The public has spoken… but is anyone listening?

The Climate Assembly’s recent report surprised many by showing that the public back even tougher climate change action than many politicians had assumed. The question now is how seriously their opinions will be taken in driving policy forward – especially the lack of appetite for nuclear and CCS to be part of the net-zero generation mix.

Three years ago, a group of randomly selected voters came together to thrash out solutions to one of the thorniest policy issues that modern government face – how to fix social care.

Selected to reflect a cross-section of wider society and then equipped with information so they could make informed decisions about the issue, the so-called Citizens Assembly produced a weighty report, the conclusions of which have largely gathered dust in the meantime.

Those who took part earlier this year in the Climate Assembly UK, which like the social care exercise was convened by the UK parliament’s select committees, will be hoping that their deliberations will bear more fruit.

Audrey Gallacher, Energy UK’s deputy chief executive, says she was “really pleased” with the Climate Assembly report when it appeared last month.

“There was a lot of support for how thorough it was and the balanced nature of the recommendations,” says Jim Watson, professor of energy policy at the UCL Institute of Sustainable Resources, who was one of the assembly’s key advisers.

The generally warm welcome for the report is perhaps surprising, given the challenging nature of the recommendations it delivered.

An overwhelming majority (86 per cent) of assembly members backed a ban on sales of new gas boilers from as soon as 2030. They also recommended banning the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars by around the same date, while heavily backing offshore and onshore wind and solar technologies for generating electricity.

Alan Whitehead, shadow energy minister, says: “One might have expected there would have been quite a big pushback against some of the more far-reaching conclusions.”

But he is heartened by the assembly’s willingness to contemplate radical solutions.

“They appeared to understand both the urgency and the extent of the net zero challenge and responded accordingly in a well-considered and informed manner, which sets at the very least an irrefutable, well worked out external reference for many of the policy discussions we are going to have in the very near future.

“It’s not a political party doing this, it’s a representative group of the population.”

The relatively radical nature of the recommendations may point to a broader shift in public attitudes towards climate change, says Gallacher: “Perhaps because people are now seeing the effects of climate change, you don’t have degree of scepticism you had a few years ago.”

And the report’s conclusion should embolden politicians to go further and faster than they might have otherwise envisaged as possible, says Whitehead: “The public is ahead of politicians: the caution of some politicians on the grounds that it won’t go down well with people is unfounded in this.”

“Hopefully that can give the government some reassurance to make the bold decisions that will be needed,” says Gallacher.  “The decisions government is making in the spending review should certainly take into account the things citizens are telling us.”

Watson agrees. “The hope among many assembly members is that it gives government confidence to do more.”

“We are all used to dealing with data and analysis about technology and costs but this is equally important data about public preferences and the conditions under which they will support certain technologies. This should give decision-makers more confidence to act perhaps more boldly than they have done already.”

The voice of the common man

The assembly’s conclusion could also make it harder for media outlets such as the Daily Telegraph to claim they are speaking up for hard-up, ordinary voters, when they argue against potentially costly measures to tackle the issue.

“The Climate Assembly was very keen to emphasise points about fairness but never said this meant it couldn’t be done. They were more about suggesting ways around it [unfairness],” says Doug Parr, head of policy at Greenpeace UK.

However, the assembly’s conclusions must also be seen in the context of opinion polling, published earlier this month by the Conservative think-tank Bright Blue, which shows that a majority are sceptical about whether the government’s target of net zero emissions can be achieved by 2050.

While the wide-ranging polling data shows overall support for the goal of decarbonisation, 58 per cent of those surveyed said it was “unlikely” the target will be achieved by 2050.

And ordinary members of the public, distracted by pressing everyday concerns even if they are interested in climate change, can hardly be expected to devote the same attention to the issues as the assembly did. As well as huge amount of information, its members were given the opportunity to grill high quality experts about it over the course of several weekends.

The assembly members were aware of how privileged they had been in terms of the information they received, says Watson: “They are very keen that lessons are learnt for trying to take the rest of the population with us. We can’t put the whole population through a climate assembly but more emphasis needs to be put on varied sorts of communication tailored to particular issues.”

The main lesson from the assembly is that information is key to getting people on side, he says.

“It was a dialogue between ordinary members of the public and those experts. They had more access to really detailed and concise information and the opportunity to interrogate that information than ordinary members of the public, but they were members of the public who had a standing start.

“You could say that interrogation could have gone a number of ways, including concluding it’s something not to be worried about.

“You had people who were not very well informed. However by the end of the process, they had clearly become much better informed and were collectively willing to support propositions they wouldn’t have thought about previously before they came into the assembly.

“They did that on the basis of much better understanding of where we stand on issues and what we need to do about it. The watchword for the future is information, information, information.”

And encouraging this kind of engagement will become more pressing as decarbonisation extends further into everyday matters like heating and transport, Gallacher says.

“Policy decisions are being taken that have not been communicated and that have quite  significant impact on people’s lives: we need to make sure we get information out to people.”

CCS and nuclear get the thumbs down

The relatively lukewarm level of support for CCS (carbon, capture and storage), which was even lower than that for nuclear power, should also have prompted some head scratching among policymakers and the industry.

Nearly half (46 per cent) of assembly members disagreed that nuclear energy should be part of the net zero generation mix, outnumbering the 34 per cent who agreed.

This dim view, echoed in the Bright Blue polling, might be expected given the nuclear industry’s chequered safety history worldwide, which viewers of last year’s Sky prime time hit series Chernobyl were reminded about.

But CCS proved to be an even bigger turn-off among the assembly. Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, admitted at the assembly’s launch that this was the one area where its conclusions were at odds with those of his organisation, which sees CCS as a key tool for achieving the decarbonisation of heavily emitting sectors, like industry.

More than half (56 per cent) of assembly members disagreed that fossil fuels with CCS should be part of the UK’s generation mix for getting to net zero, dwarfing the 22 per cent who believed that they ought to be.

The assembly took an even more jaundiced view towards the Direct Air Capture method of CCS, which will be disappointing news for its chief enthusiast Dominic Cummings.

Whitehead suggests that the complexity of the issues surrounding CCS were difficult to tease out in a forum like the assembly.

Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, is “not hugely surprised that people’s preferences were nature based and renewable over engineered solutions” given that the assembly had little time to digest all the detail. But he acknowledges that the report points to a need for those involved in the technology to better communicate its benefits.

However, Parr argues that the assembly’s conclusions should “absolutely” give ministers pause for thought about its push to roll out CCS clusters across the UK.

He thinks that its members were right to be sceptical about how CO2 can be safely disposed of over the very long time scales that the gas will need to be trapped in the ground.

“If you want to go where there is public consent, go with renewable options.”

The Climate Assembly UK has done its work by showing what the public may swallow on the road to net zero: the acid test will be whether the government is listening.