Is this Tory Government the greenest ever?

British Conservative politicians are spearheading efforts to phase out coal and go net-zero – and that’s just the start of their Green policy-making. What's going on?

This is an updated version of an article published on The Fifth Estate on 10 April. 

Claire Perry, Energy and Clean Growth Minister

Britain’s Energy and Clean Growth Minister, Claire Perry, has called for Parliament to draft new laws that will cut emissions to net-zero.

This follows her trip to New York last week when she attended the Bloomberg Future Energy Summit in New York last week where she set out the case for making coal history. “By phasing out traditional coal power, we are not only taking active steps to tackle climate change, we are also protecting the air we breathe by reducing harmful pollution. The Powering Past Coal Alliance sends a clear signal that the time for unabated coal fired electricity has well and truly passed,” Perry told her New York audience.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance was launched by Perry and her Canadian counterpart Catherine McKenna, the Minister for Climate Change, three days after the COP23 climate change conference last November. Its members number 27 countries plus a host of regions and businesses. Ireland, one of the most recent to join, has pledged to close its one remaining coal plant by 2025 at the latest.

Catherine McKenna, Canadian Minister for Climate Change

“The UK leads the world in tackling climate change – we have reduced emissions by more than 40 per cent since 1990,” Perry said.

She is not wrong. UK carbon emissions dropped 2.6 per cent in 2017 compared to the previous year, a 43 per cent reduction since 1990. Renewables powered more than coal and nuclear combined during the final quarter. Emissions are now at a level not seen since the end of the 19th century when the industrial revolution was in full swing.

Wales is fast switching away from coal to renewables (it once was the world’s biggest coal exporter) and in Scotland wind power supplied 173 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity demand on March 1. Even on the worst day for wind during the first quarter of 2018, January 11, wind powered the equivalent of over 575,000 homes there.

Perry said she hopes Australia and more countries, businesses, and regions will soon join New Zealand, France and Italy and sign up to the Powering Past Coal Alliance.

“Australia has different choices to make, and it would be wrong of us to sit here in Britain and prescribe what Australia’s energy policy should be, what we’re trying to do is to help and to show that there is a way through this,” she said.

A statement on the Canadian government’s website states the reason for the Alliance:

"Coal is one of the most greenhouse-gas intensive means of generating electricity, and coal-fired power plants still account for almost 40 per cent of the world’s electricity today. This reality makes carbon pollution from coal electricity a leading contributor to climate change.

"As a result, phasing out traditional coal power is one of the most important steps that can be taken to tackle climate change and meet our Paris Agreement commitment to keeping global temperature from increasing by 2 °C and pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. An analysis shows that, to meet this commitment, a coal phase-out is needed by no later than by 2030, in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and in the European Union, and by no later than by 2050, in the rest of the world."

Drax power station

Drax Power Station in Yorkshire, Britain’s largest electricity generator, stands as a symbol of this change. It was once dubbed ‘the dirty old man of Europe’ for being the most polluting British power station and a focus of climate change campaigners' actions. The activists have won. No longer does it burn coal; three of its six generators burn wood, albeit controversially imported from the USA.

But although she is against coal and has today said the UK government will ask its climate watchdog to consider how the UK could meet 1.5C Paris target and become net zero, Perry has also said she supports the UK oil and gas industry. In January she told the Maximising Economic Recovery Forum held by the Oil and Gas Authority in Aberdeen: “We want to squeeze every last drop at the right economic price out of the North Sea basin. I think we’ve underestimated what we still have in terms of reserves,” for which she was criticised by Aberdeen’s own MP. Does she speak with a forked tongue? Time will tell.

It’s not just action on climate change

 

Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago warned the world about climate change 

Thirty years ago the Conservative’s patron saint, Margaret Thatcher, was one of the first politicians to warn the world about climate change. She went on to say that “no generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy – with a full repairing lease.”

Former Conservative Party leader David Cameron’s coalition government in 2010 promised to be “the greenest government ever”, although his efforts were undermined by his own Treasury and by political appointments to the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Yet this shows that conservation is, in Britain at least, naturally a core conservative ideal, even though, the Conservative Party being a broad church, it does contain a number of vociferous climate sceptics, such as former DEFRA Secretary of State Owen Paterson and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson.

