How to Crisis-Proof Climate Action

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(Bloomberg) – The new UK government is unlikely to abandon climate targets, even if it serves a climate-skeptical wing within the Conservative Party, says Bryony Worthington, a member of the House of Lords.

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The UK has a legal obligation to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and must meet the interim emissions targets set in the Climate Change Act 2008. The bill passed with just three MPs voting against and 463 in favour. Since then, the law has survived and has even been strengthened in the face of the financial crisis, Brexit and the pandemic-related recession. But rising energy bills and inflation pose a real risk to these climate targets today: Prime Minister Liz Truss, who took office as Prime Minister last week, has included a review of the UK’s net-zero target in her first actions.

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“Reviewing net zero is actually not a bad idea,” says Worthington, a writer on the Climate Change Act, in a discussion on Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast. “It doesn’t hurt us to keep asking ourselves: are we doing this as efficiently as possible?”

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Worthington spoke to Zero about the importance of climate legislation, how to make it crisis-proof and why the UK’s climate targets remain and may even become more aggressive. This is an edited and condensed version of the highlights from Worthington’s interview.

You can listen to Worthington’s full conversation below, and read a full transcript here. Subscribe to Zero on Apple, Spotify and Google.

Akshat Rathi: Liz Truss has been the new prime minister for just over a week and her most pressing challenge is to coordinate the government’s response to record high energy prices. What would you do if you were prime minister?

Bryony Worthington: Fortunately, we’re in a situation where the solutions to climate change, air quality, and high energy bills are the same: use less energy and use more clean energy. All arrows point in the same direction. So I ran a massive campaign to insulate houses to make them less leaky and doubled down on providing clean power sources and started building. Now Truss got that last bit right, but for some reason she may end up building more oil and gas. This is a wrong solution.

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Akshat: She also promised to cap energy prices and gave the energy companies a kind of blank check.

Bryony: We’ll have to pay that back at some point, whether it’s through higher taxes or a poorer credit rating. We simply do not know what the consequences of this major market intervention will be.

But energy prices are a difficult problem because we are part of a global market. We get around 45% of our gas from our own sources in the North Sea. But we cannot control the prices of this gas. These companies charge what they can get. We really need to find other sources like offshore wind where the UK is the Saudi Arabia of the wind. We’re getting better at harnessing the wind with more and more efficient turbines, and have even made renewable energy a revenue stream. But politically it is a simple message to say that we will get every last drop of oil and gas out of the North Sea. That’s not the long-term answer.

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Akshat: The Climate Change Act has weathered all sorts of crises: the financial crisis, Brexit, several prime ministers and a pandemic-related recession. But now it feels really bad. Do you think high energy bills pose a challenge to the law?

Bryony: I don’t think so. Why do we have a problem? Because fossil fuel prices are volatile. Also, there is no real scenario in which Britain is fossil fuel independent. So the answer is more domestic renewable sources such as offshore wind power, using the transmission grid across Europe which acts like a battery, and nuclear power – which will not come online quickly, but nuclear power together with renewables will be the ultimate solution.

Akshat: Climate laws, once introduced, can help hold the government accountable. Laws are also made by the state. Could the law be abolished by the new government?

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Bryony: It could be, but the government has its hands full with other issues. Why would you choose this fight right now? Climate protection enjoys great support from the public and from many members of parliament. We all know that fossil fuels are the main cause of the problem of high energy bills. I don’t think abolition of the act will be high on anyone’s agenda.

Akshat: Why did the Prime Minister order a review of how Britain will then reach the net zero targets?

Bryony: Checking net zero isn’t actually a bad idea. The government has made a number of market interventions to support renewable energy and gas peak power plants. It will soon do more to support funding for nuclear power and carbon capture. I suspect what the government wants to do is look at how these all relate to each other. It doesn’t hurt us to keep asking ourselves: are we doing this as efficiently as possible?

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Akshat: And you don’t think that flatters the climate skeptical voices in British politics?

Bryony: It could have been, but I don’t think it is. The office has moved. There are many more people today who advocate the benefits of net zero goals. Most electric companies today have a portfolio of diverse assets, not just fossil fuels. Many of them only have clean energy plants. They will make sure their investments don’t go haywire. So I think the review will be good because it will carve out the evidence. And that’s probably what the government needs.

Read the full transcript of this episode. Watch more episodes of Zero and subscribe to Apple, Spotify and Google to hear new episodes every Thursday.