Newington's Nick Jeyarajah examines the environmental and climate change policies pledged by the parties ahead of Thursday's election.
“The science demands it; the evidence is before you; we must start at once; there is no time to lose”.
This election comes at the close of the year in which the UK Government acknowledged a stark reality and declared a climate emergency. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the official environmental advisor to the Government, states that reducing carbon emissions quickly enough to avert climatic and ecological catastrophe will require fundamental changes by “the whole of government and to every level of government in the UK.” The next government will take up this inescapable responsibility. So do our parties have serious policies for saving the planet?
Intent
By incorporating the framework of a Green New Deal into their manifesto, Labour are keen to communicate that they have grasped the enormity of the situation. They, echoed by the SNP, Lib Dems and the Greens, place their plans for a Green Industrial Revolution front and centre of their manifesto, with the environment touching on many parts of their overall policy programme. The Conservative Government legislated earlier this year to make reaching net zero by 2050 a legally binding target. This makes it into the manifesto headline bullet points, although the detail isn’t discussed until page 43.
Energy
The CCC has stated that, to reach net zero greenhouse gasses by 2050, supply of low-carbon electricity must quadruple by 2050. On this, the Conservative focus is on research and development; they have pledged a £1 billion Ayrton Fund to develop affordable clean energy, plus £500 million to help energy-intensive industries move to low-carbon techniques. Their aim for generating 40GW of energy through offshore wind turbines by 2030 meets the CCC’s requirement of 75GW by 2050, equivalent to 7,500 new turbines.
Labour is promising 7,000 such turbines, plus 2,000 more on shore, and 22,000 football pitches of solar panels, all coming under the banner of achieving 90% of electricity and 50% of heat from renewables and low-carbon sources by 2030. Alongside these are plans to install a windfall tax on oil companies and make all news homes zero carbon. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats commit to 80% of power coming from renewables and all new cars being electric by 2030.
While the Conservatives and Labour support nuclear power, the SNP oppose it – the Liberal Democrats stay silent on it altogether. In terms of power storage, Labour commit to building three gigafactories, while the Lib Dems and Conservatives reference innovations in storage without setting out plans.
Trees, trees, trees
The CCC says the UK must plant 1.5 billion new trees by 2050, or 50 million a year, to meet our carbon targets. Labour steal the afforestation headlines with their pledge to plant two billion trees by 2040, which translates to roughly 100 million a year. The Greens aim for 700 million trees by 2030, keeping them in line with CCC aims, with the Lib Dems similarly promising 60 million per year. The Tories are promising to reach “an additional 75,000 acres of trees a year by the end of the next Parliament.” Plans for how any of this will be achieved are hard to find.
Land use, carbon capture, and air quality
In the context of the CCC’s assertion that carbon capture “is a necessity, not an option,” the Conservatives’ £800 million pledge to build the first fully deployed carbon capture storage cluster by the mid-2020s looks a particularly impressive policy and is more than any other party promises. The Tories also promise to set “strict new laws on air quality,” while the topic only occurs once in Labour’s manifesto (in relation to airport expansion).
Although one-fifth of agricultural land must shift to alternative uses that support emissions reduction (such as afforestation, biomass production and peatland restoration), the issue is conspicuously absent from the main manifestos, with the Greens referencing the requirement without laying out plans.
“Greater urgency”
The climate emergency is a political issue that is at once distant yet immediate, existential yet material, global yet local. That the issue has risen up the agenda of each main party is a sign of progress, but climate campaigners will not yet be convinced waiting for policy action to match ambitious rhetoric and spending pledges.
The CCC states: “A net-zero greenhouse gases target is not credible unless policy is ramped up significantly. Delivery must progress with far greater urgency.” It is imperative that whoever the next government is rises to meet this challenge.
