Is Boris’ Ten Point Plan to a Low-Carbon Future 28 Years Too Late?
December 2020
In November 2020, the UK Government, realising that much tougher action on climate change needs to be adopted, published, The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. From a vantage point of 28 years ago, when sustainability issues were showing themselves to be a burgeoning problem through the Rio Earth Summit, there was very little interest, let alone political will, to take meaningful mitigating action. If this plan had been drawn up then, what an amazing positive prospect that would have presented. The issue we have now though is that we have eaten into 28 years of our remaining carbon expenditure budgets, the ones which we hope will allow us to avoid catastrophic climate change, and the challenge of meeting those targets is a lot harder to do now than it was back then. Does this plan go far enough? Will it create the green shift we need to achieve true socio, economic and environmental sustainability?
As soon as it was published, environmental campaigners decreed this new green plan did not go far enough. Some highlighted that the plan’s £5 billion budget was witheringly small when compared to the contemporary road building budget of £27 billion and that this underlines how reluctant Government is to not rock the business-as-usual boat too much. Indeed, they are trying to sell the vision by suggesting we can keep our lifestyles more or less as they are, but all our trappings of convenience will be powered by greener technologies,
“We will use this energy to carry on living our lives, running our cars, buses, trucks and trains, ships and planes, and heating our homes while keeping bills low.”
The plan is predicated on the notion, “…to build back better”. That is of course driven by the economic compression of the Coronavirus pandemic. It also invokes one of the other key commitments of the Government’s manifesto, to utilise this green shift as a driver for “levelling up the country”. Its architects identify it as a Green Industrial Revolution, aligning its’ heritage to the first industrial revolution, some 200 years ago, which, as we were all taught at school, is proudly attributed as a UK-led innovation.
So, what is the plan?
The plan consists of the following strategic sections of activity and whilst there are some sustainability issues which do not get a mention, the overall breadth of policy approach is to be commended.
Point 1
Advancing Offshore Wind
Point 2
Driving the Growth of Low Carbon Hydrogen
Point 3
Delivering New and Advanced Nuclear Power
Point 4
Accelerating the Shift to Zero Emission Vehicles
Point 5
Green Public Transport, Cycling and Walking
Point 6
Jet Zero and Green Ships
Point 7
Greener Buildings
Point 8
Investing in Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage
Point 9
Protecting Our Natural Environment
Point 10
Green Finance and Innovation
Point 1
Advancing Offshore Wind
Kicking off with offshore wind is an easy one. For the UK, offshore wind holds the promise of a lot of quick wins and it is politically is easier to sell than some other alternative technologies. As an island nation we do have a lot of coast, large areas of surrounding shallow seas and an estimated three-quarters of the available European wind resource. This is big engineering which not only creates jobs for the manufacturing and installation phases but also for the not inconsiderable ongoing maintenance of the arrays. The plan suggests support for up 60,000 jobs, securing around £20 billion of private investment and savings of 21MtCO2e (metric tonnes of CO2 equivalence for all greenhouse gas emissions). It is interesting that onshore wind and solar get a tiny mention, being eligible for Contract for Difference (CfD) finance.
Notably in David MacKay’s book, Sustainability Without the Hot Air, published in 2009 which looked at a number of energy scenarios for the UK, His Plan G, the one most heavily reliant on wind energy, assumed a total wind energy sector of around 80GW.[i] The new plan has a target for 40GW of offshore wind energy.
Point 2
Driving the Growth of Low Carbon Hydrogen
Low Carbon Hydrogen is more of a gamble. Much of the technology is still theory and it will likely be very costly to roll out even once the technical solutions are available. Hyrdogen fuel might be part of a heating mix for residential and non-residential buildings complimenting electrically driven heat pumps. Heat pumps are expensive, particularly ground source heat pumps and the cheaper air-source heat pumps are not effective at delivering domestic hot water in the colder months. In fact, until grid electricity is more completely decarbonised, super-efficient gas boilers are probably more carbon beneficial than most heat pump installations. Hydrogen fuel might also be a way of replacing fossil fuels for use in sea and air travel.
Point 3
Delivering New and Advanced Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is part of the plan. This is recognition of the fact that we need, “something easily turn-off-and-onable…and a big something”, as David MacKay termed it in his book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air.[ii] We need a reserve of base-load power to kick-in when the ambient sun and wind energy available is low and when demand potentially could be high. That reserve then needs to switch off quickly if say the wind starts to blow and the clouds part. This is coping with demand lulls and slews and the plan thinks nuclear could play a key role in providing this turn-off-and-onable base load. The Government is already pursuing large-scale nuclear (subject to value for money) but is interested in looking at small modular reactors. Such small-scale reactors are seen as being factory manufactured and then assembled on site. Notably there are no MW targets of delivery confirmed in the plan.
