The move to net zero needs more than a White Paper
After a long wait, the government’s energy White Paper has finally arrived. It includes a bold promise to support up to 220,000 new green jobs and make substantial progress towards decarbonising our economy over the next decade.
But while it contains some positive signals, there is little indication in the White Paper that the government has truly grasped the scale or immediacy of the climate crisis, and has chosen instead to dodge the hard choices needed to get us to net zero.
Size and scope
Despite being more than two years in the making, the White Paper fails to match the scale and scope of the climate emergency. This is particularly clear in the section covering plans for the power sector.
As the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) indicated in their Sixth Carbon Budget report last week, power sector decarbonisation is a key priority and needs to be complete by 2035, in order to allow decarbonisation to proceed in other sectors.
Yet, the White Paper does not even set a date for power sector decarbonisation. And, in fact, the government admits that its proposed measures will get us less than half of the way to this goal.
The weaknesses of the White Paper are a consequence of the government’s persistent belief that the free market alone can deliver net zero and a green industrial revolution. But this is a costly myth. The fate of the UK’s offshore wind sector is proof of that. The current subsidy model has triggered a race to the bottom on price, at the expense of driving jobs overseas, lowering safety standards, and piling costs onto consumer energy bills.
The need for new nuclear
On nuclear, the White Paper is particularly disappointing. There is a pledge to continue talks on a funding model for Sizewell C, and an aspiration to get at least one more nuclear project to final investment decision by the end of the current parliament. This is welcome, but insufficient.
For all of the advances we have made in the capacity and costs of renewables, nuclear is critical for achieving net zero.
The CCC thinks 8GW of new nuclear are needed by 2035, the independent Energy Systems Catapult thinks 10GW is a low-regret option, and the government’s own modelling suggests 15-30GW of nuclear will be needed by 2050.
It is clear, then, that further plants beyond Hinkley C and Sizewell C are essential, and given the long lead times for nuclear projects, final decisions on size and location will need to be taken by mid-decade. But the White Paper offers little indication of how or when such decisions will be taken.
Just Transition
The White Paper is also light on how new, quality jobs will be created and on a Just Transition to help communities associated with traditional carbon industries move to low-carbon work.
Industrial Strategy – and decent, distributed jobs – needs to be at the heart of net zero. We’ve seen too much green wash already when it comes to promises of a new economic future.
Just take, for example, the failure to ensure the UK fully benefits from its tremendous offshore wind resources. New research suggests, for example, that every MW of offshore wind installed in Danish waters supports roughly five times more local jobs than a MW in UK waters. It is a worrying sign therefore that in the section on offshore wind, the White Paper makes no mention at all of UK jobs or UK content.
In a similar vein, the government does not appear to have grasped the scale of the impact that decarbonisation will have on the existing high-carbon workforce.
There are roughly 240,000 jobs connected to fossil energy supply at present, but the White Paper only talks about the North Sea Basin, and gives no indication of how the energy workforce will be consulted on a fair process of transition. In fact, the phrase ‘Just transition’ appears only once in the document, buried in a footnote.
Time is running short, and an urgent, comprehensive step-change is needed if a real roadmap to net zero is to materialise. Clearly 2020 has pushed the machinery of government to its limit, but we should not expect things to be much easier in the immediate years ahead, given the economic and ecological challenges we face.
As Prospect has argued before, a good step forward would be to give a broader range of key stakeholders, like unions, a bigger voice in net zero planning.
But, however we approach it, a real roadmap to net zero, one that includes a credible plan for delivering new nuclear, must be a central priority for government in 2021.
Sue Ferns is Prospect’s senior deputy general secretary
