UK and EC drag themselves towards net zero emissions

In both London and Europe, the effort to reduce emissions summons up a picture of a person, put on a diet by a doctor, eying a cream pie: the head knows it shouldn't eat it, but the body has to be dragged kicking and screaming away from the table.

 A version of this piece appeared on The Fifth Estate six days ago.

That's the picture I get after studying three recent developments – in the UK's climate change legal framework, the EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, and its Climate Action Regulation.

All three developments embody the praiseworthy aspiration to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions around the middle of the century (in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change), but the fine words are not yet backed up by measures that will achieve that goal.

UK sets aim for 'net zero'

Claire Perry

The UK's Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry made a significant and unexpected announcement that she will ask the country's Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for ideas on how to adopt the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to below 2oC above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration to keep it below 1.5oC. This means achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

She made the announcement at a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government last week. "After the IPCC report later this year, we will be seeking the advice of the UK’s independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, on the implications of the Paris Agreement for the UK’s long-term emissions reduction targets," she said.

The independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) exists to set five year plans for the UK to meet its legally binding target under the Climate Change Act (2008) of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990. It then monitors and reports on the UK's progress.

Perry's announcement was welcomed by the low carbon industry and campaign groups, but they cautioned that legislation is needed soon.

Dustin Benton, policy director at thinktank Green Alliance said, "The Government has made real progress on some issues, such as diesel cars and offshore wind, but there are glaring holes in areas such as energy efficiency and onshore renewables," adding waste, housing and transport to the list.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said this would mean the end of plans for a new runway at Heathrow. "No new runway at Heathrow will fit inside our carbon budget. The data show that the challenges posed by emissions from transport – land, sea and air – and our reliance on gas for heating will have to be confronted as a matter of urgency."

The CCC itself recently challenged the Government’s policies, saying that they do not go far enough even to meet current targets.

They want to see "urgent action" on the Clean Growth Strategy (published in October 2017), and to see detail on a long list of ideas that have been adopted by the government  to reduce emissions but which are not accompanied by substance on strategy.

These include: phasing out sales of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040, increasing the energy efficiency of homes by 2035 and the energy efficiency standards of new buildings, how to phase out installation of gas and oil, to generate 85% of the UK’s electricity from low-carbon sources by 2032, and deploying carbon capture and storage technology.

They highlight also a need for new policies to close the remaining ‘emissions gap’ in the fourth and fifth carbon budgets.  Even if delivered in full, existing and new policies, including those set out in the Clean Growth Strategy, miss the fourth and fifth carbon budgets by around 10-65 MtCO2e – a significant margin.

The CCC says, "There is a particular risk around meeting the fourth carbon budget which begins in just five years’ time, including completion of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station". This is looking increasingly unlikely due partly to EDF's problems on completing a similar reactor at Flamanville.

Energy Performance of Buildings Directive

Meanwhile, on 17 April, the European Parliament approved the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. This will target the renovation of buildings, and the creation of smarter energy systems for new buildings, acknowledging that around 75% of buildings in Europe are currently energy inefficient and that buildings are the largest single energy consumer in Europe, using around 40% of final energy.

The revisions to the previous version of the Directive form the first of eight proposed steps towards the EU’s Energy Union ambitions and include advocating the use of smart technologies to introduce automation and control systems which could ensure buildings operate efficiently, the use of a 'smart readiness indicator' which can measure a building’s capacity to integrate new technologies, support for the introduction of new infrastructure for e-mobility in new buildings, and a path towards zero-emissions buildings by 2050.

There are also mechanisms to create the investment needed to renovate existing buildings to make them more energy efficient: at least 40% of infrastructure and innovation projects financed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments should contribute to the Commission's commitments on climate action and energy transition in line with the Paris Agreement. There is also funding under the European Investment Bank's Smart Finance for Smart Buildings Initiative. This aims to unlock a total of €10 billion in public and private funds between now and 2020 for energy efficiency projects.

The European Commission Vice-President for the Energy Union, Maroš Šefčovič, said: "As technology has blurred the distinction between sectors, we are also establishing a link between buildings and e-mobility infrastructure, and helping stabilize the electricity grid.”

The Council of Ministers have yet to finalise agreement of the Directive before it enters into force. Member States will have to transpose the new elements of the Directive into their national laws within 20 months. If the UK eventually Brexits, it will not have to.

I have already reported here and here on how the Directive has been watered down compared to what it might have been.

