UK aims to meet climate targets by boosting nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture

But critics say the government's planned day of announcements on tackling climate change has fallen far short of expectations

Ratcliffe on Soar power station near Nottingham. Campaigners say carbon capture projects distract from the need to move away from fossil fuels. PA

Carbon capture technology and boosts for offshore wind are at the centre of a plan to boost green investment and infrastructure called “Powering up Britain,” the UK government announced on Thursday.

New green hydrogen production projects feature prominently alongside plans for the establishment of Great British Nuclear.

The plan, which seeks to guarantee the UK's energy security, is also thought to be a way of countering the impact of the US Inflation Reduction Act.

“Access to cheap, abundant and reliable energy provide the foundation stone of a thriving economy with our homes and businesses relying on it to deliver our future prosperity,” Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps said.

He acknowledged that “we’re not there yet” on carbon capture technology, but said it could eventually “bring in a lot of money.”

Dozens of measures

Powering up Britain is more than 1,000 pages long, with dozens of measures from energy efficiency in households to large infrastructure projects.

The measures include:

· Within the carbon capture usage and storage sector, the first projects will enter into negotiations to be rolled out further into the UK's “industrial heartlands”.

· A £160 million ($197 million) fund will be launched to support port infrastructure projects involved with floating offshore wind generation.

· A £240 million Net-Zero Hydrogen Fund, which will back the first tranche of new green hydrogen production projects.

· The launch of Great British Nuclear to support the growth of the nuclear industry.

· Speeding up the planning process to attract investment so that wind and solar projects can be built more quickly.

· Rebranding the ECO+ scheme that seeks to upgrade 300,000 of the country’s least energy efficient homes, as the Great British Insulation Scheme.

· Investing more than £380 million into boosting electric vehicle (EV) charging points and infrastructure across the UK to support the roll-out of electric vehicles.

· Providing UK Export Finance with an extra £10 billion capacity to boost exports, including from the UK’s world leading clean growth sectors.

· Building a stable environment for businesses to invest and grow in the transition to electric vehicles and sustainable aviation fuel.

New jobs and opportunities

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “We have stepped in to shield people from its worst impacts by helping to pay around half the typical energy bill. But we are also stepping up to power Britain and ensure our energy security in the long term with more affordable, clean energy from Britain, so we can drive down energy prices and grow our economy.

“That’s why we’re driving forward plans to boost renewables, revive nuclear and build new thriving industries like carbon capture, which will in turn create good jobs across the country, provide new opportunities for British businesses at home and abroad, and maintain our world-leading action to reach net zero.”

Meanwhile, Mr Shapps said homes will move from gas to cleaner energy “over the next decade or two”.

He said: “We all know that electricity can be a big way to decarbonise, but we also know these are big changes. So this is not a sort of rip-out-your-boiler moment. This is a transition over a period of time to get to homes which are heated in a different way and also insulated much better.”

'Lacklustre'

But campaigners and critics suggested that ministers had missed the chance to pursue a more radical green industrial strategy, with Friends of the Earth labelling some of the announcements “lacklustre”.

Part of the Powering up Britain document contains a revamped outline of how the UK will achieve its climate targets, after the High Court ruled last July that the government's original net-zero plan was lacking detail.

Friends of the Earth brought that original case demanding more net-zero detail from the government, and could return to the courts.

“Friends of the Earth successfully took legal action against the government's previous net-zero strategy because it failed to show how legally binding climate targets would be met,” said Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth.

“With these policies looking dangerously lacklustre and lacking on climate action, we will be combing through the detail of the amended strategy and are poised to act if ministers have fallen short once again.”

Meanwhile, some observers welcomed the government's attempt to bring together all its environmental, net-zero, affordability, energy security and economic growth strategies into a single framework.

“Previous British government policies have tended to frame each of these challenges somewhat in isolation to one another,” said Dr Laurence Wainwright of the University of Oxford.

“From research and past experience, we know that complex sustainability and economic challenges cannot be correctly understood, or solved, in a linear, cause-and-effect manner. As such, framing these challenges in the right way, as has been done in these strategy documents, is a positive step forward.”

