The government released its Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan on 29th October, just in time for Halloween, because for me, there is nothing currently scarier than the impact of climate change on our planet.
It also terrifies me that so many people remain blissfully unaware of the problems, or think there’s nothing that they can do or, even worse, just stick their head in the sand and hope it’s all just going to go away.
So, I’ve written this overview for anyone not able or willing to wade through the huge amount of detail in the 238 pages for the main report, 23 pages in the summary document and another 72 pages in the technical annex as well as supporting data tables!
Do please share it with anyone who needs to hear what I would summarise as the key messages from the delivery plan:
- As a nation, we are just about on track but are in real danger of slipping
- The ‘job’ is only half done, and it’s still a ‘job’ that needs finishing
- Buildings have a key role to play in keeping us on track
- We ALL need to pull our proverbial fingers out and pay attention to what we can do to help.
The UK is the first major economy to halve emissions, but we are also the 5th largest all-time contributor to global carbon emissions
Chris Newman Zero Carbon Design Manager
COP a load of this
The UK Government has released its Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan, just in time for COP30, which is being held in Brazil between 10 and 21 November.
The document from the government: “outlines the policies and proposals needed to deliver Carbon Budgets 4, 5 and 6 – from 2025 to 2037”.
It also highlights progress towards our 2030 and 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to climate change as part of the Paris Climate Agreement (68% and 81% respectively from a 1990 baseline)
The UK has already met its first (2008-2012), second (2013-2017) and third (2018-2022) Carbon Budgets (CB1, CB2, CB3) and is on track to meet the fourth (CB4 covering 2023-2027).
The UK is also the first major economy to halve its emissions – having cut them by 54% between 1990 and 2024.
The report boasts that the UK “leads the world on decarbonisation” and has quantified emissions savings projections of 37.1MtCO2e or a 66% reduction from 1990 levels by 2030, representing 96% of the required savings to meet the first NDC (so still a little more to do but very nearly there).
However, for anyone feeling good about this, or suggesting that ‘little old Britain’ has already done it’s share, I think we need to remind ourselves that as a pioneer of the industrial revolution, with an influence that spanned the globe, we are the 5th largest all-time contributor to global carbon emissions.
Legislation for buildings
From a built environment point of view, the report highlights previous and on-going policies that have or are continuing to contribute to carbon reduction.
This includes past updates to Part L of the Building Regulations, Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES), the Renewable Heat Incentive, the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme and more recently, the current Boiler Upgrade Scheme – which offers households and small businesses up to £7,500 towards the cost of fitting a heat pump.
Interestingly, one of the largest carbon saving policies mentioned is the F-Gas phasedown introduced in 2015 and predicted to save 9.68MtCO2e between 2023-2037 as refrigerants with lower global warming potential are used in heat pumps and air conditioning systems.
Moving forward, the Future Homes and Building Standard is projected to save a combined 1.99MtCO2e across CB4, CB5 and CB6 combined which doesn’t seem that much in comparison, but to me, this just emphasises the importance of retrofit as most of the buildings that need decarbonising have already been built.
High electricity pricing
Throughout our interactions and advocacy work with UK government and associated parties, we consistently raise the issue of relatively high electricity costs compared to gas and how this is a constant barrier to electrification and therefore decarbonisation.
This plan clearly agrees and states that: “We are continuing to develop further policies to bring down electricity costs relative to gas and intend to consult on options to reduce costs and make electrification an economically rational choice for a wider range of businesses and organisations”.
Interestingly, we have just launched our second annual heat pump report called ‘Heat Pumps – Accelerating the switch’ which also highlights how the over inflated price of electricity is holding back important growth in heat pump installations.
The report shows that higher electricity prices correlate directly with fewer heat pump installations, and points to a 9% increase in installations each year, if there was more parity between electricity and gas levies and energy costs were rebalanced.
A job half done
Whilst the timescales of important policies such as increases to MEES, The Warmer Homes Plan, the Future Homes and Building Standards, and even increases to minimum heating efficiencies at product level via the Ecodesign Directive weren’t confirmed, the fact their projected impacts are being modelled and included should give confidence that they will be in place very soon – so, whilst a 54% reduction in emissions is great, our journey to net zero is still a ‘job’ that needs finishing.
For me, the only way to reduce the outstanding emissions is to actually get on with announcing long overdue plans and policies like the increase to MEES, and the severely delayed Future Homes and Buildings Standards, along with driving through changes to the planning system. I’ll come back to that after the Budget at the end of the month
Hopefully COP30 will deliver more good news for the planet, but in the meantime, the built environment must continue to do its upmost to not be part of the problem we are all trying to solve.
Chris Newman is Zero Carbon Design Manager
