Net zero – the UK’s contribution to stopping global warming

The report recommends a new emissions target for the UK of net-zero greenhouse gases (GHG) by 2050; a net-zero date of 2045 in Scotland, reflecting the region’s greater relative capacity to remove emissions than the UK as a whole; and a 95% reduction in greenhouse gases in Wales by 2050, a region regarded as having less opportunity for carbon dioxide (CO2) storage and relatively high agricultural emissions that are hard to reduce.

A net-zero GHG target for 2050 will deliver on the commitment that the UK made by signing the Paris Agreement. According to the CCC, this ‘is achievable with known technologies, alongside improvements in people’s lives, and within the expected economic cost that Parliament accepted when it legislated the existing 2050 target for an 80% reduction from 1990’. However, it continues: ‘This is only possible if clear, stable and well-designed policies to reduce emissions further are introduced across the economy without delay. Current policy is insufficient for even the existing targets.’

The report states that policies must be designed with businesses and consumers in mind; they must be stable, long-term and investable; the public must be engaged; and other key barriers such as low availability of necessary skills must be addressed. 

The report also emphasises previous CCC recommendations for heating buildings, carbon capture and storage (CCS), electric vehicles, agriculture, waste and low carbon power. New recommendations are made for stronger approaches to industry, land use, HGVs, aviation and shipping, and GHG removals.

The CCC claims that overall costs are manageable, but must be fairly distributed. Rapid cost reductions during mass deployment for key technologies mean that net zero can be met an annual resource cost of up to 1-2% of GDP to 2050, the same cost as the previous expection for an 80% reduction from 1990.

OGUK, the leading representative body for the UK’s oil and gas industry has committed to work with governments on the practical response to the CCC report. In addition to industry work to reduce operational emissions from offshore production, the sector is well placed to support the advancement of low carbon technology, in particular CCS and extending the production and use of hydrogen.

Speaking in response to the report, OGUK Chief Executive Deirdre Michie says: ‘This report provides a balanced and thoughtful blueprint towards a lower carbon future, with our industry at the heart of a managed transition. The recommendations are rooted in practical choices that need to be made and recognise that achieving such reductions are challenging and have a cost.’

The report also confirms the role of home-produced oil and gas in enhancing the UK’s energy sovereignty and the level of production anticipated by the report is consistent with the industry’s own projections, notes OGUK.

Meanwhile, Stuart Haszeldine, SCCS Director and Professor of CCS at the University of Edinburgh, notes: ‘The initial aim of the CCC’s report is to get the UK to a place of delivering negative emissions on its climate balancing journey towards net zero carbon. However, one common misconception is that net zero is an end-point destination and the job will be done. It is not. Net zero is the point in time at which the UK manages to recapture as much CO2 and other greenhouse gases as it emits each year. The UK would still be emitting greenhouse gases from sections of the economy described as “hard to treat” – abundant dispersed emissions or expensive-to-catch emissions. These are estimated at around 130mn to CO2 equivalent/y at the point of net zero.’

‘Negative emissions means recapturing CO2, which has already been emitted, just like growing new trees captures CO2 from the air and turns that into wood. The UK must ramp up efforts to target hard-to-treat emissions and at the same time start to deliver negative emissions as early as the mid-2020s and certainly during the 2030s.’ 

He concludes: ‘To get onto a pathway which fits with the Paris Agreement of keeping global warming to less than 2oC, the UK needs to go beyond net zero and continue delivering negative emissions for decades or hundreds of years into the future.’