U.K. Likely to Miss Carbon Emissions Targets, Committee Says

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. will miss its carbon-emissions targets even in the best-case scenario where all of its green initiatives go exactly to plan, according to the Committee on Climate Change.

The nation will probably exceed it by at least 3 percent, or 65 million tons of CO2, a report from the advisory group sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said on Wednesday.

“There’s a real urgency,” John Gummer, chairman of the committee, said at a briefing in London. “There is a very great deal more to do and to understand. Our job is to say what’s necessary to deliver the ends which we have required by law.”

The U.K. has legally-binding targets known as carbon budgets to set out a plan to gradually reduce pollution. The fourth carbon budget seeks to cut emissions by 51 percent by the middle of the next decade compared with 1990 levels. It’s on track to meet its target for 2020.

Although Europe has long been at the forefront of climate change policy and clean energy, overly ambitious plans are beginning to fray. Germany probably won’t meet its 2020 goal of cutting emissions by two-fifths, according to a recent policy paper. Ireland and Belgium are also likely to exceed their limits.

Although the U.K. has announced a number of initiatives to lower its greenhouse gas emissions such as a plan to phase out gasoline and diesel-burning cars by 2040, how it will actually implement these plans still hasn’t been made clear, according to the report.

The Committee on Climate Change also highlighted delays in building the controversial nuclear power project Hinkley Point and lower investment in carbon capture and storage as two key risks to reducing emissions on time.

“The history of the project and the history of nuclear in the U.K. would mean you’d have to have some concerns with the timetable,” said Adrian Gault, chief executive officer of the committee.

Hinkley Point has already been heavily criticized for its high price tag, which was recently raised from 18 billion pounds ($25 billion) to more than 20 billion pounds. If it’s not delivered on time, the U.K. will be using fossil fuel generation for longer than anticipated, leading to a potential overrun of emissions.

Coal and gas plants could continue to run if their pollution was curbed. The U.K. is allocating 100 million pounds to research carbon capture and storage. This move is a revival of a previous plan that was budgeting 1 billion pounds to develop the technology, but which was canceled in 2015. It should be “at least doubled” according to Gault.

“Carbon capture and storage is essential” to the U.K. meeting longer-term targets such as the ones outlined in the Paris climate agreement, Gummer said.

--With assistance from Mathew Carr

To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Hirtenstein in London at ahirtenstein@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Lars Paulsson

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