New EU Climate Action Regulation

A new European Climate Law is also edging closer. The Climate Action Regulation (formerly known as Effort Sharing Regulation) covers almost 60% of all greenhouse gases and establishes annual carbon budgets between 2021 and 2030 for each EU country, covering sectors like surface transport, buildings, agriculture, small industry and waste, as follows:

How effective it is as will depend on the policies adopted by each Member State, who, in the coming months, are supposed to develop National Energy and Climate Plans to show how they expect to meet their commitments under the directive.

The European Council already has an overall GHG reduction target for the EU, of reducing emissions 40% by 2030 compared to 1990, with a subtarget for sectors not included in the emissions trading system (ETS) of 30% reduction compared to 2005. The CAR gives each country an individual target to implement that target. France and Germany have by far the highest targets. Eastern European and other less industrialised countries such as Greece and Portugal will be able to continue to increase emissions [for the full list see the table on page 5 of this analysis.

This is not as straightforward as it might seem. The CAR is meant to contain flexibilities to let nations meet targets more cost-effectively, but, according to separate analysis by three think tanks (Sandbag, T&E and Öko Institut), this means it is full of loopholes that allow countries to get out of their commitments, meaning it will only lead to 25-26% reductions compared to 2005. Furthermore, they say, it does not provide the incentives to put the EU in line to fully decarbonise these sectors by 2050.

In respect of action on reducing emissions, the UK was one of the EU's high performers. With it out of the Union, the rest will have to try harder to achieve that 40% target. However, T&E says they won't make it. "Countries that will not meet their 2020 targets will be rewarded by being allowed to emit even more".

It cites the example of Ireland, whose emissions since 2011 have steadily increased. Rather than the CAR giving it a baseline starting point for emission reductions of the 2020 target of 20% relative to 2005 levels, it is being given a 2018 level, which means, because it is failing to reduce emissions to badly, it has to achieve just 5% relative to 2005 emissions. Austria, Belgium or Finland could also be among the countries that will benefit from this starting point.



To return to the picture described in my opening paragraph, at least the head has drawn up rules; whether it can implement and enforce them effectively is another matter entirely.

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 Buildings and Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

John Gummer is to chair Committee on Climate Change

John Gummer, David Cameron and Zac Goldsmith in simpler times, when Cameron had commissioned the Quality of Life report from his two environmentalist companions.

Lord Deben (better known as John Gummer) has been selected to succeed Lord Adair Turner as chair of the Committee on Climate Change, the independent body established under the Climate Change Act to advise the Government on emissions targets.

Should we be worried?

Gummer it was who co-authored with Zac Goldsmith in 2007 the radical 'blueprint for a green revolution' as part of the Quality of Life Policy Group, that was backed by David Cameron before his election, which is partly credited for the Prime Minister announcing the intention to create “the greenest government ever”.

At the time, Mr Gummer said: "I see no contradiction between greenness and economic success. The green revolution can do for Britain what the industrial revolution did a couple of hundred years ago."

When questioned on why he owned three cars, including a seven seater 4x4, he responded that this was essential for his Suffolk constituency.

John Gummer served as Secretary of State for the Environment and Minister for Agriculture Fisheries and Food under Margaret Thatcher.

He was twice awarded the title "Parliamentarian who did most for the environment internationally" by the BBC, and Friends of the Earth has described him as "the best Environment Secretary we've ever had".

But he will have to divide his time between numerous other occupations:

• as Chairman of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers
• Chairman of Forewind Ltd
• Chairman of Sancroft International Ltd
• Chairman of Valpak Ltd
• Chairman of Veolia UK
• Non-executive Director of Castle Trust Capital Ltd
• Non-executive Director of the Catholic Herald
• Non-executive Director of Veolia Voda
• a Trustee of the Blue Marine Foundation
• Trustee of the British Architectural Library Trust
• President of GLOBE International
• the Board of Directors of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation
• and a Trustee of the Theodore Trust.

Besides being famous for once feeding his daughter a beefburger on television, to persuade people that British beef did not contain BSE, he was once called "the biggest shitbag I have ever met" by the Norwegian Minister of Environmental Affairs, Thorbjørn Berntsen, for refusing to discuss the issue of acid rain carried from the UK to Norway and killing its lakes.

And during the Parliamentary expenses scandal, it emerged that he claimed expenses for mole-catching, removing jackdaw nests and gardening, on his estate in Debenham, Suffolk.

Progress far too slow on cutting emissions, says watchdog

Actual (blue) and needed greenhouse gas emissions for the UK. The Committee says they only began declining again in the last year by coincidence. Click for larger version.

The Government must quadruple its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it is to meet future carbon budgets warns the watchdog Committee on Climate Change in its new annual report.