Point 4
Accelerating the Shift to Zero Emission Vehicles
With zero emission vehicles, the Government has had a bit of a dramatic and welcome rethink and brought forward the previous phasing out date of petrol and diesel burning cars by 10 years to 2030. Hybrids will be allowed for sale up until 2035 which probably recognises that some communities may not get the car-charging infrastructure in place for many years to come. The Government see this as one of the more obvious linkages of job creation and greener forms of living. It is also one of the ways to most quickly improve the air quality of our towns and cities. There is a high-profile inquest ongoing whereby a nine-year-old girl died in 2013 from respiratory issues linked to local air quality around her home near the South Circular Road in the London Borough of Lewisham. China has already transitioned all its buses and taxis to electric only and it is illegal to have a petrol driven motorbike in Chinese cities.
Electric vehicles though are not a panacea for a sustainable economy. A nation reliant on EV-cars will massively increase the demand for electricity, thus making the energy generating strategy that much more critical and more challenging to achieve. We must not lose sight of the environmental damage of mining the minerals needed for battery manufacture. There is talk of scouring the seabeds of the globe to find these rare earth resources, a prospect of potentially horrifying environmental consequences that we can barely begin to predict.
Point 5
Green Public Transport, Cycling and Walking
It was H.G. Wells who once said,
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
It is heartening to see the fifth point of the plan is green public transport and specifically cycling and walking, something the plan calls, “active travel”. We all know that Boris Johnson is a keen advocate of the bicycle and here the plan has credible strategies for really positive change. There is a proposal to create a new body to help deliver the implementation, Active Travel England.
The plan acknowledges the link to improving not only air quality with a strong walking and cycling transport strategy but also capitalising on the lateral benefits of improving mental and physical well-being when participating in such ‘active travel’.
Most of the budgeting announced in the plan seems to be earmarked in this section for investments in public transport, notably enhancements and renewals of the rail network and buses. Surely, we should put more focus in the plan to look at ways in which society can operate with far less reliance on physical transport. Towns, villages and cities need long-term regeneration to operate more completely on pedestrian and cycle modes of transport – liveable and walkable conurbations are often the most desirable places to live.
The Covid lockdowns have woken us up to the potentials of remote working (see my earlier blog, Teleworking Cities of Tomorrow). As much of this plan would have been written during the Covid-crisis, it is disappointing that there is not more recognition of the need to rethink how we will use the rail and road networks in future. It may well be that we should not maintain some aspects of the rail network as we have been used to. It just won’t be financially viable if so many of us are not going to commute as much as we once did. Perhaps commuter trains should be reengineered to work as two coach units rather than predominantly four or five. This would make them more responsive to lighter demand and afford much-needed savings in expended energy. There is short term concern about the viability of the traditional central business districts of our major cities which have operated like ghost towns since late March 2020. It should be argued that this zonal planning model is no longer fit for purpose. Such places were devoid of life anyway on weekends which belied the fact that they were unhealthy areas of urban fabric. There is a strong parallel here to large-scale monocrop farming. We need far more biodiversity in our farming practices and our towns and cities should be reinvigorated to be a healthier mix of living, working and learning in close proximity.
Point 6
Jet Zero and Green Ships
The plan attempts to tackle aviation and shipping which are very challenging nuts to crack in terms of making them more honestly fit within our carbon reduction budgets. Most of the ideas seem to be based around the notion of developing hydrogen fuel at scale for both ships and planes. The UK has built much of its recent economic activity around aviation both in terms of manufacturing of planes and aero engines and in operating airlines and airports. Many decades ago, the UK was once a great maritime power too with large fleets of merchant and naval vessels and large parts of the economy geared around their design, manufacture and salvage. For an island nation, it is odd that we gave up so completely on shipping. Poor industrial relations and lack of management vision and investment were largely to blame. So, it is interesting to see a “Clean Maritime Demonstration Programme” being touted in the plan and being largely based around emerging hydrogen fuel cell technology. The energy and pollution costs of shipping often get missed off in people’s comprehension of societal environmental impact but they are significant. Jon Stone in the Independent writes,
“Sea transport accounts for around 3 per cent of the UK's emissions, but is currently not included in climate targets, despite repeated recommendations from the government's own experts that it should be.”[iii]
We must remember that the production of hydrogen fuel will release carbon. Is it feasible that we can make marine and aviation transport carbon neutral?
Perhaps in a post-Brexit UK, the economy should be made less reliant on globalised supply chains and look to bring back some of the industry it has outsourced over the past half century. However, to achieve a net-zero carbon economy, this plan needs to think about carrot and stick strategies for reducing our addiction to non-essential travel.
Point 7
Greener Buildings
For years, the UK Government has looked to the built environment sector as the low-hanging fruit of energy saving and the seventh point of the plan is Greener Buildings. If we step back for a moment to understand why, we can appreciate that by reducing the demand for energy by for instance making buildings more energy efficient to heat, we can reduce the amount of energy we need to find from green or fossil fuel sources.
