Deben: We aren’t delivering on climate change

The chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has branded the delivery of efforts by the government to decarbonise the economy as “crap” and called for the establishment of a “powerful” body to oversee them.

At an event held last week by renewables investor Glennmont, Lord Deben praised the prime minister Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan for a green recovery, launched last November.

He said: “The government and this government in particular are very good on policy: you can’t blame them for that.”

But, he added: “In general, they have got the policy right but the delivery is crap.

“The fact is we aren’t delivering. All governments are bad at delivery because most of the people in government, civil servants and ministers, have never delivered anything. That is why the private sector needs to teach government about delivery.

“I want to see a delivery system either within or outside the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). We need somebody doing the delivery direction, not just splitting up and changing National Grid. You need to have a very clear and powerful body saying what has to happen, these are the priorities and get on with it. Unless we have that this whole thing will be policy strong, policy powerful and policy rich but delivery poor.”

As an example, of the gap between policy and delivery, Lord Deben pointed to the government’s decision to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030.

The infrastructure must be in place to cope with the “very considerable” additional demand that mass uptake of electric vehicles would cause for the electricity system, he said: “If you want everybody to buy electric cars, they have to be totally sure that they can choose it, and they will only be able to choose it if you provide the means.”

The former Tory cabinet minister also said that Ofgem is bound by an “old fashioned” view of competition, which has led to what he described as the “ludicrous situation” whereby each offshore wind farm must have its own grid connection.

He called for the government to give the regulator powers and direction that the net zero 2050 target must be at heart the heart of its decision-making.

Lord Deben’s comments follow the publication by the government’s Industrial Strategy Council of its final report earlier this week in which it said that while the 10-point plan is a “significant step forward”, it is “not yet a practical roadmap for delivering net zero, with several areas at present lacking the required scale to make progress at the required speed”.