It says that despite greenhouse gas emissions falling by 7% last year, only 0.8% of this fall was due to Government policy. The rest happened because of coincidental factors which cannot be relied upon to meet targets.

“Much of last year’s fall in emissions was due to a combination of mild weather, rising fuel prices, falling incomes and transitory factors in power generation," said David Kennedy, Chief Executive of the CCC. "But as the economy recovers it will be difficult to keep the country on track to meet carbon budgets. We need to tackle major challenges to drive emissions down across the economy – and to do this as a matter of urgency.”

Yesterday, Energy Minister Charles Hendry was celebrating apparent progress in decarbonising the UK grid, as his department issued its quarterly energy statistics. He said they showed "a clear increase on the first quarter of last year across all renewables, with rises in wind, hydro, solar and bioenergy generation.

“Alongside a 36% increase in renewables capacity in the last 12 months, this shows that the UK is powering forward on clean and secure energy and is clearly a very attractive place to invest,” he said.

The latest energy statistics do record progress, with onshore wind generation increasing by 51% and offshore by 51% in the first quarter of 2012, and the high amount of rainfall helped to boost hydroelectric generation by 43%. In 2011, renewable heat sources increased by 5% but still only accounted for around 2.2% of total heat demand.

This is good news but not good enough for the Committee.

In reducing emissions, decarbonising the power sector is only part of the picture. Nevertheless, the report complains that investment in wind generation in 2011 was just one third of the rate required annually to achieve the target by the end of the decade.

It says that a total of £8 billion is required to support low carbon generation by 2020-21, which would satisfy a shopping list of one new nuclear reactor, four CCS demonstration projects, 15GW of onshore and 12GW of offshore wind, plus a mix of other renewables.

The important figure for the statistics comes in terms of measuring progress towards the 2020 target of deriving 15% of all energy from renewable sources, as specified under the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. The provisional figures show that during 2011, just 3.8% of final energy consumption was from renewable sources. This is an increase from the revised 2010 figure of 3.2%, and 3.0% in 2009.

Although there is plenty of potential new wind generation in the pipeline, the Committee says that “delivering investments will require resolution of current policy uncertainties, and that financing barriers are addressed".

Most urgently it wants to see support levels confirmed under the Renewables Obligation. Then there must be a major role for the Green Investment Bank in mobilising project finance for offshore wind investment. The Government also needs to work with its EU partners to strengthen the carbon price within the EU emissions trading scheme.

The Committee is furthermore concerned at the lack of progress on carbon capture and storage (CCS). It warns that projects must be selected and funding awarded this year, with construction starting by 2014.

It recommends further incentives: to increase uptake particularly of cavity wall and loft insulation in the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation, to support renewable heat in the residential sector, and to address market barriers such as households not having confidence in or enough information about renewable heat technologies.

It advises retaining the Carbon Reduction Commitment, but with a reduced administrative burden and a redesigned league table to strengthen reputational incentives.

There should be a Green Deal for the non-residential sector in place by the end of the year and ambitious standards for private rented regulation in the non-residential sector by the end of 2013.

It also wants to see, in the forthcoming industry strategy, approaches set out to increase the use of sustainable bioenergy in large industry.

Transport

Renewable biofuels for transport actually fell by 7% (to 1,127 ktoe), comprising just 3.5% by volume of road transport fuels in 2011.

In this sector, the Committee wants to see more incentives to encourage the reduction of emissions from new vans, an increase in the electric vehicle market, and a reversal of the decision on company car tax relief for electric vehicles which George Osborne made in the last budget.

In the Budget 2012 George Osborne announced that company car tax exemption for electric vehicles would be withdrawn from 2015/16. This decision, the Committee says, will not raise significant revenue, given the low sales of electric vehicles, but it will undermine incentives for purchase of electric company cars, a market niche where there is a potentially high share of early adopters.

Interestingly, the Committee proposes that driving tests should include standards for driving fuel-efficiently, and wants to see the current motorway speed limit enforced properly, code for saying do not increase the speed limit.

Agriculture must play its part, the Committee says, and there needs to be a robust framework in place for monitoring changes in farming practice that influence emissions, and by the end of the year a strategy for going beyond the current voluntary approach in the sector to cutting emissions.

The Committee wants to see the electricity market reforms set a clear objective of achieving carbon intensity in power generation of the order of 50gCO2/kWh in 2030. This would "provide investor confidence that there will be a market for low carbon technologies that are built to schedule and cost and that there will not be a second dash for gas".

In conclusion, the Committee issues a stark warning: "when we first highlighted the need for a step change in investment there was a lead-time of several years, but this has now elapsed. Therefore the step change is needed urgently if we are to remain on track to meeting future carbon budgets".

