The environmental community tends to think that Gordon Brown doesn’t understand the complexity and size of the climate challenge. His first speech on the subject gave more detail than expected and reassured some that the prime minister does recognise the severity of the challenge. He moved towards an 80% reduction in GHGs by 2050, but even under optimistic assumptions his plans will not result in emissions reductions on the scale required. All his proposals were pain-free. He does not yet believe that the electorate is ready to face the real challenges of emissions reduction.

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Gordon Brown’s speech consisted of a long list of measures his government would back. The proposals ranged from tighter car emissions rules to providing free light bulbs. Some items on the shopping list aim at reducing demand growth, others at reducing the carbon content of the energy used in the UK. There was no figure for the total savings expected.

Total emissions from the UK The prime minister indicated that the government would ask the new Climate Change Committee (CCC) to approve a target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050. The speech wasn’t entirely clear what this means. It means a reduction to about 154m tonnes, down from 770m in 1990, not from today’s figure of about 658m tonnes. So the actual percentage cut from the current figure is 76-77%. When the leaders of other countries talk about 80% cuts, they generally seem to mean from today’s levels but the UK uses the higher 1990 figure because it makes the emissions target easier to achieve.

The world has settled on a view that climate change is manageable if temperature increases are kept below 2 degrees. In order to do this, the consensus opinion – by no means universally shared – is that the concentrations of GHGs must not stabilise at more than 500 parts per million CO2 equivalent (ppm CO2e).

The Stern Review – mentioned approvingly in the speech – suggested the 2 degree and 500 ppm CO2e ambitions need global emissions to average no more than 21bn tonnes of CO2 a year during the 21st century. The UK’s 2050 target of 154m tonnes in 2050 will absorb over 0.7% of this total, roughly equivalent to the country’s expected share of the world population total.

But Stern does not rest there. He looks for emissions in 2050 and beyond to average less than a quarter of this. In the year or so since Stern was published, scientific opinion has substantially hardened. However much we may welcome Gordon Brown’s stronger words on climate change, his speech nowhere recognised the increasingly alarming scientific analysis nor the need for the UK to contemplate reductions down 40m tonnes or so, the level corresponding to a fair share of the global total in the second half of the century. This is no more than about 6% of today’s emissions totals.

Nor did the prime minister accurately report the conclusions of last week’s IPCC synthesis report. The IPCC did not suggest that business as usual would result in temperature increases of ‘up to 4 degrees centrigrade’ and a sea level rise of ‘up to 60cm’. In fact, the IPCC suggests an upper bound of 6.4 degrees. It also says explicitly for the first time that its top figure of 59cm for sea level rise excludes the impact of substantial changes in ice flow patterns. This exclusion is simply because the IPCC is not yet adequately able to model these effects, not that they are not already occurring in Greenland and elsewhere.

Demand reduction The speech envisaged these principal measures:

all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016
loft and cavity wall insulation for 5m homes
discounted energy efficient appliances
smart meters
a ‘green homes’ service
carbon trading for middle-sized companies
banning plastic bags.

All new homes to be zero carbon by 2016 In this context I believe that ‘zero carbon’ means no net use of carbon-based fuels for heating, lighting and electric appliances. The problems with this target were laid out in Carbon Commentary’s article on the Bladon eco-homes. The best UK new builds are still very substantial users of fossil fuels. German Passiv Haus construction techniques may allow the achievement of the zero target, when combined with on-site generation of electricity. But 2016 is only eight years away. The UK construction industry has recently begun to accept the need for better insulation of new homes, and its commitment is only half-hearted. Dragging this most Medieval of industries into the 21st century will be challenging.

Loft and cavity wall insulation Almost all houses now have loft insulation, though most do not have enough. But despite the active subsidy programme, the government has only succeeded in persuading 2m out of the 11m households with cavity walls in 2002 to insulate the cavities. About 9m houses remain with open cavities, out of the UK’s stock of about 25m homes. (By the way, a large percentage of these houses will be still standing in 2050.) The government now promises that 5m homes will get cavity wall or better loft insulation by 2010, paid for by the utility companies.

