5: An interview with Chris Stark
Chris Stark, chief executive of the UK's Climate Change Committee, shares his hopes, ambitions and fears over climate change goals, and his aspirations for Glasgow as it prepares to host COP26 later this year.
The team refer to a document in the episode entitled 'Local Authorities and the Sixth Carbon Budget'. You can download it at this link: https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/local-authorities-and-the-sixth-carbon-budget/
Episode transcript
[Music flourish]
Matthew: Hello and welcome. I’m Dr Matt Hannon.
Rebecca: And I’m Dr Rebecca Ford and welcome to Local Zero. This is episode five.
[Music flourish]
Leading up to COP26, when it lands in Glasgow this coming November, we’re going to be spending this year focusing on Earth’s most urgent question and that is what can we all do, very practically, about climate change?
Matthew: Today’s episode, very simply, is an in-depth chat with Chris Stark, the Chief Executive of the UK’s Climate Change Committee. We’re going to get his thoughts on the year ahead, preparations for COP26 and progress towards the UK’s net zero target for 2050.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: With us, as always, and keeping us on track is our producer, Fraser Stewart. So Fraser, happy New Year.
Fraser: Happy New Year everybody. It’s good to be back.
Matthew: Very happy New Year to you both.
Rebecca: Have you had a good break?
Fraser: Yeah, it was nice to have a holiday at home from working from home. I’m glad to be back working from home now [laughter].
Rebecca: So I’m glad everyone is with us and just to remind you, if you’re on social media, feel free to follow along using our hashtag #LocalZero or find us on Twitter @EnergyREV_UK.
Matthew: So it’s 2021, a new year, and I’m hoping we’ll have some first-time listeners tuning in, given the interview with Chris Stark and given who he is and his leading role with the Committee on Climate Change. So it’s worth us doing a quick recap for anybody new who is dialling in and trying to understand a little bit more about what this podcast is. So what do we need to tell people?
Rebecca: Well, first of all, we’re all climate change and energy researchers from Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde and we’re part of the EnergyREV Research Consortium which is a UK-wide group of researchers looking at how smart local energy can help play a role in delivering the UK’s net zero target.
Matthew: So we’re here to explore all the issues around climate change and to hear from the UK’s brightest minds working at the cutting edge of these issues. We’re going to steer away from the hand-wringing and the doom and gloom and we’re always looking for the positive pathway forward, the innovations and the routes to success. Becky, it’s probably worth just recapping some of the episodes we’ve covered.
Rebecca: Yeah, so we’ve had four great episodes already, haven’t we, Matt? In the first one, we talked to three fantastic guests about the road to COP26; what it meant, where we were going and what we needed to focus on. We followed that up in episode two by looking at what COVID has taught us about what net zero might look like. Polly Billington and Jim Watson were fantastic guests that really gave us great insight, both from the research side of things as well as what it meant for people at the sharp end of delivering stuff on the ground. Our third episode then focused in on Glasgow and we looked at what Glasgow is trying to do in the run-up to COP26 and beyond to become one of the first climate-neutral cities in the UK. Our fourth episode, just before Christmas, was looking at fuel poverty and how we can make sure that no one is left behind in the transition to net zero. So this episode really builds on that great content that’s gone before.
Matthew: And if you haven’t already listened to them, please do go back and listen. Subscribe and you’ll be able to get alerts for when the new episodes come out. We’re going to be running these pods every fortnight all the way up to COP26 in November 2021 when the United Nations have their Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: So let’s jump into today’s show which has a different feel from our usual episodes. We’ve got just one guest, Chris Stark, and we’re going to spend the whole episode speaking with him about who he is, what he does, why it’s important and what’s on his to-do list for 2021.
Matthew: So Chris Stark is the CEO of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, an independent statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008. Their purpose is to advise the UK and devolved government on their emissions targets and report to parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse emissions and crucially, preparing the UK to deliver on its net zero goals and adapting to the impacts of climate change. So we’re absolutely thrilled to have Chris along today and to hear a little bit more about what they’re doing and why.
[Music flourish]
So first things first, how was your Christmas break?
Chris: Christmas was just lovely. I properly took a break. Last year, was just crazy for us and particularly, at the end of the year when we produced the Sixth Carbon Budget. So it was really nice to have two weeks off and I’ve just been with my two kids and my long-suffering wife and we’ve been locked away in the West End of Glasgow. It’s been great.
Matthew: Feet up, mince pies. I’m sure you’ve...
Chris: Put on a stone, yeah, exactly [laughter].
Matthew: And, of course, it’s tradition to have some New Year’s resolutions. We’ve got 2021, so what are yours?
Chris: My personal resolution is I’m going to be more active. I’ve spent the last six months planted in front of a desk with this strange experience, that I think many others have been having, of losing the sense of what the work and home life division is. It’s just all melded into one. My main resolution this year, since we’re staring down the barrel of another few months at least of this type of work, is that I’m going to be more conditioned in the way that I approach work and life and get out a bit more. But I’ve got a whole set of things that we need to do with the CCC this year which is just fascinating. It’s going to be a really interesting year for us I think.
Rebecca: So tell us a bit more about your hopes and dreams for the CCC this year.
