British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been criticized by his own net zero czar, who says the
UK risks missing its green targets due to inconsistent policies and lack of commitment to pledges.
In his net zero review, British Member of Parliament (MP) Chris Skidmore said a large barrier to renewable energy was a lack of confidence in the UK government, which has inconsistent policy support for green energy, with measures such as Sunak’s new electricity tax.
Skidmore, the Conservative Party MP for Kingswood, was asked by former British prime minister Liz Truss to write a review on the policy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
He was asked to find out what was working with the policy regarding not putting more carbon into the atmosphere than the UK absorbs, and to make the business case for the goal.
One issue mentioned throughout the report is a lack of policy commitment.
“The overwhelming impression I got was we will make net zero more affordable if we are able to deliver further and faster, which requires certainty and consistency of approach. We need to de-risk investment, which will actually drive down the costs of net zero, and if the recommendations put forward by my review are followed we will create incentives to invest in renewables,” Skidmore said.
“The review recognizes we have fallen behind, but it sets out how we can be world-leading in these areas once again. We need to remove the barriers that are in place at the moment,” he added.
“Sudden policy changes like the imposition of the electricity generator levy, which kicked in at the start of this year, have put investment at risk,” RenewableUK chief executive officer Dan McGrail said.
“Skidmore is right to demand the replacement of stop-start policies with certainty for investors,” Solar Energy UK chief executive officer Chris Hewett said.
Skidmore cited agriculture as one of the main culprits of carbon emissions, and said its share of emissions could, by 2030, grow from 12 percent to 30 percent. To encourage people to eat more environmentally friendly foods, Skidmore recommended “eco-labeling” rather than a tax or ban on foods such as red meat.
He also said that farmers had been disincentivized from farming in an environmentally friendly way by the confusion around the government’s post-Brexit nature-friendly agriculture payments, and that there had been missed opportunities for nature-based solutions with most policy focused on woodlands and peatland rather than other carbon sinks such as wetlands.
In the review, Skidmore called for a stable policy environment, with consistent support for renewables, as well as a reform of the way the government financially helps renewable energy projects to make that more attractive for investors.
However, climate campaigners criticized the review for being unambitious and for not calling for strong policies to avert the climate crisis.
“While there is much useful analysis of the problem, the review stops short of recommending the kind of muscular policies that would really drive change toward the massive growth in renewables which will be necessary,” Greenpeace UK policy director Doug Parr said.
“Without a strong push from government, the renewables revolution will still proceed, because the economic logic dictates it should. But it won’t happen at the pace it needs to in order to forestall some of the worst effects of climate change,” he said.
While the review says the UK needs a “rooftop revolution” for solar panels, and suggests making planning decisions easier to enable this, it does not recommend mandates for solar panels on new builds, or more funding to encourage take-up.
“All credible scenarios of our future economy rely on renewable energy being the backbone of the future energy system, and the review should have said government needs to change the remit of the regulator to include net zero delivery, insist on solar panels being on new roofs, expand the scale of renewables contracts and rapidly lay out the location of the offshore electricity grid,” Parr said.
“Instead, the government seems like a mildly curious spectator, wondering why their aspirations aren’t materializing without ever intervening to make them happen,” he added.
The renewable energy industry has tentatively welcomed the review, with industry leaders saying it contains good ideas that should be adopted by the government.
“If the government is looking to increase the economic benefits of the UK’s decarbonization ambitions, Chris Skidmore’s review has some really clear easy wins. As he suggests, setting targets for new onshore wind and solar capacity would certainly increase investor confidence, as well as ensuring we can decarbonize our electricity system by 2035,” McGrail said.
He also praised Skidmore for promoting the use of “a wide range of renewables to strengthen Britain’s energy security, including innovative technologies like floating wind and tidal stream.”
He said that he would have liked the review to have told the government to take a “war room” approach to tackling grid connectivity, “with the prime minister bringing all relevant bodies together to address this urgently.”
“We very much hope that Whitehall will embrace his call to establish a joint task force with the solar industry to work on a roadmap for reaching 70 gigawatts of solar [capacity] by 2035 — about four-and-a-half times what we have now,” Hewett said.
“The number-one priority of this group will have to be unblocking access to the grid — which is pushing back the completion of many large projects well into the next decade,” he said.
Polly Billington, chief executive officer of the UK100 group of local government leaders, said the review showed that local authorities must play a leading role in implementing policy.
“This independent review confirms what UK100 has been saying for years: Local authorities are the key to achieving the UK’s net zero goals,” she said.
The group welcomes “the recommendation to end the disjointed mess of short-term, competitive local authority funding pots. This move would help communities maximize the economic and social benefits of net zero while making the most cost-effective use of resources,” she added.
“Another day, another Conservative MP calling out the total failure of this government over many years to act with the urgency and consistency that the climate crisis demands,” British Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero Ed Miliband said.
“Chris Skidmore is right about the fact that 13 years of delay, dither and a refusal to go all-in on a green energy sprint under the Conservatives is depriving our country of the economic opportunities climate action offers,” he said.
“The tragedy is that Rishi Sunak is making things even worse. He is a fossil fuel prime minister in a renewable age who has never understood what this report reaffirms — that going green is pro-business, pro-worker and is a vital part of growing our economy,” he added.
As it has striven toward superiority in most measures of the Asian military balance, China is now ready to challenge the undersea balance of power, long dominated by the United States, a decisive advantage crucial to its ability to deter blockade and invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). America expended enormous treasure to develop the technology, logistics, training, and personnel to emerge victorious in the Cold War undersea struggle against the former Soviet Union, and to remain superior today; the US is not used to considering the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
The annual summit of East Asia and other events around the ASEAN summit in October and November every year have become the most important gathering of leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, as Laos is the chair of ASEAN, it was privileged to host all of the ministerial and summit meetings associated with ASEAN. Besides the main summit, this included the high-profile East Asia Summit, ASEAN summits with its dialogue partners and the ASEAN Plus Three Summit with China, Japan and South Korea. The events and what happens around them have changed over the past 15 years from a US-supported, ASEAN-led
Lately, China has been inviting Taiwanese influencers to travel to China’s Xinjiang region to make films, weaving a “beautiful Xinjiang” narrative as an antidote to the international community’s criticisms by creating a Potemkin village where nothing is awry. Such manipulations appear harmless — even compelling enough for people to go there — but peeling back the shiny veneer reveals something more insidious, something that is hard to ignore. These films are not only meant to promote tourism, but also harbor a deeper level of political intentions. Xinjiang — a region of China continuously listed in global human rights reports —
President William Lai’s (賴清德) first Double Ten National Day address had two strategic goals. For domestic affairs, the speech aimed to foster consensus on national identity, strengthen the country and unite the Taiwanese against a Chinese invasion. In terms of cross-strait relations, the speech aimed to mitigate tensions in the Taiwan Strait and promote the coexistence and prosperity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China and the Republic of China (ROC). Lai is taking a different stance from previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations on domestic political issues. During his speech, he said: “The PRC could not be the
RSS