UK Carbon Budget: Five big bets that aim to hit net zero by 2050

The UK government has finally released the detailed calculations behind its plan to become net-zero by 2050. It provides a roadmap for how life in the UK will change in the years to come, assuming all goes according to plan.

This roadmap has been in the works for some time. The UK launched its first net-zero strategy for 2021, but importantly did not provide details on how much each policy would reduce emissions.the government has repeatedly refused new scientistWe request that these details be made public.

now, Carbon budget delivery planwas published on 30 March and provides a complete list of how the government expects individual policy measures to contribute to emissions reductions. Due to the uncertainties involved, these policies are essentially a big bet on the future of UK energy use, with hopes of putting the country on track towards net zero emissions by the end of the 2030s. doing.

new scientist We looked at the top five carbon reduction moves in UK plans that are expected to deliver 40% of the required emissions reductions by 2037, according to government estimates. But experts have expressed concern that the report’s calculations represent “hopeful policy decisions” rather than realistic projections.

Decarbonization power

The UK aims to decarbonize its electricity grid by 2035, deploying new nuclear power plants, massive offshore wind, hydrogen, solar and carbon capture technologies.

In total, this would reduce emissions by 2.7 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) annually from now to 2027, 6.7 MtCO2e between 2028 and 2032, and 11.2 MtCO2E between 2033 and 2037. expected.

Of all the big bets, this is probably the safest, says Jim Watson of University College London. But there are still risks, he said, such as uncertainty about new small modular reactors. “We don’t know what the timescales and costs will be until developers start building,” says Watson.

Creation of greenhouse gas removal business

Technologies to trap and store carbon dioxide are central to government programs. Alongside this decade-long plan to establish a carbon capture and storage ‘cluster’, the minister wants to foster a commercial market for these greenhouse gas removal technologies.

I ride this a lot. Carbon dioxide reductions by the greenhouse gas removal industry are projected to jump from 0.054 MtCO2e per year in 2023-2027 to 23.4 MtCO2e per year in 2033-2037.

But Stuart Hazeldine of the University of Edinburgh, UK, says greenhouse gas removal is still a nascent industry, mostly dominated by start-ups. He estimates that it could take a decade for the sector to expand dramatically, and warns that the government’s projections of development are “totally speculative.”

decarburization of steel

The steel industry accounts for about 14% of the UK’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, but the government could cut 10.3MtCO2e by electrifying the steelmaking process, using recycled steel and introducing hydrogen-powered steelmaking. I expect. UK annual carbon emissions from 2033 to 2037.

However, achieving such a large-scale industrial transformation is not easy. The UK has “not yet piloted new ‘green’ steelmaking technologies on a large scale and has not set a specific policy framework,” noted a UK parliamentary report for May 2022. .

Mass introduction of heat pumps

There are broadly two options for decarbonizing UK home heating, which accounts for about 14% of emissions. Either change the gas grid to run on hydrogen or switch the gas boilers to low-carbon heating like heat pumps.

The government’s official climate advisor, the Climate Change Commission, advocates a rapid increase in the number of heat pumps deployed. Under a “high electrification” scenario, where little or no hydrogen is used to heat homes, heat pump installations will rise from 55,000 installations per year in 2021 to 1.9 million by 2035. Go to Carbon Budget Delivery Plan.

But Richard Lowes of the Regulatory Support Project said current policies would not be enough to significantly increase deployments. The government needs to do more to encourage households to buy heat pumps, make the technology cheaper to run, and eventually ban new gas boilers, he says.

Electric car

With the sale of petrol and diesel cars banned by 2030, the government wants to accelerate the pace at which people switch to electric vehicles. On March 30, it detailed requirements for zero-emission vehicles to make up a percentage of manufacturers’ annual new car sales. This is expected to deliver an annual carbon reduction of 16MtCO2e by 2037.

To support this, the government aims to have 300,000 electric vehicle charging points installed across the UK by 2030, but data released in January showed that monthly It suggests that the number of installs should be increased by 288%.

big challenge

Despite the obstacles, Britain needs to achieve its ambitions. Even if all of her five big bets worked, the country would fall just short of her 2033-to-her 2037 carbon reduction target. The current shortfall is her 32 million tonnes of CO2, more than her yearly emissions from London. .

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