Chris: Right! There’s just so much to talk about. We’ve just come off a whole package of work really which you could trace back to about three years ago. All the work that we’ve been doing on net zero came to a head in the work for the Sixth Carbon Budget. Over the last three years, what we’ve done is work towards getting the commission to advise on a new target for the UK, for Scotland, for Wales and, hopefully, in due course, for Northern Ireland; get that commissioned first; then do the analysis and what the right target was and the underpinnings for that in the net zero report; then work on to the question, which is far more interesting, of how you actually deliver that. That was what the Sixth Carbon Budget was all about really. It was looking at the path to achieving net zero and the steps that need to be in place to meet it. That feels like the culmination of three years of work.
Now we’ve got one big further piece of strategic work to do this year, the year coming, which is on adaptation and on climate risk. Every five years, we do a piece of work looking at the climate risks that the UK faces. So we’re switching to the priority of looking at the climate risks and how well adapted we are to them. That will be the last major piece of strategic advice that we offer probably for a while. The other thing that runs alongside all this is that we’re working towards developing the CCRA3, as it’s known, or the Third Climate Change Risk Assessment. That will come in the summer but alongside all of that, what we now need to do I think is switch towards being better at advising on delivery which is a big challenge for us. We’ve been very good at setting out the things that need to be done and we have been looking at the delivery issues but we need to look at them more closely. The question of how you actually deliver them in practice is something I’m really, really interested in. It’s something we might want to talk more about. With that, there’s another aspect to our work which I think has not been the priority and now needs to be and that’s the scrutiny powers that we have and the scrutiny requirement to look at what, especially, central government is doing to deliver these new statutory targets that are set in stone.
So the process for this year is to do that really important work on climate change adaptation and risk, then develop the scrutiny and delivery programmes of work that we need and to then become the expert in those things over the course of this year and beyond. There’s then the little matter of COP26 happening at the end of this year [laughter] and I want to be as helpful as possible in that process as the UK’s climate gurus.
Matthew: Of course, Chris. You live in Glasgow, right?
Chris: Yeah, I’m in the West End of Glasgow right now.
Matthew: You’re just round the corner and so, of course, this is happening on your doorstep and it must be of great pride for you that this is coming to your hometown. What are your hopes for what the CCC can do in terms of shaping the action that the UK takes there?
Chris: It’s an interesting question this, isn’t it? Because if you look at the piece of legislation that set us up, which is the Climate Change Act, it’s very clear that what we’re here to do is to give advice. We are here to stand alongside the government and it’s certainly not in the legislation to work with the government but I do think we need to interpret our role slightly more broadly than that because I think the work that we’ve been doing over the last three years and the work that will continue this year with climate change adaptation is a bit more than was envisaged I think by the Climate Change Act. We have a thing here that is useful to the government in the work that they are required to do by that same piece of legislation. So I want to do a bit more than just be the advisors. I think we have a stake in seeing the things that we are advising on delivered. That doesn’t mean that it’s our job to get them delivered but I do think it’s our job to make sure that we provide that analysis, that data and the numbers in a way that is as useful as possible to the people who have to make the policies and then the people that then deliver them. That takes us into a whole new world of people outside of government who actually need to deliver this stuff in business and, of course, real people living in communities across the UK. So I think that means for the CCC that we’ve got to broaden our role but I think about how we reach out to those people in different ways. I want to be as useful as we can whilst maintaining the idea of an independent body that does the scrutiny for parliament as well. It’s not an easy task to flip between these roles but I think that’s what we need to do.
Rebecca: It sounds like you’ve got a lot of work on your hands coming up but very, very exciting. So just taking us back, some of our listeners might not have had a deep look at the Sixth Carbon Budget and some might not even know what we’re talking about at all. So can you just break this down for us a little bit coming back to some of the big work you’ve done recently and talk to us about where we’re at so far on the road to net zero. Are we being ambitious enough? What have we got to come? What do we still need to do?
Chris: Again, so much to talk about here. I think we are in the midst of something pretty remarkable at the moment in terms of the scaling up that’s necessary for us to reach this new target that’s been set. Are we doing enough? That was the question you asked, Becky, and the answer to that is no. Can we get to the target? Absolutely. Could we do it earlier? I think we possibly could. So we’re in the middle of a period when a lot of this will be resolved I think. The goal of setting net zero was the task last year and the year before. The task at the tail-end of 2020 was to build on all that work in this piece of work that we do every five years and to advise on the next set of interim targets across the UK that we think are necessary for the UK to reach that net zero goal overall. That was a really interesting piece of work. That was what we call the Sixth Carbon Budget which takes us from the period 2033-’37. It’s the critical period really if you’re standing in 2021 looking forward because it’s the target for emissions in the mid-2030s. It’s the first of those interim targets, the carbon budgets, that has been set since the long-term goal was set. It’s also, therefore, the most important. It’s probably the most important ever of all of the carbon budgets because the one after that is going to be pretty close to the eventual statutory goal, so you’re into the 2040s by that point. Our view in the CCC was we better throw everything at this, so we better make sure that we have as deep an understanding as we can build of what needs to happen over the next thirty years across the UK for it to meet that 2050 net zero goal that the UK has. The Scottish target is an earlier one of 2045 but that’s consistent with the UK goal. So we’re really talking about a thirty-year strategy and that’s what we looked at. We interpreted our role more broadly, we looked at the path to net zero overall and we built a completely new assessment bottom-up in each of the sectors of the economy on how you can cut emissions. The other thing that we really leaned on here was this idea that actually, if you could look over thirty years, we’re really staring down the barrel now of some really key decisions that need to be taken now. You’ve got assets being used today, assets that will be purchased tomorrow and that will potentially be in use in 2050. You’ve potentially got this set of asset cycles and replacements that you’ve got to get right.
