UK progress on climate change worryingly slow, advisers warn

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The UK has “lost its global leadership” on climate action, according to the government’s independent climate advisers, as a lack of ministerial initiative meant the country was making “worryingly slow” progress on cutting carbon emissions.

In its annual progress report to parliament published on Wednesday, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) said it had “markedly less” confidence than it did last year that the UK’s climate targets from 2030 onwards would be met, blaming weak leadership for the “inertia”.

It added that the “delivery risks” on the emissions targets were increased because of the government’s overreliance on some technologies, such as carbon capture, which have yet to be scaled up. It should therefore be looking at other ways to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint, such as encouraging behavioural changes, including cutting air and car travel and eating less meat.

“Glimmers of the net zero transition can be seen in growing sales of new electric cars and the continued deployment of renewable capacity, but the scale-up of action overall is worryingly slow,” it said. 

The report is the latest critical assessment by the CCC since 2019 when the UK became the first leading economy to put in place a legally binding target to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. It has also committed to an interim target to reduce emissions by 68 per cent by the end of the decade. 

Since committing to those targets, the government has faced criticism for decisions that run counter to those aims, including approving a new coking coal mine in Cumbria. The government was also forced to admit its revised net zero strategy, published in March, would fail to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to hit its own legally enforceable targets.

The CCC urged ministers to speed up policy development. “We are worried about inertia,” added Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC. “My view is that what’s missing is the political leadership. I think until that happens, this programme is going to run into the sand.”

The UK emitted almost 450mn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022, which was 9 per cent lower than 2019, before the pandemic hit. But the report noted that last year’s reduction was helped by a relatively warm winter and high gas prices.

The UK is not alone in failing to make headway. On Tuesday, the EU’s in-house auditors warned the bloc that it risked failing to meet its target to cut emissions by 55 per cent by 2030, warning there was “no sign of sufficient funding being made available”. 

On a more positive note, the CCC said it was slightly more confident than last year that the UK would meet its near-term commitments to limit emissions between 2023 and 2027, partly owing to higher sales of electric cars. 

However, over the longer term, it warned that emissions from agriculture and land use are “essentially unchanged” over the past decade and “significant risk and policy gaps” remained in those and other areas. 

The CCC also said no airport expansions should proceed until a UK-wide framework was in place to assess and control the sector’s emissions. The UK’s eight largest airports have outlined plans to fly a combined extra 150mn passengers a year. The government has previously said it supports expansion “where it can be delivered within our environmental obligations”.

Philip Dunne, Tory MP for Ludlow and chair of the parliamentary environmental audit committee, said the CCC’s report made “for concerning reading and should serve as a wake-up call to ministers”. 

The government said: “We can be proud of the UK’s record as a world leader on net zero . . . The UK is cutting emissions faster than any other G7 country and attracted billions of investment into renewables, which now account for 40 per cent of our electricity.”

Additional reporting by Philip Georgiadis