UK falling short on carbon targets

Dr Nina Skorupska CBE, Chief Executive of the REA has answered questions posed to her by the Energy and Climate Change Committee. She advised that the UK is not currently on course to meet its fourth carbon budget and that the policy gap needed to be addressed.

The Committee was told that the Government has introduced thirteen policies which had had a detrimental effect on energy policy changes. They have further restricted the growth of renewables in the UK.

When asked about the fifth carbon budget Dr. Skorupska argued that the CCC needed to re-evaluate energy storage as they “missed out on how fast this was moving.” The CCC has “vastly underestimated energy storage and yet reinforces the dash for gas and high prices linked with expensive nuclear.” On solar deployment Dr. Skorupska told the Committee:

The government has just “revised its assessments of 13GW of solar being deployed by 2020, I’m afraid that’s going to happen by the end of March!” On low carbon transport Dr. Skorupska told the Committee:

“We have the renewable transport fuels group as part of the REA…Our members have invested over £1bn in infrastructure for delivering bio-based fuels to meet that 10% renewable energy transport target, and it’s not been helped by the activities of the government to date. It’s languished, it’s fell behind.” On carbon pricing Dr. Skorupska told the Committee:

"We need a properly functioning market… the EU ETS has been a quite drastic failure in terms of giving right signals for carbon prices and causing people to change behaviour. It has been the intervention of the government, in a positive way,… that has caused behavioural changes.” Following the evidence session, James Court, Head of Policy and External Affairs at the REA said:

“The country faces declining electricity supplies and is lagging behind in its urgent decarbonisation goals. All the while, since the election the government has been making it more difficult to deploy renewables such as solar, biomass, and biogas which can be deployed cheaply and quickly.” “The Committee on Climate Change holds an important role in forming energy policy and could clearly tell the government: renewables are critical for security, for decarbonisation, and should be supported now.”