Whilst the environmental credibility of the current Conservative leader Theresa May is debatable, the current DEFRA secretary, Michael Gove, has been praised by Greenpeace, WWF and, albeit cautiously, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas.

Michael Gove, Defra Secretary of State

Gove has seen an opportunity to rebrand himself as a progressive since his self-inflicted downfall due to a botched bid to lead his party after his team-up with Boris Johnson drove the pro-Brexit bus to victory and kicked out David Cameron from the post. Theresa May, in a surprise move, put him in charge of DEFRA, since when he has hardly seemed to be the same person as the Gove who was once in charge of the Education Department, overseeing a return to ‘traditional teaching values’ and alienating virtually every teacher in the country.

His promises (and most of them are still promises in the form of consultations) include banning ivory sales in an effort to reduce elephant poaching, banning all petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040 (critics want it sooner), committing to safeguarding coral reefs, introducing a deposit scheme for all drinks containers across England, support for a total ban on insect-harming pesticides across Europe, and making farming subsidies dependent on farmers proving that they are genuinely improving biodiversity and soil quality.

The Brexit factor and Trump’s trade issues

Much of the UK’s environmental policy derives from its membership of the EU, which has raised standards arguably well beyond what they would have been otherwise.

Concern has been loudly heard that, post-Brexit, these protections will be weakened. The British public overwhelmingly backs retaining these food and environmental standards. In response, Gove has promised a consultation on a new, independent body to enforce environmental law, although the future extent of its powers is uncertain.

But Trump’s White House has stressed that any new trade deal it forges with the UK cannot include current EU food standards that block the import of American products such as chlorine-washed chickens, hormone-treated beef, and crops washed with various herbicide chemicals. Further environmental battles over trade deals clearly lie ahead.

The Climate Change Act

It remains a small miracle that the 2008 Climate Change Act, a product of the Labour government, has not been repealed by the Tories. It is a phenomenal piece of legislation that enshrines in law a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 relative to 1990 levels.

This impels the UK economy towards a more sustainable future and is the underlying reason for much of the above. Under it, every five years, the government of the day – of whatever hue – must adopt a legally-binding carbon budget that sets, 15 years ahead, limits on the economy’s total greenhouse gas emissions for the following five year period.

If that sounds ludicrous to some right-wingers, it is what businesses and investors want, because it gives them the time and confidence to plan ahead. It has been extremely successful.

If Australians seek allies in persuading Abbott to change his tune, they really need to look no further than Britain’s Tories and their business supporters.

David Thorpe’s two new books are Passive Solar Architecture Pocket Reference and Solar Energy Pocket Reference. He’s also the author of Energy Management in Building and Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

David Cameron, you must go to Durban this December & end subsidies for fossil fuels

This week David Cameron appeared to play down his party's commitment to tackling climate change by not even mentioning the topic in his keynote speech to the Tory Party conference.

It is unlikely that the shift in rhetorical emphasis will impact on the many commitments and measures in the legislative pipeline, but it may have an impact in two important areas: on investment decisions and on the vital UNFCCC Durban Climate Summit which is fast approaching.

The need for international action has never been more paramount, and it is tremendously important that Cameron is unwavering on the international stage for drastic measures to curb emissions.

The evidence for this is overwhelming. I will discuss some of it, and the single most simple policy that could be implemented to achieve the level of cuts required.

It was announced this week that global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by a staggering 45% since 1990, according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and other sources.

This puts the world in the region of the high emissions scenarios discussed in the last IPCC report (see below).

At the same time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said on Tuesday that subsidies for fossil fuel consumption are actually rising - they totalled $409 billion in 2010, compared to $312 billion in 2009, with oil products having the largest share at $193 billion in 2010 with natural gas getting $91 billion.

Iran and Saudi Arabia were the countries with the biggest subsidies.

The IEA's Chief Economist Fatih Birol said that "without further reform, spending on fossil fuel consumption subsidies is set to reach $660 billion in 2020, or 0.7 percent of global gross domestic product".

Yet leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) countries committed in Pittsburgh in 2009 to phase out these subsidies.

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said doing so is an obvious way to save money. "As they (nations) look for policy responses to the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, phasing out subsidies is an obvious way to help governments meet their economic, environmental and social goals".

It would also cut global energy demand by 4% and considerably reduce carbon emissions growth, the IEA said.

If David Cameron can't find it easy to support a call to phase out the subsidies, and do so himself, then he should tell us why.