Dr Wainwright added, however, that the Powering up Britain document itself did leave him “underwhelmed”.

“Compared to the scale, ambition and grandiosity of recent US and EU announcements, one has to ask whether this strategy represents the UK scaling back its previous intentions to be a world leader in collapsing the energy trilemma and seizing green growth opportunities, and settling for good rather than great.” Dr Wainwright said.

Many scientists, campaigners and green entrepreneurs were expecting a set of policies to spark investment that would rival the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU's Green Industrial Plan.

Writing in The Times on Thursday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said Powering Up Britain was the first response to the US act, and an even broader national response will be forthcoming later in the year.

But Mr Hunt said that the UK would not be “going toe-to-toe with our friends and allies in some distortive global subsidy race.”

“Yes, we will continue to back industries of the future, however, we will target public funding in a strategic way in the areas where the UK has a clear competitive advantage,” he added.

The IRA contains $369 billion of funding for climate-related spending and clean-energy tax credits, but analysts feel some of the provisions for subsidies within it, especially for auto part makers, are protectionist.

Mr Hunt said the UK would instead focus on incentivising private investment and a “pro-growth regulatory regime”.

RenewableUK's executive director of policy, Ana Musat, contends that Powering up Britain does not “go far enough to attract the investment we need in the renewable energy sector.”

“Global competition for investment in renewable energy projects is fiercer than ever and the UK risks falling behind and surrendering our global lead,” she said.

Tom Burke, chairman of the independent climate change think tank E3G, feels that Powering up Britain is a “really bad document” that will “chill investment of all kinds”.

“There's no new money and we're just not going to compete,” he told The National.

The opposition Labour party also attacked the strategy.

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate and net-zero secretary, pointed to “no removal of the onshore wind ban which is costing families hundreds of pounds on bills, no new investment for energy efficiency which could cut bills and imports, no response to the Inflation Reduction Act which could help Britain win the global race for clean energy jobs.

“What was billed with huge hype as the government's 'green day' turns out to be a weak and feeble groundhog day of reannouncements, reheated policy, and no new investment,” Mr Miliband said.

However, Robin Beaman, partner at global management consultancy BIP, broadly welcomed the Powering up Britain strategy. He said the “measures on carbon capture technologies, offshore wind farms and green hydrogen projects are a shot in the arm, an added boost for a sector under geopolitical stress”.

But he added that the “struggle was far from over” and “the deadline for a complete transition from fossil fuel usage is looming and, as it stands, the UK is still unprepared.”

Business groups broadly welcomed Powering up Britain. The Confederation of British Industry said UK companies were “raring to go on delivering green growth.”

“With the strategy now set, the test is for all parts of government and business to switch to delivery mode. We need to move at pace to keep up with fierce international competition for green investment,” said Syma Cullasy-Aldridge, chief campaigns director at the CBI.

The Institute of Directors applauded the government's efforts, but felt there was “nothing obvious within these plans which matches the ambition of the US’s Inflation Reduction Act.”

“It remains an open question as to whether the UK can offer the incentives for green investment that can sustain it as a leader in the global green economy,” said the institute's Alexandra Hall-Chen.

Greenhouse gas reduction

Meanwhile, the UK’s Office for National Statistics released new provisional data on territorial greenhouse gas emissions, which fell by 2.2 per cent last year.

The annually published ONS statistics track emissions across the UK economy, including from households, businesses, transport, energy generators and agriculture.

CO2 emissions fell by 2.4 per cent, largely because households tended to use less heating amid soaring energy prices and warmer average temperatures throughout 2022.

Transport CO2 emissions increased by 4 per cent, but only as a result of post-Covid lockdown traffic. The levels for transport emissions were still below those recorded five years before the pandemic.

There has been a general decline in GHG emissions over the past 32 years, according to the ONS — from about 650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 1990 to 417 million in 2022 — a drop of 48 per cent.

For the most part, this is because coal has been phased out of the energy mix over that time period in favour of renewables and gas.

Renewables accounted for about 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity production last year, up from 35 per cent in 2021, according to a study by Imperial College London.