The low carbon transformation
The transition to a low carbon world will transform our whole economy. Lord Stern’s landmark Review in 2006 set out the economic case for action on climate change and for investment in a low carbon economy. Recognising that economic necessity, the UK has through the Climate Change Act become the first country in the world to adopt a legally binding target to reduce carbon emissions – by at least 26% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050.
Achieving this means that by that date, every unit of output in Britain will need to be produced using on average just one tenth of the carbon used today.
This transition will transform our whole economy. It will change our industrial landscape, our supply chain, and the way in which we all work and consume. For as well as being an environmental and economic imperative, the shift to a low carbon economy is also an economic opportunity. Businesses and consumers can benefit from significant savings through energy and resource efficiency measures. And supplying the demands of the low carbon economy offers a significant potential contribution to economic growth and job creation in Britain, not only as part of the short term economic recovery, but also through sustainable growth over the decades to come.
The global market for low carbon goods and services is already worth over £3 trillion and growing rapidly. For the UK, which is already a leader in many low carbon and resource efficient services, technologies and processes, this is a huge potential opportunity.
The challenge for business and government is to make sure that the UK benefits economically and industrially from the move to low carbon – ensuring that the jobs and growth that it could bring support our recovery from the downturn and our long term industrial future.
Share:
Delicious
Digg
Facebook
Reddit
StumbleUpon
The low carbon economy presents us with the greatest challenge, and greatest opportunity of our time. The opportunity to increase our quality of life, to sustain our civilisation and societies, and to act as a beacon for developing nations.
In order to make the transition successfully, government needs to adjust the underlying economics rather than make one-off surges in funding, to form a predictable and reliable platform on which clean technology can build and thrive. We need joined up thinking in policy across all government departments!
I’d like to see increasing transparency so that green and carbon penalties and taxes directly contribute towards investment and subsidies for sustainable technologies, projects and industry.
The Stern Report clearly showed what the real risks are for the UK - and BERR and other government investment channels need to adjust their risk assessments in light of that. For too long, it has been impossible to get government support for unproven technologies, however strong and clear their potential.
Low carbon industry is the equivalent of web2.0 (industry2.0?) and many of the principles and lessons are transferable.
Well done to BERR for offering this interactive platform for community participation - it’s a good sign of things to come.
Is this site about publishing a strategy, or just a talking shop. When is the UK government going to actually start doing something, rather than just talking about it. They have been talking for 10 years about renewables and how important they are, but our generation capacity hasn’t grown at all in that time.
Just to put that in perspective, Spain’s renewable capacity is nearing 25%. Ours is less than 2%. Nevermind, we have another pretty website.
The transition to a low carbon economy is necessary for two reasons. Primarily it is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Secondly, the low carbon path is seen as a viable stimulus for a tipping economy. But it is also important to acknowledge that the ‘limits to growth’ thesis has been confirmed after decades of poor criticism. The way forward to a sustainable future is to master and widely deploy clean engineering technologies.
Contraction and convergence, a simple approach to distributing the total greenhouse gas emission reductions required internationally, between various countries or groups of countries.
Transformation of the energy generation grid cannot progress at the pace required while the planning process for wind power continues to result in rejection of applications and public inenquiries. A system of relevant planning control needs to be much more efficient.
We have access to technology that when installed on a domestic site, will reduce energy consumption by 25-35%. This technology can be supplemental to the proposed smart meter roll out. It can be installed by technician in 45 mins.
The development of the low-carbon economy will require a huge input from chemists and chemical engineers. Not only will we need to find low carbon alternatives to many technologies but also manage the carbon we do use in a better way – closing loops and life-cycles. This stress on being resource efficient is welcome, with the chemistry-using industries vital to managing the molecules through the life-cycles. Transparent, widely adopted methods for communicating life-cycle and carbon footprint information along supply chains are needed to ensure the carbon burden is not shifted elsewhere.
A transition to a low carbon economy will require:-
1. Greater encouragement/incentive for consumers to purchase low carbon products, transform their homes, and change their habits in the domestic market.
2. More support for innovation in low carbon technologies, not just in the customer facing industries, but also in the enabling, support industries such as chemicals.
3. Direct support for R&D into low carbon solutions, and for the subsequent incentivisation of full scale production of low carbon products/components in the UK.
4. A world class skills base in science and technology subjects.
5. The strategy, and any incentives that derive from it, to be based on sound life cycle assessment so that it delivers a reliable platform from which enduring decisions at both societal and business levels can be made.
6. The industrial base from which the low carbon industry will be derived, to have survived the current economic downturn, which in turn will require an understanding of the complexities and inter-dependencies of manufacturing industries and supply chains, and where necessary intervention and support.
7. An understanding of where UK manufacturing currently has competitive advantage and disadvantage, with necessary interventions in areas where the government has some level of control or influence e.g. taxation, planning, energy supply and costs.
8. Markets available outside the UK for UK produced low carbon products and services.
The transformation to electric cars that are charged up from the plug does very little to reduce carbon emissions. It simply shifts where the pollution joins the atmosphere from the car exhaust to the power station surely?
Wouldn’t the development of an infrastructure to support hydrogen fueled cars be a better long term development than the current plans
In response to the comment of Richard Burns…given that known copper reserves will never suffice to support an electric vehicle industry, then it can be fairly argued that the UK ‘low carbon strategy’ is putting the cart before the horse without first offering viable technology that supports the development of a carbon-controlled hydrogen economy , an economy where ‘efficiency’ is dictated primarily by convenience and not by the government-mandated reductions in use of carbon or energy (note; uncontrolled release of carbon is never ‘neutral’, and the concept of’ zero’ waste violates laws of thermodynamics).
There seems to be a lot of negative feedback about these targets, and how the goverment will never reach these important targets. In my mind there needs to be more proof to business and the public that these targets can be met and that, so as to make everyone move towards acheiving these targets.
Transition should mean looking where we want to go, where we are, and then PLANNING a route between the two.
A low carbon economy would be better planned if the issues were split out into supply and demand. i.e. how much energy can we sustainably supply and then how do we balance the demand against it. (An excellent approach to this has been set out at http://www.withouthotair.com)
In order to do the planning, the Government should appoint a Chief Engineer to oversee the assessment of what’s feasible in the timeline and how it should be done. Science dictates the “why” and options for solutions, but it is instrinsic to ‘engineering think’ to be best placed to do the “how”.
Finally, without some emissions burden being put on the consumer, rather than the producer (or benchmarking done of producers), the majority of our products will end up being made overseas, thus increasing the true UK carbon footprint, as seen post-Kyoto.