James Dyson may not be everyone’s cup of tea. His resiting of manufacturing from Malmesbury to Malaysia in 2002 was regarded by some as a cynical betrayal of the local workforce. But he’s right on the money in making the complaint last week that the UK government has backed the bankers to the hilt while ignoring the manufacturing sector. Specifically, said the bagless vacuum cleaner billionaire, ministers should back large projects that could help tackle environmental problems as well as encourage young people to take up engineering.
The UK government is now mounting a big environmental drive in the run up to December's Copenhagen climate change conference. By its own middle-range projections, the UK faces average summer temperatures between two and six degrees warmer by the 2080s, over a fifth less summer rainfall in the South East; 16 percent more winter rainfall in the North West; and sea level rises of 36cm. Speaking hours after Dyson, prime minister Gordon Brown said global emissions must peak by 2020 and developed countries must agree to reduce their emissions by 80 per cent to allow developing countries room for growth.
This is the direction set out in the Climate Change Act last November. It won't be enough. If you believe the US academic Roger Pielke, the Act "is flawed and comprised of unrealistic and unobtainable targets," he says in a paper published earlier this month in Environmental Research Letters.
Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, says no one knows how fast a major economy can decarbonise, so policy must focus less on targets and timetables that no one can be sure of reaching, and more on the tangible process for achieving goals. These include the development of clean technologies that will be crucial in the decarbonising process. Back to Sir James.
Pielke says countries seeking to decrease carbon emissions have essentially only four options: reducing their population; cutting back economic activity; taking positive steps to increase energy efficient technologies; or expanding the role of less carbon intensive energy sources.
Two of these are out. No government wants depopulation or reducing wealth generation. So Pielke argues that setting objectives for efficiency gains in specific economic sectors and for the expansion of carbon-free energy supplies would be a first step in the right direction to make the UK a world-leader in the actual practice of carbon policy.
Looking at the targets set in the Act, the UK government would have to achieve annual decarbonisation rates in excess of 4 or 5 per cent over coming decades to counteract expected population and economic growth.
To achieve these targets the UK would have to become as carbon efficient as France by no later than 2015. This "would require a level of effort comparable to the building and implementation of about 30 new nuclear power plants in the UK in the next six years. It took France about 20 years to decarbonise to its current level, largely due to its investment in nuclear energy."
As Pielke concludes, “Given the magnitude of the challenge and the pace of action, it would not be too strong a conclusion to suggest that the UK Climate Act has failed even before it has gotten started. It seems likely that the Climate Change Act will have to be revisited by Parliament or simply ignored by policy makers. Achievements of its targets does not appear a realistic option.”
The Climate Change Committee is already dragging its heels. It is not expected to present a specific decarbonisation policy roadmap until December this year. Nothing will happen under the Act before 2010 at the earliest. For many hoping government action to stimulate the low-carbon manufacturing economy, that may well be too late.
Categories: Commentary ,
17 March 2010
16 March 2010
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