Chaos envelops Coalition's green policies

The High Court has ordered a judicial review of the Government's proposals to cut feed-in tariff payments for solar photovoltaic installations.

With the Committee on Climate Change also saying this week that there is no way the Green Deal will work, as presently designed, Government plans to reduce UK carbon emissions are falling into disarray.

FiTs cut challenge success

Following a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth and two solar firms, Solarcentury and HomeSun, the High Court agreed yesterday afternoon that proposals to cut feed-in tariff payments for any solar scheme completed after 12 December, eleven days before the current consultation closes tomorrow, were unlawful.

Friends of the Earth’s Executive Director Andy Atkins said the "botched" proposals were "jeopardising thousands of jobs".

“Ministers must now come up with a sensible plan that protects the UK's solar industry and allows cash-strapped homes and businesses to free themselves from expensive fossil fuels by plugging into clean energy,” he said.

He agreed with the Government that "solar payments should fall in line with falling installation costs", which have almost halved in the last two years, "but the speed of the Government's proposals threatened to devastate the entire industry".

Jeremy Leggett, Chairman of Solarcentury, also welcomed the decision, saying: "We encourage the Secretary of State to accept the judges' very clear ruling, not plunge the industry into a further period of uncertainty by considering going to appeal".

There seemed to be no sign of that happening last night. Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said the Government would be seeking an appeal, and hoped to secure a hearing as soon as possible.

"Regardless of today’s outcome, the current high tariffs for solar PV are not sustainable and changes need to be made in order to protect the budget which is funded by consumers through their energy bills,” he added.

FoE is also calling for more money to encourage solar installations, to be paid for by the revenue the industry raises for the Treasury, the removal of planned restrictions that would prevent poorer households from installing solar panels and more support for community-owned schemes.

Green Deal "will fail"

On Monday, Lord Adair Turner, who announced this week that he is resigning as Chair of the Committee on Climate Change in order to focus on his role as Chair of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), wrote to Greg Barker and the Secretary of State Chris Huhne, expressing concern about the detail of the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO).

He slammed the current proposals as being "an inefficient way of spending ECO funding", which would not cut energy bills for householders or enable the Government to meet its carbon budgets.

He pointed out that DECC’s own draft Impact Assessment projects show that between 2013 and 2020, six million lofts and 6.3 million cavity walls must be insulated.

But the Government itself estimates that just 700,000 lofts and 1.7 million cavity walls will be insulated under the ECO.

Yet this policy is supposed to account for much of the cost-effective potential to improve energy efficiency in the residential sector.

Lord Turner therefore proposes that the current Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT)'s targets for insulating lofts and cavity walls be included in its proposed replacement, the ECO.

This would make it much more likely that target emission reductions would be achieved (e.g. 4-5 MtCO2 in 2020, rather than 2 MtCO2 as currently projected).

Lord Turner adds, "a less energy efficient housing stock would raise costs and risks of investing in renewable heat" (under the Renewable Heat Incentive), because electric heat pumps work less efficiently in poorly insulated homes.

He rejected DECC's argument in the impact assessment that including loft and cavity wall insulation in the ECO would crowd out the Green Deal finance, saying that there is enough money to achieve this if the energy companies and Green Deal providers have appropriate incentives, which he describes, to keep costs down.

Lord Turner's replacement as chair of the CCC is expected to be appointed by the end of March.

No one is policing EPCs

Further doubt on the ability of the Green Deal to meet its targets is cast by Mike Ockenden of the Property and Energy Professionals Association, writing in the current print edition of Energy and Environmental Management magazine.

He points out that there is only one local authority in the country, East Sussex, which is still monitoring the adequacy of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). These are the documents which will be used to estimate the energy efficiency of homes and buildings under the Green Deal.

A similar situation applies to Display Energy Certificates (DECs), which are meant to be displayed by public buildings over 1000 ft.². Many of these do not have a DEC, and yet not one has been prosecuted for this omission.

Trading Standards Offices are supposed to police the situation, and yet their departments have had their funding cut and enforcement activity has ceased completely, says Mr. Ockenden.

Without a monitoring system in place, and certification available to purchasers of homes to show how energy efficient they are, the nation's energy consumers are being forced to consume more energy and have higher bills.

At the root of all of these troubles for the Government's energy policies can be found the spending cuts and the dispute between the Treasury and the Department for Energy and Climate Change over budget allocations.

This dispute looks set to continue in 2012, with the low carbon industry sectors looking anxiously for the reassurance they need that their future is secure.