This is a remarkably inadequate commitment. Home heating represents about 10% of UK emissions. Better domestic insulation has a far greater economic return than any other approach to emissions reduction. It is simply impossible to understand why the government’s approach is so limited and hesitant.

For those homes without wall cavities (about 5m out of 25m) insulation is more challenging. But new technologies are arriving that allow cheaper external cladding for solid wall homes. There is no mention of this in the Prime Minister’s speech.

Discounted or free lighting and electric appliances Incandescent light bulbs are likely to disappear from shops within about 3 years. (The progenitors of this change have yet to explain to observers how UK householders are going to be able to replace kitchen and bathroom halogen bulbs.) The prime minister simply ‘announced’ a continuation of existing plans. The offer of discounted energy-efficient electric appliances was left unspecific. What the prime minister did not say was that the growth in typical television screen size will probably wipe out any savings in domestic electricity consumption from subsidising new appliances. He made no reference to the increase in home energy consumption resulting from the addition of more and more electrical devices across the house.

Unfortunately, this was a problem throughout the speech. The idea that British people might have to give something up if we are to achieve climate change targets is still an unspoken taboo. A grown-up political system would have started to discuss how to restrain the purchase of new energy-using appliances, but British politicians are reluctant to discuss demand limitation, whether it be for air travel, motor cars or consumer electronics. There was, for example, not a single mention of public transport in the speech. Getting people out of cars and into efficient and comfortable buses is simply not something that Labour is prepared to discuss.

Smart meters The prime minister mentioned ‘smart meters’. The primary purpose of such meters in other parts of the world is to give incentives to users not to consume electricity when demand is high. Turn your air conditioner on at 3pm in the afternoon and the price of electricity might be five times what it is at 3am at night. Typically, there was no mention of this in the speech. Mr Brown concentrated on selling smart meters as a way of providing more accurate bills to customers. He avoided even hinting that some electricity prices might rise to choke off demand.

A ‘green homes’ service This proposal caught the attention of newspapers. It will offer advice on energy efficiency, particularly in poorer areas. The record of government energy advice centres does not inspire confidence that this idea will do more than scratch the surface of the problems of poor domestic insulation standards and the unstoppable proliferation of electrical appliances.

Carbon trading for medium-sized enterprises and sites The prime minister talked about ‘carbon trading’ for smaller businesses than those covered by the EU ETS. He was referring to a scheme in gestation since 2006, now called the Carbon Reduction Commitment. The design of this scheme is not yet fully worked out, and it looks extremely complex to administer. It also seems to offer limited incentives to reduce emissions, largely because the participants capture only a small fraction of the value of energy reductions. It is therefore not really a conventional emissions trading scheme. Like many other subjects in the speech, the scheme has been widely discussed elsewhere though some observers may have gained the impression it was a new initiative.

Banning plastic bags This was a real howler. The prime minister said that plastic bags create methane gas in landfill. Of course, they do not. They stay there for millions of years. When we are all long gone, the Tesco label will still be visible.

Demand reduction in summary The only new plan was the Green Homes service. The rest of the schemes are already part of government policy. The prime minister did not touch on any sensitive topics, such as reducing home electricity use, or using higher utility prices to help restrain demand.

Low-carbon technologies There was a mixture of new ideas and schemes that have already been well aired:

nuclear
carbon capture and storage
20% renewable energy commitment
encouragement of offshore wind and the Severn barrage
reducing obstacles to onshore wind, using more biomass and energy from waste
the Energy Technologies Institute
car emissions reductions.

Nuclear Although the consultation on nuclear has now ended, the prime minister hardly mentioned this source of electricity. Nevertheless his few words left no-onein any doubt that the government will support new applications for atomic power stations.

Carbon capture Government ministers have been giving speeches about the carbon capture competition for months. Mr Darling talked about it in the Pre-Budget Review. But Gordon Brown’s speech did not hesitate to bring it forward as a completely new idea. ‘I can announce today that we are launching a competition to build [...] one of the [...] first commercial CCS [...] projects’.

He also mentioned the agreement between China and the UK to work together on Near Zero Emission Coal. He said it was the first of its kind. It was not. Australia and China signed a similar deal in September.