Rebecca: So tell us about some of those assets. What sort of assets are we talking about here?
Chris: We’re talking about everything actually. We’re talking about turning over the whole capital stock of an economy but the crucial things are the things that we use to travel around, the things that we use to heat ourselves and the things that we use to generate electricity and to move that electricity around and get it to homes and businesses across the UK. I could go on. These things tend to have quite long asset lives. Actually, if you look across the average of them, it’s between 15-20 years. If you don’t get the policies right, then at the point when those assets are replaced, you’d make a decision that will make it much harder, potentially, to reach net zero by 2050. What we were looking at in the Sixty Carbon Budget was by what date have you got to reach a certain position? By what date have you got to be ready to replace a high-carbon asset with a low-carbon asset so that you meet the 2050 goal on time? Some of those dates are pretty close, so it’s really good that we have a prime ministerial 10-point plan that talks about phasing out sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030 because if we don’t have that, then we’re not going to make the date by 2050. Similarly, gas boilers, which is the thing that every newspaper in the land wants to talk about whenever we talk about climate change, 2035 is probably the latest possible date for that phasing out of new sales. So, therefore, you’ve got to build up to that and that means you’ve got to have a strategy in place over the next decade, which is two parliaments, to get to the point when you’re ready for people to start, en masse, replacing high-carbon boilers with something low carbon and we’re not at the races on that yet. We could talk about this for hours but you look right across the economy, you see these imminent dates coming up and policy has got to be framed around that.
Matthew: What are the decisions that need to be made today with regards to that transformation of asset stock and which do we maybe have a little bit more time to make the decisive calls on?
Chris: The glib answer to that is we don’t have any time. We need to make decisions now but actually, I don’t think that’s the right thing to say. I think there is some time still to make plans. We could have been doing with those plans much sooner than now, of course, but given that we’re in that position now, we’re actually scaling up the policymaking right across government, not just in Whitehall but in local authorities and in devolved governments as well. There is policy being developed now even in the midst of a pandemic. So this is the point to do the strategic planning properly I think. Working back from that net zero goal, what we really need is a well-coordinated set of strategies across the economy. I think we have that, more or less, in the power sector now. What we don’t have is a set of really worked-through policies for industry. We don’t have them for heat decarbonisation, the thing we’ve been talking about, and with that, we haven’t got energy efficiency in buildings policy in the right place either. There’s also the natural environment where you’re right up against time because it takes time to grow a tree, so you need to have a strategy in place now if you want that to be part of the solution by 2050. All those things come together. I think we have this parliament to get those strategies right. That means doing the right consultation, doing the strategic planning, putting the policies in place and putting those strategies in place. Broadly, just talking mainly about Whitehall here, that’s what is planned. You’ve got a whole set of strategic policy statements coming out in the next few years. It helps that we have the COP in Glasgow at the end of this year because that’s keeping everyone honest. If those things come together well, then you’ve got the remainder of the 2020s to start the process of scaling up the delivery against those strategic policies so that by the time you get to 2030, or thereabouts, we’re at the point then where investments are zero carbon, so new asset replacements and new purchases are zero carbon.
There is no real barrier to reaching net zero in technical terms. We know all the things that we need to do. We’ve got enough options in front of us that we can be very confident, I think, that we’ll get to net zero and very confident too that the cost won’t be very high, if there is any cost at all to the whole economy. That’s not on an individual consumer basis but the overall costs will be low too. That’s remarkable and we shouldn’t just step away from it without banking that. That’s an amazing thing that we’ve managed to demonstrate. What we don’t have though... if we look at that heat question, I think it’s the most interesting one because we’ve always known about the technologies that would decarbonise heat. We’ve always known about the things that could be done but we just haven’t been doing them. I think what we’ve been lacking is a framework through which we plan. I’m not talking here about regulations. I’m not talking about laws to do things. I’m talking about a process that brings people together to make those decisions properly. One of the big steps forward in our most recent piece of work was to say actually, let’s stop talking about the technology decisions so much. Let’s instead look at the process of the planning that needs to be done and especially at local area and regional level. How do you bring people together to start making those decisions?
Here, I’ll bring in the other piece of work that I was involved in last year which was on the UK’s Climate Assembly. This is an assembly from last year and it was a really wonderful thing to have been involved with. They looked at the same things and broadly, what we heard from the Climate Assembly was that there are lots of options here. We accept that those options are valid and we’re happy to pursue any of them but what we want is a stake in the decision. We want to understand what those things are. We want to be informed about it and then we want to be involved in the process of making the decisions locally. I think that points to the need for that kind of process to be in place before you can get on and do it. It’s easy for me to say, let’s just get everything done now. All these decisions have to be taken now but actually, there’s a process of consent that needs to come before that. That is something that I think has been notably absent from some of these big transitions that we’re talking about.
Matthew: That’s a very important point, Chris, that you’ve raised is that it’s not just about making a choice. It’s about putting in place the foundations to make the right choice and a choice which is delivered and driven by citizens.
Chris: Exactly.
Matthew: So I take that absolutely, thank you.
