Committee condemns UK Government for net zero targets failure

28 June 2023

The UK Climate Change Committee, in the last Report to Parliament to be presented by the retiring Chairman Lord Deben, condemns the government for  failing to come anywhere near reaching its net zero targets.

The government’s plans to hit net zero have been comprehensively criticised in a withering report by its own advisers that says targets are being missed on nearly every front.

Fewer homes were insulated last year under the government-backed scheme than the year before, despite soaring energy bills and a cost of living crisis. There is little progress on transport emissions, no coherent programme for behaviour change, and still no decision on hydrogen for home heating.

Meanwhile the installation of new wind and solar farms and the upgrading of the electricity grid are still too slow to meet net zero, according to the Climate Change Committee, which says that the lack of urgency of government and a failure of political leadership means progress has stalled.

Lord Deben . . . said the UK had “lost the leadership” on climate action shown at Cop26 in 2021 and done “a number of things” – such as greenlighting a new coal mine and new oil and gasfields in the North Sea – that were “utterly unacceptable”.

The Guardian   28 June 2023   Fiona Harvey  Environment Editor

Among Lord Deben's forceful responses when interviewed on the BBC's Today Programme were

"The government is relying on technology we don't have . ."

"We are not doing the things we have to do . ." 

"Out there there are millions of people whose future we are destroying"

"If we don't fight climate change, we will leave a world which is too hot for people to live in, it will have migratory people moving all over the world, moving away from the [thugs?] and the heat, and we will not give to our children the kind of world which we have received . ."

"So what I'm concerned about is - if we don't act now . . . this will not be the world which we would wish anyone to live in."

You can listen to the broadcast  here . 

You may have to register on the BBC website if you haven't used it before.  The interview with Lord Deben begins at 3.39.29 .

Read the Committee's Key Messages and full report