When it comes to announcing its targets without the slightest idea of how to achieve them, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is world beating. Wisely or otherwise, DESNZ set its key target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Initially, emissions fell, largely because the UK exported carbon-emitting industries. In March 2022, the Public Accounts Committee report concluded: “The government has unveiled a plan without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation. The government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself.” In other words, it had no plan.
In July 2022, Mr Justice Holgate ruled, in effect, that DESNZ had no plan to achieve its objective and they should prepare and publish one by 31st March 2023. In the event, no plan emerged and on 15th November 2023, the Public Accounts Committee reported on how DESNZ was managing innovation and its contribution to achieving net zero carbon 2050. It found it to be short-termist, muddled and had no central management.
DESNZ has published numerous aspirational papers on what might be achieved but none bring the whole picture together or explain what the overall energy/electricity needs will be or how they will be generated without carbon emissions. On low wind and sun days, renewables and nuclear will be inadequate and so fossil fuels, with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) will be needed into the foreseeable future. For example this month, wind generation reached a low of 0.4GW (1.7% of demand). Nominal installed wind capacity is over 27GW. As of now, CCUS is commercially unproven in the power sector, so it is all a bit speculative.
At the 8th November Oral Evidence session with the ESNZ Select Committee, the Secretary of State claimed “we’re now spending £20 billion on carbon capture and storage”. Clearly net zero carbon will be impossible without CCUS. DESNZ claims the UK will be the world leaders in that and has set up a council to achieve it: “Commissioning of the first CCUS facility from the mid-2020s would help the UK to meet our ambition of having the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently.” The £20bn is possible in the future, but not currently and needs clarifying. It is not clear whether this should be government funding. Surely the responsibility for, and costs of, decarbonising fossil fuel emissions should lie with the fossil fuel generators.
The creation of the UK’s CCUS market lies with its Council, inaugurated in 2018. Its last meeting was on 27th June. Some 45 or so members, including the Director, CCUS, DESNZ and his five deputies, discussed bureaucratic matters, like reporting lines, with little evidence of practical haste. The idea of having “a timeline to understand industry progress” was introduced. Fancy that! Things would move a lot faster if they were left to the fossil fuel companies.
The overall picture is that DESNZ in inadequate. What do its 8,498 staff actually do? Probably around 44% work from home. The ESNZ Select Committee held a brief Inquiry into what DESNZ actually does. The new Secretary of State was not asked how the 2050 targets might be achieved, so it might be described as a soft ride but other ESNZ Committee inquiries are addressing those issues and will be reporting next year. The bottom line is that we have this vast number of people in DESNZ, their main target is achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and, after years of prodding, have still not produced a plan, never mind a decent one, to achieve it.
UK industry is back-peddling on CCUS as they wait to see how tough the post-election Government will be on CO2 emitters. The current Government seems to be supporting this by allowing the Emissions Trading Scheme to decline in effectiveness as evidenced by the UK’s falling carbon price, in sharp contrast to the rising carbon prices in other countries. The Sunak Government seems to have thrown in the towel on tackling climate change and will, I imagine, keep a low profile at the upcoming COP.