According to the CCC, the UK will need to achieve a 78% reduction in its emissions by 2035, compared to 1990 levels, to remain on track to meet its 2050 'net zero' target.
Much would need to change for the CCC's budget to be met, from greater take-up of low-carbon vehicles and boilers to increased dependency on offshore wind and hydrogen power. It would also mean the introduction of a national programme to improve the insulation in buildings, and a 20% reduction in the consumption of high-carbon meat and dairy products by 2030, as well as growing new areas of woodland to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The CCC has urged the government to embrace the recommendations of the report through legislation "as soon as possible".
Collins, said: "As the CCC states 'we don’t reach net zero simply by wishing it'. A common criticism has been that the government has announced various eye-catching initiatives and funding pots, but has provided limited detail on exactly how such targets will be delivered. It is important, and welcome, that the CCC has taken the initiative in setting out a more tangible, and evidenced-based, route map to deliver on the government’s objectives. The big question is whether, and to what extent, the government will embrace the CCC’s report through legislation."
Collins said that an important aspect of the report is that the CCC does not agree with the UK’s current approach of allowing ‘headroom’ for aviation and shipping. The CCC considers that those sectors have significant GHG emissions and to put less pressure on them to reduce their emissions isn’t realistic.
Collins: "The CCC appears to be suggesting that the government is being too soft on the aviation and shipping sector by assuming they can’t achieve 'net zero' in the required time-frames. This is apparent in the government’s recent improved Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which excludes aviation and shipping. The CCC expresses that it is seen as ‘unfair’ on the other sectors that may have to potentially transition harder and faster, in order to offset GHG emissions from shipping and aviation. Surely it has to be right that the aviation and shipping industries are required to embrace the climate change challenge to the same extent as other sectors. Many within those industries already are."
Environment and climate change expert Nick McDonald of Pinsent Masons said that planning policy will have an important role to play in achieving the CCC's recommendations, but said there would be major hurdles to achieving the CCC's goal of all new buildings being 'zero carbon' from 2025.
"The planning system has a significant role to play in ensuring that new buildings take account of the need to decarbonise, and don’t increase the scale of the retrofit problem we already face," McDonald said. "Planning policy is already doing that to some extent, but suffers from various problems which hamper its role – policies are mostly set at the individual council level so there’s a significant degree of divergence between them; updating planning policy to reflect the latest requirements is slow – many councils won’t consult on and adopt a new set of local planning policies before that 2025 date."
"The government is very keen on permitted development rights, and has enacted various changes this year which allow land owners to do much more with their assets, including large scale upwards extensions, and demolition and re-build projects. Climate planning policies don’t touch these projects, and that’s unlikely to change given the government’s clear aim to remove planning regulation, not increase it. However, new build is the smaller issue compared to decarbonising the existing building stock, given all the issues the latter entails," he said.