There is no mention of the Government’s earlier slogan of “build, build, build”, but policy makers need to catch up with the notion that the very process of constructing buildings is a massive carbon impact in its own right. The industry itself is getting to grips with how to model and tweak what is known as ‘embodied carbon’ in their design work, but it is complex and excruciating stuff. The idea that we can build ourselves out of a deep economic recession, fills those in the know about embodied carbon with environmental dread. Organisations like Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) have described this get Britain building knee jerk as a “carbon burp”. Moreover, the recent Government white paper looking at reforms to speed up the planning system broadly in favour of development appears completely at odds with the checks and balances needed to ensure that developments are designed fit for the environmental challenges of the next century. Of course, there is a crisis in the supply of housing but that can largely be put down to a lack public investment in social housing, and let us be honest with ourselves, that is a result of the 35 year old but still popular ‘right to buy’ legislation. Beyond that is the biggest elephant in the room, at some point leaders have to start tackling a global and local managed population decent but that is a topic too big to tackle in this review of the Ten Point Plan.
Point Seven is worryingly light on discussion around the upgrading of existing building stock. It is that old chestnut of an issue that two thirds of the buildings we will have in 2050, already exist. Policy makers, it would appear, are still reeling and scratching their heads over the ill-fated Green Deal programme. It is very hard to get people to invest in energy efficiency measures on their properties as the pay-back period is usually far longer than they can expect to be in the property. Moreover, technically sound eco-retrofit is not any easy to thing to get right and many architects are reluctant to design such projects as the risks and fees are not commensurate with the project’s design complexities, especially post-Grenfell. It remains to be seen if the new PAS2035 standard will help improve matters in this regard (See my earlier blog, Top Tips for Eco-Retrofit).
Point 8
Investing in Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage
Point eight concerns itself with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS). There is a high-tech version of carbon capture which is a technology which is not yet fully proven at scale and there is a low-tech version that we are all familiar with, growing trees. Here the plan talks about the establishment of four industrial clusters it coins, SuperPlaces which are intended to bring together carbon capture and hydrogen projects as part of a new business model. In short, carbon capture will help mitigate ongoing fossil fuel burning, part of the mix when equating a ‘carbon neutral’ status for development. As an economic strategy it is trying to position the UK’s industry to be competitive within an anticipated global net-zero carbon economy. The goal is to capture up to 10Mt of carbon dioxide per year by 2030.
Point 9
Protecting Our Natural Environment
It is disappointing there is no overt acknowledgment in Point 9, which itself deals with the natural environment, that there is a bio-diversity collapse going on around us. The report comes across more as a strategy to conserve the romantic notion of the rural landscapes of Britain. That said there are some good strategic plans to be proactive in safeguarding and restoring habitats, rewilding and creating new national landscapes (new national parks and AONB’s), with some post-Brexit planning in the form of replacing EU land management funding.
What should be acknowledged, and which also relates back to the planning system, is how in recent years simple building projects have been bogged down in sometimes hugely expensive ecological surveys which hardly ever result in a development being stopped or in producing significant net gain of biodiversity. What should be included is an overt project to buy back farmland which is proven to be worked in environmentally damaging ways and rewild these as nature reserves of regional significance. The funding for this could be levied from planning applicants but this should not be seen as additional cost. Whilst some types of ecological surveys are hugely important, it is arguable that some are more to do with box ticking in accordance with the survey standards (typically BS42020) and do not necessarily lead to ecological enhancements. In such cases it would be more meaningful for planning application to contribute towards a form of eco-land banking towards increasing eco-system services.
Industrialised farming practices should be scrutinised and assessed in terms of overall environmental impacts, including use of fossil fuels, fertilisers, pesticides and land use biodiversity. There should then be a financial carrot and stick framework to help level up the costs of more environmental farming techniques.
Point 10
Green Finance and Innovation
The 10 Point Plan must be commended for projecting positivity in its’ suit of policy proposals and Point 10 completes the plan with ideas to create the green technology innovation and the incentives for free-market investment into green sectors of the economy. It proposes a Net Zero Innovation Portfolio which effectively will translate each strand of the 10 Point Plan into commercialisation. In particular it highlights the need to boost development of the riskier technologies like direct air carbon capture and that ever-tantalising prospect of nuclear fusion energy generation.
To help deliver the green industrial revolution, it recognises the need to upskill the workforce and propose the launch of the Green Jobs Taskforce to help achieve this.
Perhaps though this plan needs to be bolder. Governance of the free-market sector needs to step-up to steer consumer-focused industries away from overtly polluting and energy hungry product manufacture and service delivery as well as root out wasteful packaging practices. The last three decades have proved that private sector industry alone rarely does it of their own volition. 28 years on from the Rio Earth Summit, we no longer have the luxury of time to see if business can be left to do the right thing.
[i] MacKay, David, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, UIT Cambridge Ltd, 2009. Pg. 210
[ii] MacKay, David, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, UIT Cambridge Ltd, 2009. Pg. 186
[iii] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-urges-government-to-include-international-shipping-emissions-in-co2-targets/ar-BB1bsOBG?item=personalization_enabled%25253Afalse&%2525253Bfdhead=intl30ip
