Net zero tsar claims Sunak’s speech ‘changes nothing’

Rishi Sunak’s recent announcement on the UK’s green initiatives has been branded “fundamentally dishonest” by the author of the government’s review of net zero.

Ex-energy minister Chris Skidmore MP criticised the prime minister for touting his Downing Street announcement a fortnight ago as a shift in policy, while speaking at a fringe session at the Conservative party organised by the IPPR thinktank.

He said that “nothing has changed” because policy had already allowed for exceptions to the phase out of internal combustion engine small vehicles and fossil fuel boilers by the target dates of 2030 and 2035 respectively.

The government has announced that around 80% of cars and vans must be electric by 2030, while around a fifth of homes will be exempted from the ban on fitting new gas boilers.

Skidmore told the meeting that it was “fundamentally dishonest […] to tell the public there has been a policy shift”.

“Nothing has changed in terms of the policy and we should be honest that what has changed is the tone,” he added.

Noting that delaying the implementation of measures like boiler and energy efficiency upgrades is likely to add to fuel bills in the long run, politicians should not “mislead” voters, he said: “We shouldn’t go around telling people that this is costly and by delaying that we’re going to make it cheaper for them because actually the opposite is the case.

“The more that we delay, the more expensive it will be for householders: that’s the reality.”

Sunak said in his announcement that he wanted to see more honesty and transparency around the transition to net zero than had hitherto been the case in the UK.

However Sunak’s change of tone threatens to hit the UK’s ability to attract investment in low carbon technologies, Skidmore warned.

“There are investors internationally, who are less certain about putting their money in the UK,” the Tory MP said, adding that they were now more likely to opt for the US or France, where president Emmanuel Macron has recently announced a one million per annum heat pump target.

“You have a certain outcome (there) that they’re going to work towards. That’s the policy risk that we’re going to face by going slow.”

Skidmore also criticised the PM’s speech for breaking down the cross-party consensus on climate change, which has existed since the Labour Party passed the Climate Change Act in 2008 with Conservative backing.

“We’re in the run up to a general election in which we’re trying to play party politics at a time when we should have cross party consensus on delivering on climate.”

“We are at risk of losing this consensus,” Skidmore added, noting that the years leading up to the 2050 net zero target date are likely to see governments of different political colours.

“We have a responsibility to citizens to make sure we deliver this transition and not try to create rhetoric on the back of it.”

At the same event, Catherine Raw, managing director of SSE Thermal, warned that the UK is losing ground in areas like carbon capture and storage (CCS).

She said: “In terms of ambition into implementation, there is a gap. We have targets, we have the beginnings of policies, but we don’t have implementation.”

An example is the industrial CCS cluster process, which SSE has been involved with since 2019 but has been hit by constant six-month slippages, she said: “We have to go back to the board and say we need to spend another £5 million, another £10 million or another £20 million in order to be part of a process.

“The challenge is at what point can you continue to justify that level when you have no clarity on implementation.”

Raw said that “not a single CCS project” has reached the stage of implementation in terms of final investment decision (FID), which now looks set for September next year.

In the meantime, she said similar projects had gone from concept to FID stages in the US, which made it more difficult to maintain the supply chain’s interest in the UK.

“That is only one power CCS project. Our estimates are you need at least nine GW of power CCS,” Raw said, adding that additional flexibility coming through from hydrogen from batteries.

“All of these technologies are going to be required and what we’re not able to do is implement them fast enough to deliver the 2035 decarbonisation target.”

To read Utility Week’s analysis of Sunak’s speech on net zero, click here.