Rebecca: But do we need to go beyond that? I think if we look at the news that we often see around the great steps that have been made in the power sector, a lot of that has been largely invisible to people that are living in their homes. I still do everything very much the same even though my power might be a lot more renewable now than it was, say, five years ago. The changes that we’re now talking about... we’ve talked a lot about heating but you mentioned earlier about how we move around. I’ve got a ten-year-old Vauxhall Corsa on my driveway that cost about £1,000 to buy. I’m not getting an EV for that. There’s just no way. So the changes that we’re about to see and the changes that we’re going to have to embark on are going to be much more invasive into our everyday lives. They’re going to require much more, I guess, commitment across all parts of society. How do you see that unfolding and do you see any real challenges there, particularly around the costs of some of these new technologies or if not, the upfront costs like the costs to run them and the ongoing implications of how that might play out?
Chris: We’re right at the heart of the matter now. First, I’m going to disagree with the premise of your question slightly. I’m not sure it needs to be invasive. I think that’s another one of these prior questions that we should really have a discussion about nationally. When you look at the world in 2050, let’s assume everything goes well and we get there by 2050 at the latest and we’re in this net zero world, I don’t think it’s that different from the world we have in 2021. We’re still travelling around on roads. It’s just that the vehicles on those roads are plugged in rather than filled at a petrol station. If you really pry open that, it makes much more sense to have a vehicle that you plug in rather than visiting a petrol station somewhere else to fill it up once in a while. That kind of step is, indeed, a big step but you’ve no need to worry about it. We’ll still have warm homes but the technology that’s warming them will be something, I hope, that is not fossil-fueled. Again, I think thinking of it in that way, you can work back from that to say, okay, if that’s the case, what are the key issues here? I don’t think cost is the issue. Cost, overall, to the economy looks pretty low, especially if you’re able to transfer some of the benefits of the transition from one sector to another. That transition from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles is one that we think will be cost-saving to the economy and quite significantly cost-saving. Now, it’s not beyond the wit of policymakers to look at that transition now and say, actually, let’s bank some of those savings and start to pay for some of the more costly transitions in industry, for example, around that heat question that we’ve talked about a few times already and make that cheaper. You then get this effect happening when you have these mass rollouts of technologies which is very commonly understood about the fact that it will make the unit price of those technologies cheaper. That’s one of the things that we are looking at and we are being conservative about that for the electric vehicle transition but I expect that to happen in electric vehicles. I expect that to happen in industry. I expect that to happen in low-carbon heat installations as well. So I think you start on this process with some confidence that, actually, it’s not going to be invasive. It’s not going to be that difficult but it does involve change. This is where we come to the consent question which is that we’ve got to be honest about the changes that are coming and present them in as positive a way as we can whilst acknowledging that they are changes. These are going to be changes to people’s lives that I don’t think are going to be that difficult but we’ve got to also present the worthwhile reason for doing it. It’s not just about climate change. There are all sorts of good reasons.
Matthew: Surely, there will be some pain for the gain. I was asked this question the other day. Thinking forward to 2050, what are going to be the hardest choices for Mr and Mrs Jones at 32, Acacia Avenue in their semi-detached with two cars and 2.4 children? What’s going to be the toughest decision that they personally need to make?
Chris: I don’t know is the short answer but I accept that there is going to be a transitional cost which some people may experience as more difficult but I think that’s overstated. I mean you’re probably hearing that in my answers to these things. I think that probably the biggest single difference is that we’re not going to be using natural gas to heat homes, so that’s going to involve some form of intervention in the home. Again, I don’t think that the alternatives are going to be that challenging. I think we’ve got to work out what the plan is. I’m in Glasgow right now and this is probably a good place to do a district heating network. I’m right next to Glasgow University where there is already one on the ground. That kind of change for me involves moving away from a gas boiler to some sort of heat exchanger for a district heating network on our road. In the end, is that a huge burden on me? Probably not but it is a change. The question about who pays for it is probably the hardest thing. Again, I’ll go back to my other point that the overall cost of this thing now looks really low, if there’s any cost at all, and that’s at the economy level, so at the aggregate level. The challenge for policymakers is how to spread that cost out fairly and to do so in such a way that you don’t expose those consumers, either businesses or individuals who are vulnerable, to costs that they can’t afford. That may involve people who can afford costs paying more. It shouldn’t, in my view, involve people who can’t afford those costs having to pay for things that they wouldn’t otherwise have to do and that is the policy challenge for me. It’s not about meeting an overall cost any longer because that’s so small. It’s about spreading it out in such a way that you achieve that fair outcome.
Fraser: I’m completely on board with where you are with it, Chris, but if we’re trying to avoid the people who are worst placed to afford those costs, how do we effectively bring them along on the transition with us? How do we ensure that they not only don’t incur the costs but maybe reap some of the benefits of the transition as well?
