The new Labour government must act “fast” to put the country on target to meet its 2030 climate goals, Britain’s top climate change advisory body warned on Thursday.
The Climate Change Committee said that the UK had committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 68 percent compared to 1990 levels, but “only six years away, the country is not on track to hit this target”.
According to its assessment “only a third of the emissions reductions required to achieve the 2030 target are currently covered by credible plans”.
While efforts had been made in recent years to reduce emissions in energy production with the closure of coal-fired power plants, the country must now tackle other sectors such as transport and construction, the report said.
“Action is needed across all sectors of the economy,” the watchdog said in its annual report, laying out 10 recommendations including a mass roll-out of heat pumps and a far wider use of electric vehicles.
Everywhere, low-carbon technologies “must become the norm”, the report said.
In energy production, the UK should learn to do without oil and gas, it added.
Looking back on the past year, the committee said it welcomed the “significant” fall in recorded CO2 emissions.
There had been “some good progress on policy” under Rishi Sunak’s outgoing Conservative administration although there had also been “inconsistent messages” on its “commitment to the actions needed to reach Net Zero”.
Last September, Sunak put the brakes on several net-zero initiatives.
His government also approved a new coal mine and licensed new oil and gas production while postponing a plan to bar the sale of petrol and diesel cars by five years.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new Labour government must therefore “send clear signals to households and firms on the direction of travel in these sectors”, James Richardson, committee interim director general, told reporters.
He said “positive action” already taken by the new government such as the unblocking of onshore wind power or its ambitions in solar power were “really encouraging”.
“But we do need to see this action wider than just the energy supply sector,” he said.
Environmental campaigners Greenpeace said Starmer had inherited a “position of weakness” from the last government, but that it believed the report provided a “clear path” to the UK’s 2050 carbon neutral goal.
“Now the new government just needs to deliver,” Greenpeace UK’s policy director Doug Parr said.
Friends of the Earth also called on the government to “ramp up ambition on cutting emissions” with a “bold package of policies that put the UK’s climate goals back on track”.
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