Is a fair transition to a low carbon economy possible?

Mike Childs

23 September 2011

One of the reasons I joined Friends of the Earth over 20 years ago was that it was an environmental group with a strong record of joining up social justice, development and environmental issues. This position has been maintained through the years.

And that's why we wanted to answer the question: can the UK shift to a low-carbon society operating within our share of a global carbon budget, in a way that doesn't unfairly impact on poorer households?

We've just published research investigating this, as I mentioned a couple of days ago. Today I want to talk about the findings in a bit more detail.

The starting point was to work out how much carbon the UK could emit up until 2050 to avoid dangerous climate. The answer - not very much, and much less than current Government plans - came from research we published in December 2010.

Changes

We then identified how quickly we could cut emissions through economic changes and ascertain whether doing this would reduce carbon enough to meet our 2050 target.

We used the Department of Energy and Climate Change's (DECC) 2050 Pathways model. This model - fun to play with if you're a geek like me - lets you select carbon-cutting measures in different sectors. These range from the straightforward to heroic, such as simple loft insulation to super insulation.

Ridiculously, the model doesn't tell you the total carbon released as a result so you must calculate that yourself. Also, it's clear that in some sectors the heroic efforts DECC describes are not very heroic at all, more a political compromise between government departments (for example, aviation is given a massive growth model). So, in a small number of sectors, we adapted the model to be more ambitious. The changes we modelled included:

• Domestic - All consumer electronics and home computing products are most energy-efficient with 75 per cent less energy per home for lighting and appliances. Average winter house temperature is maintained at 17oC (approximately the same as currently). Improvements in energy efficiency close to the maximum of what is physically possible. Energy for space heating is provided within the domestic and commercial sectors through 88 per cent electric (principally air-source and ground-source heat pumps), 11 per cent power station combined heat and power (CHP) and 1 per cent geothermal energy.
• Personal surface transport - A modal shift to public transport and cycling accounts for 36 per cent of all distance travelled by 2050 and travel by car accounts for only 62 per cent with increased car sharing (currently 84 per cent of trips are by car). Despite population growth, car passenger miles would be 5 per cent lower in 2050 than now. The majority of surface passenger transport is electrified. The total distance people travel remains the same as today's levels.
• Aviation - emissions in 2050 are half the 2007 level. This level can be reached by immediate annual reductions starting at minus 1.5 per cent per annum, increasing to minus 2.4 per cent in late 2020s and flattening off from 2030s onwards. This would require significantly fewer flights. The exact reduction is dependent on carbon efficiency gains in aviation.
• Heavy industry - a 40 per cent improvement in energy efficiency in heavy industry with electricity used for two-thirds of energy use and CCS in industry rolled out after 2025.
• Renewables - 10 times the current number of on-shore wind turbines and a massive growth in marine renewables with 17,000 wind turbines, mainly in the North Sea, 600km of new wave farms, mainly off North West Scotland beyond the Hebrides, and tidal energy significantly utilised. Much of this would produce excess electricity which could be used for export or for storage for long periods of low wind, typically seen in the winter (for example, as compressed hydrogen to be used with open cycle hydrogen turbines). All suitable domestic and non-domestic roofs and facades are used for solar PV with some land based installations.

We looked at the impact of extending the life of existing nuclear power plants but found this had little impact on emissions as they were simply competing with renewable energy.

Sadly, all the changes we modelled, which are pretty heroic given current trends as well as political and public will, still result in the carbon limit being significantly breached. This led us to conclude that not only would we need to cut emissions quickly but also develop technologies to take carbon out of the air.

Social justice

We then considered how to achieve these changes without disproportionately impacting on poorer households. Given the scale of change and resources available it was only possible to do this in a broad brush way. What we found was that:

• Impact on energy bills is a critical factor. Different modelling by DECC suggests that a rapid increase in renewables and energy efficiency will result in lower bills in 2020 than a business as usual approach. And this only assumes moderate increases in gas prices which is pretty unlikely. Modelling with higher gas prices would make a decarbonisation strategy even more attractive.
• Rural transport is a key issue. We recommended a focus on low carbon car share schemes and much better public transport.
• Cutting down on how much meat we eat - necessary to free up land to provide biomass for energy - would require the use of soft measures such as education on healthy diets but may be difficult to achieve.
• Reducing international aviation emissions could be driven by higher taxes which is an economically progressive solution. If this was thought unfair in terms of equality of opportunity, a rationing system could be considered.

Conclusion

We came to the conclusion that yes, it is possible for the UK to go low-carbon in a way that's fair for everyone who lives here. But that it will take a determined effort by government, businesses and individuals to do so. It will undoubtedly require decision-makers to stand up to vested interests such as the big 6 energy companies.

So, heroic changes and a determined effort to address social justice is the order of the day. Not so different from when I joined Friends of the Earth 20 years ago.