Chris: Yeah, this is a brilliant question. For me, the set of issues that are often not addressed by people like me doing these kinds of assessments are the things I think will really matter. There is a question about convenience. There is the big, big, big question, and probably the most important question, about where are the jobs in this transition going to come from. If you came frame those up, then I think the question of fairness blossoms and it opens right out into whole different things which are not just about cost-benefit assessments. Let’s just have that conversation [laughter]. Let’s not make decisions on behalf of people without having had this discussion. I mean that’s the bit that I feel we haven’t really begun to have that discussion. In the work that we’ve been doing recently, we’ve started to unpick some of those stories. The one about jobs is the one I’ll just return to if I can. Although the overall costs to the economy are low, that masks a massive transition and there’s a huge amount of investment that’s taking place as well. There are lots of new jobs in that transition but there are also sectors that are shrinking, notably the oil and gas sector. Unless we’re honest about that, then that’s going to be really painful and if we are honest about what’s coming next, then we can start the process early of transitioning people from those high-carbon jobs to the low-carbon jobs. We know that if you do that early, it’s a lot easier. It’s a lot easier to move someone from a job they’re in into a new job than it is to wait till they’re unemployed. This should be a positive discussion. Those jobs happen to be more highly skilled than many other jobs, so you could expect that those people who are making low-carbon heating installations for energy efficiency improvements can move into other jobs after that. This is a really sensible thing to do and I think, although there is a cost to those things, that people are more willing to permit that cost and, indeed, to pay for it if they can see the positive benefits that come from that and they’re not all about climate. There’s a whole set of things here that I would like to see presented in a more, if I can put it this way, social wrapper that I think would build the consent for those changes much more readily than just how quickly you can cut emissions.
Matthew: The title of the show is Local Zero and we’re trying to bring everything back to that local dimension, whether it’s the individual, the home or the community. What you’ve just said there, Chris, is really relevant I think to the DNA of this show. Trying to understand what those local benefits are, and we may look at jobs there or whether it’s a sense of place and culture because there’s this wide spectrum of benefits that could be attached to this net zero, how important is it to plan locally and say this is what Aberdeen, or Birmingham, or Stevenage might look like in 2030, 2040 or 2050?
Chris: How else could I answer that question except to say that it’s essential? It’s maybe worth saying why I think that. I think it’s 308 of the 408 local authorities across the UK that have declared climate emergencies. More than half of them have net zero goals of 2030. So something is happening locally which complements or should complement the national changes that are now in law. We reckon local authorities have powers over about a third of the emission reductions that are necessary to reach net zero. So if you frame that a different way, if we don’t involve them in a coherent way in the national strategy for getting to net zero, we will not make net zero. Those housing and building powers, the enforcement powers that are there and the policy-setting powers that local authorities have are absolutely critical ways of building stronger local consent for the changes and crucially, I think improving those changes too. Everything has got to be tailored to the local resources and local infrastructure if it’s going to work.
Rebecca: So what do you think local authorities might need to support that? Put another way, what does local government need to do to support those local authorities? We’ve heard, particularly in previous episodes, how local authorities are really struggling with budget cuts over the years and facing all sorts of challenges, particularly with COVID at the moment. So what needs to happen to empower local authorities and not just the ones that are already coming along but all local authorities to ensure we can build that up evenly across the country in a fair way?
Chris: There’s a set of things and if any of your listeners are interested in this, we published a document alongside the Sixth Carbon Budget because we had so much that came out at the end of the year and I don’t think it got nearly enough focus and we’ll give it a boost I think this year.
Matthew: It’s an excellent report, Chris...
Chris: Ah, thanks, Matt.
Matthew: ...and we’ll definitely tether it to the pod when we put it out. Yeah, it’s really good.
Chris: Good, good. Do have a look at that. It’s about 100 pages or so and it sets out a lot of the answers to the question that you’ve just asked me, Becky. Crucially, it doesn’t try to close down the discussion at all. I think much of what we’re talking about is how you open up the question of what we do next. At the heart of what we were saying is that we should be seeing local authorities as enablers and not as barriers or as some sort of annoyance on the journey. That’s really crucial in making this work but capacity is really patchy if you look across the local authorities the UK has. There is no go-to resource, if you’re in a local authority, for information on what to do about net zero or climate change itself. Because of that, far too many consultants get hired and so there’s lots of duplication of effort, lots of different tools being used by those local authorities and no common reporting which is absolutely critical. We need to turn that situation into something that’s better coordinated and something that looks like more of a national delivery plan that involves those local agents properly. At the heart of it, it’s not just about funding, although I think that is an issue itself. It’s mainly about developing the framework for doing all of that, so we have a plan for local authorities for how they can be involved in delivery using their powers properly and also we bring them into the discussion of how they can actually bring local actors into the decision-making process. That’s been the big lesson for me, at least, from the Citizens Assembly is how can we structure a discussion locale by locale, again, that brings in the questions of transport, jobs, housing and economic development in a way that is seen as positive rather than as something that’s been forced down from Whitehall or, indeed, from anywhere else.
Fraser: In terms of the local actors, Chris, I think from the local authority report, and Matt highlighted this when we were having a kickabout earlier as well, it felt like community groups, who are often at the forefront of innovations, especially when it comes to energy, who are particularly good at operating in their locale and getting out to more disadvantaged areas, that there wasn’t very much reference to those groups within the report itself. Do you see them as potentially having an important role going forward as well?
Chris: Yeah, I mean it’s worth saying that that report was focused on local authorities, so the recommendations we had are for central government and for local government but that doesn’t exclude all the other people who will matter here. So the community groups, the people who are actually at the coalface dealing with many of the issues that we’ve already talked about, of course, they’re critical but those conditions will be different right across the country. I can tell you from experience how different it is moving from Scotland to London, for example.
