Progress Since the King Review
Professor Julia King, Vice Chancellor of Aston University and former Director of Advanced Engineering at Rolls-Royce plc
The ongoing political unrest affecting a number of North African oil producers, and the resulting high oil price, is another reminder of the dangers of dependence on a single, dominant technology. Almost a billion vehicles in the world today burn around 53% of oil production in internal combustion engines. By 2030 there could be two billion vehicles, by 2050, perhaps three billion. There are many pressing reasons why we need change: fuel security; increased access to mobility to drive global economic growth; and clean air. And then there is the really urgent and really critical challenge of addressing climate change – leaving a habitable world for future generations.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), of which I am a member, has recently submitted its recommendations for the fourth carbon budget to the Government – as it is required to do by the Climate Change Act of 2008. The fourth budget sets a CO2e (Kyoto greenhouse gas emissions, stated as an equivalent level of CO2 emissions) emissions target for the UK for the 5 year period from 2023 to 2027, at a level to ensure we are reducing emissions along a cost effective path to our 80% reduction commitment by 2050 (compared to a 1990 baseline.) The 2050 target was set, and accepted by Parliament, on the basis that it represents (i) the best scientific understanding of the emissions reduction required to ensure a low probability (less than 1%) of an average global temperature rise of around 4O, and a likely increase of not much above 2O, and (ii) a fair approach - ‘equal shares’ - ie every one of the world’s 9 billion people in 2050 being entitled to use an equal amount of the ‘allowable’ emissions. (Each person would have 2 to 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per year, in total, in 2050, this roughly equates to the annual emissions of an average car in the UK today.)
In proposing the fourth carbon budget for 2023-2027, we started our analysis by developing a picture of what the UK needs to look like, in terms of low carbon developments, in 2030. The analysis takes into account issues such as the replacement rates for our existing infrastructure and major capital items such as vehicles, investment requirements, technology maturity and learning rates, predicted carbon prices, and technology and economic risks. The purpose is to illustrate cost effective emission reduction paths to 2030, whilst leaving a challenging but achievable – in investment, technology and infrastructure terms – path for the next 20 years from 2030 to 2050. The results are reported in detail in ‘The Fourth Carbon Budget: reducing emissions through the 2020s’ published in December 2010. This can be found at
www.theccc.org.uk.
I think it is well worth highlighting the headline challenges for the next 20 years associated with meeting our emissions reduction requirements. • We need to deliver a 46% reduction in emissions by 2030, followed by a further 62% reduction from 2030 to 2050, to achieve the 2050 target
• Some major sectors are unlikely to be able to achieve this, including aviation, agriculture, and some industrial processes
• Those sectors with greater potential to reduce emissions will have to make larger cuts: power generation, land transport and buildings (primarily heat) will need to achieve a reduction of around 67% by 2030
• Power generation has to be essentially decarbonised
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