COP expert urges UK to aim for net zero by 2042

The UK should think about how it can reach net-zero emissions eight years ahead of its existing 2050 target in order to secure competitive advantage, the government’s climate change champion has urged.

Nigel Topping, high level champion for climate action for the COP26 conference, told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on net zero yesterday (9 March) that the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said the earliest date the target could be achieved is 2042.

The CCC, which has recommended a 2050 net zero target for the UK, said in its sixth carbon budget report last year that the 2042 scenario is unlikely to be delivered because it relies on “stretching” assumptions about technological innovations and behavioural change, including a further halving of renewable electricity costs.

However, Topping told the APPG that the UK should set itself the challenge of identifying how a 2042 target can be achieved in order to gain competitive economic advantage in a net-zero world.

He said: “If we drive technology much faster, we can get to net zero by 2042. As an industrialist and somebody who believes in the power of engineering, we should be thinking about getting to 2042, and being very clear about what has to happen.

“We need to look at this as much more of a competitive opportunity than a burden.

“People who commit boldest are going to reap disproportionate rewards, people who are slowest are going to lose market share and take a bigger economic hit.

“Having the courage to legislate to be the first to make this transition can only drive investment in the jobs and innovation supply chain.

“These things are going to happen anyway. If you do it five years after everybody else, you get no benefit.”

As an example of the kind of changes required, he pointed to the UK government’s decision to mandate the end of internal combustion engine cars and vans by 2030.

At the same meeting, former shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint described last week’s Budget as a “missed opportunity” by the chancellor to introduce measures that would both tackle climate change and help the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

Flint, who is co-chairing a research programme into the practical challenges of delivering net zero for the thinktank Onward, said “At every public opportunity, we need people in power to make connections between things.

“If you are talking about Covid recovery, some of that is green recovery.”

She was backed by Abena Oppong-Asare, shadow exchequer secretary.

“Climate change and the path to net zero was absent from the Budget. It is extremely important because the transition to net zero and from Covid must go hand in hand. There was a clear opportunity to have that set out so we hope the government comes out with something better in the months to come.”

And while welcoming the latest moves in the Budget to set up a national infrastructure bank, Oppong-Asare expressed reservations about the scale of the £12 billion initial capital commitment by the government.

She said: “The capacity of the new bank is far too low: it needs to be about £20 billion at a bare minimum for the first five years.”