Rebecca: So 2021 is going to be a very big year, especially for the UK and Glasgow with COP26 happening later. In fact, in our very first episode, we heard that COP26 could well be the most important COP of all time in terms of setting future direction. You’ve talked a little bit about the CCC’s priorities for this year. What do you think the UK at large really needs to focus on ahead of COP26? What are the key actions for the next nine months or so?
Chris: I think it probably is the most important COP for a while at least. It remains to be seen whether it’s the most important COP ever but it could be. Let’s just step back and just think about what it’s got to do. As we’re talking today, I think it’s 300 days or thereabouts until we actually have the COP, so the countdown is really beginning now properly. By the time we get to the COP, that goal of net zero is, I think, going to be the binding thing that sits through all of the things that the COP is trying to pull off. It’s funny to say that because we’ve accommodated it now so much into the discussion that I think we forget that, a few years back, we weren’t talking about net zero in that way. I think that will be the first achievement for this COP is that net zero is a binding goal; the science of it well understood and the need for it. Here’s the second point which is that that’s a goal for national governments, of course, but it’s also a goal in civic society too, particularly in the business community. I think one of the big things that the COP may pull off this year is something that goes alongside those national commitments, the things that the COP process is designed to generate, which demonstrates how, particularly multinationals - not just multinationals but the business community more generally – can play a role in achieving net zero too. Many of those commitments, especially if they’re from high-carbon producing companies, can be really meaningful, more so than even groups of large economies potentially. I think that will be a big story. The second thing I hope we get to is that we step away from just discussing net zero and talk more about the near term. It is not to be dismissed how important it is that the UK was willing to set an ambitious NDC, as we call, the 2030 goal for emissions reduction. We advised that it should be a 68% reduction on 1990 levels which is a very significant increase from where we were in our national commitments prior to that. It’s hugely important that the UK, as president of the COP this year, is willing to make that kind of commitment. I think it helped getting the EU commitment over the line and it will help focus on what needs to happen over the next decade beyond these net zero goals in the long-term so that we have a path to net zero that is compliant with the Paris Agreement temperature goals. One of the really interesting questions that I’m occasionally asked is what would a successful COP be. I think the only answer that you can give to that question is that a successful COP is one that people leave saying that it was successful. That was what was done in Paris. If you were being super critical of the Paris Agreement, you could say it was only a set of temperature goals and not too much more but people left feeling empowered and optimistic about that. That’s a big goal for the UK in hosting the COP. It’s one of the reasons why I’m very glad it’s being hosted in Glasgow. We are quite good at these jamborees when they come along, so Glasgow is a good place to host it.
Matthew: It certainly is, Chris. On that, all four of us live in Glasgow now and I’m very excited about it being here. I’m more excited than I think I’ve possibly been about anything before and we really hope, fingers and toes crossed, that it does happen here next year, COVID permitting. What are your hopes and dreams for Glasgow after this? There was much talk after the Commonwealth Games about legacy and ditto for the 2012 Olympics in London. Do you think this could have a lasting change on Glasgow’s identity in Scotland more broadly?
Chris: I’d certainly hope it does. I don’t know if it will. You asked about hopes and dreams and my principal hope and dream is that Glasgow does what it does so well and hosts a brilliant conference which is seen as a celebration I hope. Glasgow is excellent at that stuff. We seem to do that fairly regularly along the way. We need these intravenous cultural injections occasionally in Glasgow, so we have these big moments and Glasgow does it really well. It needs to do that principally. I’m confident that that will happen. What I’d love to see happen though is that legacy of lasting strategic commitments. The biggest of those, clearly, is on heat. So let’s have a plan for decarbonised heat in Glasgow that means something because we’re going to need one that is fundamentally tailored to the needs of Glasgow anyway. It’s an unusual city. I’m in a Glasgow tenement today. That type of building you will not find in other cities around the UK or Europe, so we’re going to need that kind of tailored plan in any case, so let’s make that plan and make those kinds of commitments. Alongside it, let’s have the transport and the employment commitments that go with that so that Glasgow is pointing itself towards a genuinely low-carbon future. That, for me, will be the secret of the COP’s success because the reason for having the COP in Glasgow isn’t just so we can host it well. It’s that there’s a nice narrative that we are the high-carbon city that became, I hope, the low-carbon city in the future. This used to be the cradle of industry globally where all the ships were made and it was founded on coal. Let’s have a lovely story of moving away from that to a zero-carbon future and that kind of plan is within our gift. Even if there are 300 days to the COP, there’s time to do it.
Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great vision. I should also probably slightly edit my response because I know my wife listens to this. The birth of children is number one; wedding is number two; COP26 is number three in terms of the most exciting things ever. I just want to get that in there [laughter].
Chris: A damning indictment, Matt, of your priorities [laughter].
Matthew: I’m in trouble.
Fraser: I think the last question in the spirit of this podcast... we’re trying our best to give people tangible things that can practically help people help towards the effort towards net zero. If you had a gun to your head, Chris, and there were three things that you could recommend, changes that we can make or things that we should support and that can get us there quicker, what would those be?