Gordon Brown also floated the idea that CCS might be made mandatory in new power plants in the UK. This depends, he said, on whether it was ‘commercially viable’. Of course, if CCS is indeed commercially viable then it wouldn’t have to be made mandatory. In other words, this is a completely toothless commitment and provides exactly the unclear signal on clean energy technologies that government says it wants to avoid.

20% renewable commitment In recent days persistent press reports indicated that the government might be backing away from the EU plan to insist on 20% renewables in the energy mix. These appear to have been slightly misleading. The prime minister now says that he supports the 20% target, as long as it is applied across the EU. Individual countries may not have to achieve this level, provided other countries do better than 20%. The UK only generates 2% of its total energy needs (electricity plus gas) from renewables, a low figure compared to most European countries.

So the government will be arguing that it should not be asked to get the country up to the 20% average. The rest of the EU will be deeply unimpressed; the UK has by far the best renewable resources in Europe and it is completely unclear why it should remain a laggard.

Encouragement of offshore wind and the barrage To a government that faces fierce opposition to every initiative to increase renewable electricity generation, offshore wind is looking increasingly attractive. The opponents of giant schemes like the London Array are much less organised and effective than the people mobilised against onshore wind or the Severn barrage. The main opposition to offshore wind seems to come from inside central government in the form of the Ministry of Defence, worried about its radar signals.

With the current level of financial support from the ROC system, offshore wind now looks reasonably cost competitive. I sense we will see many more schemes for large arrays of three hundred or more turbines coming forward.

Reducing obstacles to other renewables The prime minister wants more onshore wind, more ‘energy from waste’, more burning of biomass and more microgeneration.

He hints that the government is considering how to incentivise communities to accept wind turbines. The language is opaque: ‘I want to explore how local communities can themselves benefit from the economic opportunities they [wind farms] create’. This is unclear, but may be a precursor to offering support for community ownership of wind farms. (This edition of Carbon Commentary contains an article on the Fenland community owned scheme.) Onshore wind farms are now so profitable that allowing the locals to invest in them is a very good way of encouraging acceptance.

He says he wants more ‘energy from waste’. This may mean more encouragement of incineration with waste capture. As techniques for pryolysis (heating in the absence of oxygen) evolve, we may see an increasing numbers of plants that generate electricity from consuming municipal waste. This is a good alternative to landfill provided worries over dioxin emissions can be calmed.

Energy Technologies Institute This body has already been announced and will carry out research into low-carbon technologies, particularly those in which the UK has a natural advantage, such as wind, wave, and tidal stream.

Car emissions standards The prime minister acknowledges the role of the EU in getting a target of 130g of CO2 per km by 2012 close to final agreement. He wants to increase the EU standard to 100 g/km by 2025. This is approximately the level achieved by the best small cars in the market today – it is perfectly feasible for the average car by 2025. In fact, it is quite undemanding. A more revolutionary approach would have been to try to replace the internal combustion engine (about 30% efficient) entirely by electricity (100% efficient if generated from home renewables) by 2025.

How far will the government have got by 2025 if cars are typically generating 100g/km? This is about 40% better than the average today, but the number of cars on the road will increase substantially. The net effect will be small.

Summary on low-carbon technologies Mr Brown did not mention aviation, except in the context of the ETS. At current rates of growth, aviation will use up the UK’s entire CO2 allowance by 2050. No government that plans to expand runway capacity can be truly serious about encouraging low-carbon technologies.

He also devotes only a sentence or two to low-carbon heating sources for the home. After aviation and car travel, this is the single most important source of emissions over which the consumer has direct control. Progress on this is slow, even though the example of biomass-fuelled district heating schemes in the Nordic countries shows that substantial progress can be made.

Nor is there any comment on decarbonising food production and distribution. Recognition of the importance of the food supply chain in GHG emissions is rising, but the UK government is still lethargic in its response.

Summary of the speech The prime minister sees the scale of the challenge. But nowhere in government is there even an outline plan for how the UK economy gets from 658 tonnes (and rising) to 154 tonnes within the lifetime of the next generation of power stations. As with most government speeches, a long list of measures seems to be a substitute for the hard thought necessary to decide how really to cut emissions.