Chris Stark discussed the government’s domestic plans to achieve ‘clean power’ (95% low-carbon generation and 5% unabated gas) by 2030. He was interviewed by Akshat Rathi, Senior Reporter for Climate, Bloomberg News, at the Carbon Trust’s Energy Transition Acceleration Forum event.

Asked if, six months in, he was confident of achieving the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, Stark said: ‘What we have committed to do is really right on the edge of what we think is possible... we call it a mission for a reason. It is an actual mission and just to make the point, governments can have a few missions, they can’t have hundreds, and I think it is really important that we selected this one as something that has the support of the whole government right up to the Prime Minister. It also has the support of other parts of government in the UK as well, including notably our devolved governments.’

Rathi asked about the £200bn project, which he called ‘expensive’, and questioned what the government’s obligations were. Stark responded: ‘Expensive is a word that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting in that question, and I don’t regard it as expensive. Let me briefly explain what are we trying to do here. Yes, I’m trying to clean up the power system and it’s tremendously important that we do that. But I think even more importantly than that, we are preparing for a period after 2030 when we’re going to need to seriously grow the power system, because we expect the end use of transport uses and the industrial uses and domestic heating and cooling to become electric.’

‘The mission of 2030 is an enormous challenge. We’ve got another one after that, hopefully at a more measured pace, to grow the power system probably by 50%, possibly even more than that; it might even double by 2050. We are basically getting ahead of that by encouraging that investment. Now that £200bn you refer to is what happens if you roll up the investments in storage, generation and in networks that we think we need for 2030 to prepare us. That is not a cost directly to the consumer, at least not initially. So, we will recover those costs from the consumer or from the taxpayer. These are choices over a very long period.’

Asked about the importance of electricity prices in the energy transition, Stark admitted that prices are currently high. He said: ‘Even though we have a very extensive renewables power system, gas sets the price very often in the wholesale market. And that price of gas in the last few years has been at historic highs, and it continues to be the reason why electricity prices are high in this country.’ 

‘If you want to displace gas, you’ve got two things to do. One is to build out more of those long-term renewable contracts and clean power contracts... and reduce the points over the course of the years when gas sets the price. And the other thing that we can do is bring on a set of technologies that provide a similar service to a gas-fired power station when you need it, typically low-carbon flexibility in the power system or long-duration energy storage technologies.’

‘You're absolutely right… our success depends not just on building stuff but also on the consumer seeing the benefit. I would really like to see us move to where we were seeing the electricity price in particular come down, because the rest of the story on decarbonisation rests on a cheaper electricity price.’

Asked how the government would manage opposition to new energy infrastructure, such as new high-voltage transmission lines, Stark replied: ‘We have to do a genuine consultation, not riding roughshod over these communities. But there are going to be difficult decisions ahead about where to site infrastructure.’

Finally, asked about whether the government’s support of a third runway at Heathrow airport doesn’t go against its climate commitments, Stark said: ‘There is room to manage Heathrow under a carbon budget. Ed Miliband has said just that. So, we are maintaining commitment to our legal goals here. I don’t doubt it becomes more challenging as you bring more emissions into one sector; you’ve got to work harder somewhere else. But that’s the point of a carbon budget.’

Foreign Office agenda: at all points of the compass 
That evening, Rachel Kyte HonFEI gave the second annual Pete Betts Memorial Lecture at the London School of Economics, organised by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. An abridged version of her speech is below.

‘At the beginning of 2025, when governments should produce the next iteration of NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions], helping close the gap of ambition and committing to close the gap in implementation, we see storm clouds to our west; to our east, innovation and possibility. To the north, we have a potential great game playing out over the control of the poles, the planet’s thermostats, home to indigenous peoples and critical natural abundance. And to our south, we can see scepticism and doubt that the north’s word is our bond, following betrayals during COVID and the benign neglect of investment and trade necessary for the energy revolution and the fairness that we need in international financial institutions.’

‘We must work hard to protect the Paris Agreement. How? By implementing the Paris Agreement and the narrative around it. I was reminded by Indy Johar [that] our energy security here in the United Kingdom depends upon the security of supply chains, which are important for the prosperity of so many other countries around the world.’

‘Fragmentation is our enemy: fragmentation of funds, fragmentation of efforts, fragmentation of organisations.’ – Rachel Kyte, UK Special Representative for Climate

‘The energy security of people in the heart of the African continent depends on their ability to secure the renewable energy components needed for their build out, both to ship them to African soil and then to get them logistically from the coast to the interior, all at a reasonable price. We are all entangled. And the beauty of the Paris Agreement is in its bottom-up process of ambition and vision planning.’

‘So, in an era of implementation, we need to do three things better. First, we must shift the narrative. We can see from the weaponisation of net zero around the world that we have much to do to win back a narrative, especially for young people, a narrative of growth, jobs and wellness that comes from a shift to clean energy and more resilience, a narrative that embraces nature. What people want is clean air, clean communities, clean energy, affordable bills, clean energy flood defences and to protect our family members from extreme heat.’

‘… The international community is beginning to be focused on country platforms... It knows what it wants. Partners don’t undermine each other, and come to the table in an organised way. We bring with us a capital stack appropriate for the task in hand.’

‘On the back of forward momentum of reform in the country, we sequence our interventions to support the country’s plans, from fiscal policy, regulation of capital markets to utility and transmission reform to policies for distribution. And, at the heart, [have] guard rails on the protection of nature and an agenda which means that we will not leave women’s needs to the end.’

‘Nothing there is new. It can all be found in the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or in Financing for Development, or the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. But what hasn’t kept up is our imagination of what we need to do to bring forward this world. What we haven’t kept up with is the way in which governments are organised, the way that development finance is organised and the way we work with the private sector.’

‘Fragmentation is our enemy: fragmentation of funds, fragmentation of efforts, fragmentation of organisations.’

‘… We also have to get better at recognising and rewarding – in real time – those who are making a first move, who take the initiative, who drive forward for change, whether at the national or the local level. The international climate circuit celebrates leadership, but then we move on, and the international system struggles to make big bets to come in behind those who have visionary agendas.’

‘We find it hard to organise our international support, differentiating between those who are really deserving and those who we have to stay engaged with. We celebrate the Bridgetown Initiative, but still the Caribbean sends more money north in terms of debt service payments than we invest in the Caribbean's resilience.’

‘We Herald Colombia’s effort to go beyond oil and gas, and then do little to rally around as Colombia was downgraded by the credit rating agencies. We deify and then we gather in the village square to “tut! tut!” We can link the way we organise and make clear that there is international support for those countries, those leaders that are prepared to tackle the deeply entrenched and complex unravelling of fiscal and economic policy built around a fossil fuel past. We must be ready to respond at scale, to invest in the standing tropical forests, to begin with that will be a focus of Brazil’s [COP30] presidency.’

‘We must be ready, for example, to ensure that our domestic regulations don’t get in the way of the UK’s domiciled investors seizing these new opportunities. The global clean power alliance is one way for us to marshal like-minded countries and leaders in the resources at their disposal behind those willing to put their necks out.’

The complete lecture is available to view here.  

• Further reading: ‘Why Great Britain is going towards a ‘whole system’ network transmission approach to energy operations’. To deliver a ‘net zero carbon’ economy, Great Britain has to remake its energy system, both physically with expanded networks and economically with new markets. A new National Energy System Operator (NESO) will have responsibility for delivering the change across both electricity and gas.
• The UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) closed on Saturday 23 November 2024 having brokered several new climate finance agreements, including a new finance goal, to help countries to protect their people and economies against climate disasters. Reaction to the agreements were mixed.