10 Point Plan for green recovery?

Ahead of the ratifying its Paris Agreement targets (NDCs – Nationally Determined Targets) on 12th December, the UK government have released its ’10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’.

Top of the list is power in the form of offshore wind, hydrogen and nuclear. Transport is highlighted through electric vehicles – and the headline-grabbing phasing out of combustion engines by 2030 – public transport, cycling and walking, and, the elusive ones, ‘Jet Zero’ and shipping. The big emitter, home and business heating, is covered via insulation and heat pumps. Finally, carbon capture and storage development, ‘nature’ (tree planting and conservation), and green innovation.

Conspicuous by its absence in the overview was no reference to ‘climate change’ and, instead, ‘net zero’. Also ignored was urban air pollution and, instead, the Conservative-friendly ‘nature’.

Carbon brief covers the range of media reaction, and the tempering by the Chancellor’s spending review this week, which cut foreign aid (which may hamper beneficiary countries from investing in their own green revolution and sully the UK’s influence) and pledged a big spend on road building.

Although Corunavirus may have caused emissions to fall for a while it now threatens the aeroplane’s major alternative, Eurostar, which is currently running at 1 percent of its usual capacity and is asking the government for the same emergency deal as airlines. Covid-19 is also, according to a government adviser in a meeting CCL attended this week, causing an amplification of short termism by government, who now approaches policy on a week-by-week basis – worrying for the kind of longterm vision required to fix climate change.

Meanwhile, the Climate Coalition is drumming up support for its own Ten Point Plan, aimed at COP26 (but no mention of a carbon price) as is ZeroC which launched its declaration in favour of a carbon charge.