Chris: If we’re talking about individual change, again, this is probably the other question that comes up most often and the reason this question comes up I think is that people want to know what they can do. Many people who ask that question of me, and I’m not talking about journalists or podcasters but normal people [laughter], feel that they are not empowered to do anything about it and I think that’s terrible. There are lots of things that you can do and there’s a long list of things but if I could just pick out a few... if you’re feeling like you want to do something about it, then think about how you travel and what you eat obviously. They’re the most obvious things to do. The third one that’s worth discussing is what you are invested in. You might think you have any investments but if you’ve got a pension, that’s another biggie. It’s quite interesting how often a pension fund is motivated to change its own investment strategy by those pension holders. That kind of change is the other thing that you can do but the first two are the most important. What you eat is remarkably important in terms of your overall carbon footprint. I’ve given up red meat since doing this job. I didn’t eat very much of it to begin with but I don’t eat it at all anymore and I’m almost pescatarian, although I ate my Christmas dinner and so I did eat a bird for that. That matters and then transport is the other biggie. I am, this week, giving up my diesel car and I’m handing it back and that will be a big step forward for us. It’s not a difficult decision in the end for me. We’re not going to replace it all for the time being because we don’t use it at the moment and especially in these lockdown times, I feel like my world has shrunk. The next car that you own is another good thing to think about and walking and cycling more.
Matthew: Just on the diesel thing there, Chris, I think this is one thing that I constantly hear from friends and family. They say, ‘I bought a diesel because it was meant to be an environmentally friendly thing to do and I’m now being told...’ I think there’s a useful lesson there for us in terms of communicating with the public going forward.
Chris: There is, although I think the people who made those proclamations were doing so for the right reasons. This is one of those policy changes that we’ve thought about a lot in the CCC as well. We were not speaking, in the times when everyone was being urged to buy a diesel, on the basis of the full data. I think there’s a big lesson in that about making sure that you’ve got all the information that you need to make those kinds of very clear pronouncements. I really feel we do now for the electric vehicle transition. We’ve got everything lined up well now. I think the fact that the Prime Minister has committed to 2030 as the phase-out date is really important. It will drive change and I think it is the right decision. We can be confident about that. That wasn’t the case for the diesel transition and, you’re right, it’s absolutely damaged the status of those kinds of changes and we’ve got to rebuild that trust.
Rebecca: I was very glad to hear you mention also, Chris, about what you eat. I’ve been a vegan for some time, partly by choice and then partly just by foods that I’m allergic to. I never thought I would see the day when energy news had an article about meat eaters versus veganism which I saw this morning which was putting together the figures that meat eaters have about twice as large a carbon footprint as people who eat a plant-based diet.
Chris: Oh god, we’ve done three reports now where we’ve looked really closely at the diet question, tied obviously to the land use question, and on each occasion, we’ve tried to respond to the criticism we’ve had from the last report about not having looked at one aspect of it. Some of the agricultural voices are often very strong on this. They’re very clear that we’ve missed something or that we haven’t got the soil carbon analysis right. Each time we look at it and we conclude, really clearly, that there is an issue with livestock that we will not address unless diets change. We’re not talking about everyone becoming a vegan. It is about eating a little less and if you’re going to do that, then eating higher quality meat which tends to be produced locally and actually, that’s quite a nice story potentially for agriculture in this country if we get that right. So yes, change your diet but you don’t need to be a vegan. Becky, I respect your desire to wish to be so. I’m not a vegan and my wife was a vegan for a long time and is now a fish eater actually. She’s gone the other way. But you don’t need to be a vegan but it is better to eat less red meat and that’s also a health issue too. Much of the red meat that we eat is processed. That bit of meat that’s processed, 80% of our diet (if you’re a meat eater), is the bit that is least resistant to change. So that’s another thing to think about that, over time, we have cut our consumption of meat but our processed meat consumption has remained largely the same over that period. There is quite a big shift ahead potentially if we’re to move towards eating a little less and eating a higher quality meat diet that would be more compatible with net zero.
Rebecca: Chris, I also have to say you have a brilliant capacity to bring all of this into a very positive light and you’ve made me feel a lot more excited that we can achieve things [laughter] that I might not have been otherwise. In this big challenge that we are facing and given that you are the voice of a lot of the UK’s efforts on climate change or at least the face of the CCC, what’s keeping you awake at night? What are you most anxious about in this journey to address climate change?
Chris: Let’s dwell briefly on the positive bits. We’ve got so much going right at the moment if you’re a policy wonk like me. You’ve got targets that are now set, we think, in line with the science. We’ve got real momentum in government to build policies that will address those targets. We’ve got the COP which is genuinely important in keeping all of that on the road. We’ve now got the finalisation, rather than full development, of a whole set of policy strategies across the piece that will help inform all of that and, I’ll make this point specifically, we’ve got a Treasury that is really interested now in the topic. So if you’re in the policy space, as I am and as you are, this is a good moment. The Treasury, in particular, has really come around the curve on this and is now actively championing decarbonisation in a way that they weren’t before. They’re not viewing it as a cost to the economy now that needs to be managed but more as a fundamental of the economy over the transition ahead. All of that is really, really great but what keeps me awake at night, if I can put it that way, is that that’s built on sand. There is still a lot of potential for that to go wrong. If that’s to happen, and I desperately hope that it doesn’t, then I worry a lot about this becoming part of the culture wars and that it becomes, as I think it has in the US, a discussion only on the left or aspects of it are captured by the right and left. The hallmark of this UK success in addressing climate change to date, and we can all agree we haven’t done enough but we have been doing more than other developed economies, is that it hasn’t been captured in that way. Yes, there is a debate about how to reach these targets and how to address climate change but the debate isn’t about whether to do it. It’s the question of whether you do more state-led action or less. There is a political debate about reaching the target and not whether the target is there at all. I worry about Nigel Farage and his love, suddenly, of criticising cycle lanes. That sort of political discourse can turn quite quickly against these, to my mind, very sensible steps which are generally well-supported because they’re not captured by that political fight. I think that would be a disaster if we got into that kind of world where it was really divisive again, sides were taken and we end up where it’s supported by one bit of the political spectrum and not the other because progress just gets harder then. I think we, the CCC, have a big role in making sure that we tread carefully there too and don’t fuel that kind of desire of Nigel Farage and others to make it a culture issue.
