Can the UK really be a zero-emissions nation?

The UK has a bold target to become a zero-emissions nation by 2050. If it can be achieved, this would make the UK the cleanest country in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. 31 years certainly seems like a long time to achieve this, but is this goal attainable at all?

The current figures are certainly concerning. As of October 2018, the UK had annual greenhouse emissions of around 500 million tonnes of CO2. The government has received advice from the Committee on Climate Change regarding reducing this to zero, after a UN report highlighted the urgent need to cut carbon emissions entirely in order to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Speaking to BBC News, the UK’s climate minister Claire Perry said: "The report was a really stark and sober piece of work — a good piece of work. Now we know what the goal is, and we know what some of the levers are."

"But for me, the constant question is: what is the cost and who's going to bear that, both in the UK and in the global economy. The question is: what does government need to do, where can the private sector come in, and what technologies will come through?"

Volkswagen dealership Vindis has investigated the issue in further detail, looking into the actions that need to take place in order for this goal to be achieved.

Vehicles that are fuel-efficient

With petrol and diesel vehicles being banned in the UK from 2040 onwards, the government is already making moves to clean up the air by cleaning up on the roads. While we may be a couple of decades away from seeing this ban come into force, it appears that an increasing number of British motorists are already exploring what’s available when it comes to alternative-fuel vehicles, e.g. LPG power.

Some are going further than simply exploring the option and are already committing to a greener drive. In fact, Next Green Car has reported that the number of new registrations of plug-in cars jumped from just 3,500 in 2013 to over 195,000 as of the end of January 2019. Furthermore, figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders highlighted that electric car sales across the UK has shifted from only close to 500 being registered each month in the early part of 2014 to an average of 5,000 per month throughout 2018.

The support for alternative-fuel vehicles is also improving throughout the UK. While the UK’s network of electric vehicle charging points was recorded in at just a few hundred units as of 2011, there had been more than 5,800 charging locations, 9,800 charging devices and 16,700 connectors installed by June 2018. We may still be quite a while away from seeing all vehicles on the roads of the UK being run on alternative fuels — the latest vehicle data from the SMMT stated that the car registrations market share for January 2019 was 64.08% petrol, 29.08% diesel and 6.84% alternative-fuel vehicles, for example — but it appears that things are at least moving in the right direction.

Switching to greener fuels

Low-carbon fuels could be key in the UK’s efforts to slash its carbon emissions. It appears the nation is already assisting in this area too. In figures compiled by Imperial College London and reported on by The Guardian, the capacity of renewable energy in the UK surpassed that of fossil fuels for the first time. With the amount of renewable capacity trebling in the same five-year period that fossil fuels decreased by one-third, the capacity of biomass, hydropower, solar and wind power hit 41.9 gigawatts and the capacity of gas, coal and oil-fired power plants recorded in at 41.2 gigawatts between July and September.

Imperial College London’s Dr Iain Staffell, who led the research, said: “Britain’s power system is slowly but surely walking away from fossil fuels, and [the quarter between July and September] saw a major milestone on the journey.”

The UK is already setting records, such as being powered for three days straight without the use of coal in 2018. This was before a report from Imperial College London which was commissioned by Drax suggested that coal supplied only 1.3% of Britain’s entire use of electricity during the second quarter of 2018 — furnaces based at coal-fired power stations throughout the country were completely unused for 12 days in June last year too.

Insulating homes

Let’s move away from the roads and consider our homes now. According to a BBC News article from February 2017, the UK was needing to cut carbon emissions by 80% between the date that the piece was published and 2050. What’s more, a third of those carbon emissions had been recorded from heating draughty buildings across the nation.

These poorly insulated buildings are having a huge impact. Experts from the Green Building Council — a group of leading construction firms — stated in a report sent to Parliament that 25 million existing homes will not currently meet the insulation standards being enforced in the mid-century and will need to be refurbished to the highest standards. According to calculations, these findings mean that the rate of refurbishment stood at a rate of 1.4 homes needing to be worked on every minute as of the beginning of 2017.

Of course, this work will help cut carbon emissions, but it can also help with other areas too. The Green Building Council’s head Julie Hirigoyen explains: "People will have warmer homes and lower bills; they will live longer, happier lives; we will be able to address climate change and carbon emissions."

"We will also be creating many thousands of jobs and exporting our best skills in innovation.”

The UK’s 2050 target is certainly ambitious. Fortunately, some of the examples covered in this article does at least suggest that efforts are being made to ensure the nation reaches its goal.

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