Changing gear on carbon reduction

The Secretary of State with Imperial's Rector and the Director of the Grantham Institute

Secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change sets out Government's intent to reduce carbon emissions.

Carbon reduction conference at Imperial

The Secretary of State during his address to the conference

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The Climate Change Committee’s Fourth Carbon Budget is a challenging prospectus of what the UK will need to do to accelerate its carbon reduction in the medium term.  At the conference, “Changing Gear on Carbon Reduction” the Grantham Institute and Imperial Business School brought together more than 150 business leaders to engage with the Secretary of State and Lord Adair Turner, to confront the full implications of the changes that will be required.  A summary of the key points from the day can be downloaded on the right of this page.

Lord Turner articulated the transition that is needed and the Secretary of State gave a strong message of leadership and political intent.  Nobody questioned the vital importance of meeting the government’s targets and, in that general sense, business appears to be firmly on-side.  However there were questions about detailed implementation, about securing public backing, about carbon “leakage” and competitiveness, and on building the UK’s industrial capability.

Industry broadly welcomes the Government’s Electricity Market Reform proposals as a means of delivery, especially the contracts for differences, and recognises them as a major step forward.  But they want to see the details pinned down urgently, and in the most straightforward way, so that they can make investment plans.

Industry wants to see that the public is truly behind the carbon reduction strategy, including its costs, because this is, in part, how they judge the stability and reliability of government policies.  There is a clear degree of unease that public support for ambitious policy in this area may be somewhat fragile.

Some energy intensive manufacturers argue that existing policies, which address direct UK emissions only and not the emissions embodied in imports, are unfair to them and, most significantly, fail to address the global nature of the problem.

Finally, many speakers dwelt on the importance of building the UK’s industrial capability, for instance to supply major nuclear power components. Education to expand our stock of qualified engineers is an essential part of this – a topic that is close to the heart of Imperial.

Session talks: summaries and slides

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