director (CCC) has urged.

Dr David Joffe, head of carbon budgets at the CCC, told the Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee that such a test would demonstrate to the wider public that the government is fully signed up to the wider target to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.

Giving evidence to the committee’s follow up inquiry to last year’s Climate Assembly UK report, he said it could prevent the “mixed signals” that resulted from the government’s decision earlier this year to allow plans for a new deep coal mine in Cumbria before subsequently executing a volte-face by calling a public inquiry.

Joffe said: “It would be really helpful for the government to have a mechanism to align all their policy to the net-zero target they have signed up to, so something like a net-zero test.

“To align all policy to net zero would be really important as part of that public engagement strategy, to really show to people that the government are committed to this.”

He also told the committee that there was no “time to waste” for the Treasury to publish its long-awaited review into how the costs of the transition the transition can be funded.

The net zero review was launched in 2019, but has yet to unveil its final conclusions, although an interim study was published last December.

Joffe said the final report should set out “at least principles if not a practical detailed framework for how decarbonisation of homes is going to be funded”.

Postponing detailed plan for another two or three years could create a “real problem”, he said: “We do not have that time to waste. We need to be making decisions on how we are going to be heating people’s homes in the middle of this decade. There is a whole engagement process to go through once we have put in place a framework. We really cannot afford to waste a year, two years or three years on this. It is absolutely crucial.

“It is really important to recognise that we cannot afford to waste any time on that. We need to get a good framework, but as soon as possible.”

Joffe said that the need for urgent action is particularly pressing on home decarbonisation because of the expense and disruption that it will cause households.

He also said that the Green Homes Grant was handicapped from its inception because the supply chain for delivering energy efficiency and low-carbon heat measures has “withered” over the past decade.

“Having a hugely ambitious programme to spend £3 billion in less than a year was never going to work with the supply chains that we had because we did not have a long-term programme.”

Responding to the lack of support amongst climate assembly members for carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) Joffe said technology would be required in a “back-up role” to ensure sufficient generation capacity on non-windy days.

He was backed up on CCUS by energy minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan later in the evidence session.

She said: “We need that mix of technologies blended together to help decarbonise the power sector at low cost and balance renewable variability against demand to maintain security of supply, which for me, as the energy minister, is the most important thing.

“The one thing we cannot allow on this journey is to find that we do not have security of supply, so CCUS is a really important part of that journey.”

Trevelyan also said that Whitehall has “never been more co-ordinated” than it is on the challenge of net zero, pointing to the creation by the prime minister of a cross-government climate action committee which meets regularly to drive forward policy changes and ensure they are as co-ordinated as possible.