(By the way, if you think renewables get too much in the way of subsidies, research published this week in the States shows that nuclear subsidies there at least accounted for more than one percent of the federal budget over the first 15 years of each subsidies’ life; oil and gas subsidies made up half a percent of the total budget, but renewables have amounted to only about a tenth of a percent.)

Using market measures alone is not working as a way of limiting emissions. The 3.5 million EU carbon emissions permits which the UK sold on the market last Thursday went for a price of 10.38 euros each.

This is the lowest price since it started auctions in November 2008, and will not encourage anything like the level of investment needed in greenhouse gas emission abatement technology.

It does strengthen the case for the introduction of a robust carbon price floor, but it also shows other types of action are required.

In a sign of its desperation that the message is not getting through to politicians, the Tyndall Centre this week attempted once more to draw attention to a paper it had first published in a Royal Society journal in 2009, saying that the world could very possibly reach an average global temperature of 4oC higher than pre-industrial levels as early as 2060, with catastrophic consequences for all life on earth.

The paper is peer-reviewed and written by Richard Betts at the Hadley Centre of the Met Office and uses the most accurate and authoritative climate modelling systems currently available.

The Tyndall Centre is based at the University of East Anglia, now famous for the hacked emails scandal, yet exonerated of any bias in its scientific reports by three separate investigations.

(The centre is named after John Tyndall, the man who first discovered the global warming effect 150 years ago - this year marks that anniversary.)

What the paper says

The paper looks at a particular set of scenarios that were considered in the (last) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007. (The 5th is due in 2014.)

AR4's projections suggested that in the absence of mitigation high levels of warming were possible and the median of these was approximately 4?C.

The modelling used at the time did not include certain climate-warming carbon-cycle feedback features, plus more recent measurements that since became available; and the high-emissions scenario - which we now are confident we are within - was not examined with complex general circulation models (GCMs).

Betts' paper looks at this range of scenarios of future greenhouse-gas emissions without policies, including this information.

In other words, looking as best as we can at the world we live in now, in which, year after year, UNFCCC summits come and go and no legally binding agreements are reached.

The paper concludes: "Our best estimate is that a temperature rise of 4?C would be reached in the 2070s, and if carbon-cycle feedbacks are strong, then 4?C could be reached in the early 2060s."

When originally published, the journal did trigger an alarmist headline in the Daily Telegraph with graphic descriptions of how the world would change. It gave fuel to Ed Miliband's efforts to secure a legally bunding deal at Copenhagen. But it did not achieve sufficient global recognition.

I spoke to Asher Minns at the Tyndall Centre and he said he tweeted the paper in an attempt to give it more recognition.

I then spoke to its author, Richard Betts. I asked him whether he could put a figure on the probability of the world reaching this level of warming by that date, and he said "That entirely depends on the policies adopted by politicians".

I asked him about the current state of climate research, and he said that the Hadley Centre "is now working on a huge project coupled climate models with all modelling across the world being run through a commonly agreed protocol, so we know we are comparing like with like, which ones are more or less sensitive to emissions.

"It is mostly work in progress, and will be ready in next year. The deadline is July, and the papers will be accepted by March 2013 for publication in the 2014 report."

The slowness of this work is frustrating for everyone, but science cannot be hurried. I asked Richard if this frustrates him. "No, we have to get it right," he said.

DECC commissions reports from the Hadley Centre, including a paper for the Durban talks that is "more about drawing together information that is already out there into a tight context".

He said the global carbon project will release its annual update in a month, however.

Richard is typical of climate scientists in refusing to be drawn on policy or urgency, saying it is beyond his remit.

"I have no role in saying this is urgent or anything. We have no political objective whatsoever. We are just trying to find the science."

He says all they can do is lay this before politicians. It is up to them to decide how to act.

Does he think that journalists like myself convey the science well?

"In some cases the messages are too simple," he replied. "But our research can be misused either way. It depends on peoples' attitude to risk - people must be informed. But I do think that journalists should convey the science better."

If climate scientists are clear that it is up to politicians to show leadership on the basis of the science, and the science is as clear as it is, then it is incumbent on the consciences of politicians to give these humble toilers on the frontlines of understanding due weight in their deliberations, in comparison to the clamouring of vested interests or focus groups.

In simple language, Mr Cameron: go to Durban. Demonstrate leadership. Cut subsidies to fossil fuels.