[Music flourish]
Matthew: Brilliant, Chris. Thank you very much for that indeed. We’ve put you through your paces. You’re listening to Local Zero. You can find us using the hashtag #LocalZero. You can also find us @EnergyREV_UK. If you’ve got any questions, any comments or any queries, please send them our way.
[Music flourish]
We are delighted to have Chris Stark along after a marathon of questions. Chris, I don’t know whether you’ve listened to any of the previous episodes before but you’re about to enjoy the game Future or Fiction?
This is Fraser’s creation. He’s pretty guarded about it and rightly proud. Every week, it is Becky versus Matt and this week, you have the honour of being our first guest player. I will hand over to Fraser who will explain the rules.
Fraser: Thank you very much for that, Matt. That was very professional. What we do in this game, Chris, for the uninitiated, is I will present you with a technology that either I’ve invented in my head and I’ve just completely made it up or it’s something that I’ve read about recently in which case, it’s the future of technology. The question is is it the future, i.e. have I read about it in research or have I completely pulled it out of my backside? [Laughter]
[Music flourish]
This episode, my invention is called The Looking Glass. Researchers have developed effective, fully-transparent solar panels that can be placed over windows, mobile phone screens or even car windshields to generate power. Do we think it’s the future or do we think it’s fiction?
Matthew: I ought to warn you here, Chris, he’s an extremely good liar is Fraser, so just take that into account as well [laughter]. You’ve got a ‘phone a friend’ and ‘ask the audience.’ Fraser, are we talking about something essentially like a film you can stick on a window?
Fraser: We’re talking about a clear screen and more, I envisage, an architectural development rather than purely an energy technology development integrating solar generation in things like windows.
Chris: Yeah, I’m aware that there is the capacity to do that and my understanding is it’s not very efficient. It’s not nearly as efficient as more traditional solar PV.
Rebecca: I feel like I’ve read about this but let’s see the acid test. What was the name of it, Fraser, again?
Fraser: The Looking Glass.
Rebecca: I don’t think that that name is exciting enough for you to have made it up [laughter], I’m going with...
Matthew: Yeah, they’ve normally got a bit more flourish to them if they’re Fraser’s.
Chris: Ah, it’s impossible to give a straightforward answer to that, so I think it’s not fictional but I doubt it will be providing the majority of the power that we need in the future. Through gritted teeth, I’ll say fiction.
Fraser: Becky, do we have a verdict, other than insulting my ability to name technologies?
Rebecca: I think it’s the future. I mean I agree that it probably won’t be as efficient as other forms of solar generation but I don’t think that’s the question you’re asking here. You’ve tricked us on these grounds before, so I’m going to go with future.
Fraser: Future? Is that two sticking with fiction? Chris and Matt?
Chris: I’m a past master in just being confident in my assertions, so I’m just going to stick with fiction [laughter].
Matthew: I think I’m with Chris on this one. I mean I teach this stuff occasionally and I know you’ve got thin film technology and there are organic PV technologies. I think I have seen applications like this in the past but I agree with Chris that you’re not going to be able to milk much from the sun using this stuff and that’s why we probably don’t see much of it about. There’s something in your wording, Fraser. I can see it in your eyes as well that you’re about to pull something on us. Yeah, I’m future.
Fraser: That’s interesting, Chris, because you accepted that the technology exists. The answer is... future. The Looking Glass is the future. It’s not called The Looking Glass. I did invent it, so it was still hurtful to my feelings, Becky. Thank you. But researchers at the Michigan State University have devised, just last year, a fully transparent solar panel that, unlike previous attempts, boasts a very high efficiency and high material quality. It uses organic molecules to absorb waves of light that are invisible to the human eye which means that the material can be transparent. So right now, it’s about six times more efficient than previous attempts but, Chris, you’re absolutely right to say that it’s still not entirely efficient. When I say future, they talk about it as potential applications for architecture in maybe ten years or so.
[Music flourish]
Chris: I’m glad I was completely correct [laughter].
Rebecca: I think that’s the first one I’ve got right so far, so I’m very pleased about that one. Thanks, Fraser [laughter].
[Music flourish]
What a great Future or Fiction? A special thanks to Chris for such an exciting conversation and a little bit of positivity to start our 2021.
One of the things Chris mentioned was the success of the Citizens Assemblies and we’ll be following up on this next time when we talk more about the Citizens Assemblies and the role of people in both creating and delivering that net zero future when we talk to Professor Rebecca Willis.
Matthew: If you want to follow us on social media, use the hashtag @LocalZero and you’ll find us @EnergyREV_UK to send us questions that you want answered and we’ll get to them later in the series.
Rebecca: But for now, thank you and goodbye.
Matthew: Goodbye and see you soon.
Fraser: Goodbye.
[Music flourish]
Transcribed by
PODTRANSCRIBE