British Climate Act 'failed before it started'

The British Climate Act is flawed and comprised of unrealistic and unobtainable targets, writes US academic Roger A Pielke Jr, in a journal paper published today, 18 June, 2009, in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters.

As Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, points out, no one knows how fast a major economy can decarbonise and policy therefore needs to focus less on targets and timetables that no one can be sure of reaching, and more on the tangible process for achieving goals such as the development of clean technologies that will be crucial in the decarbonising process.

In order to decrease carbon emissions, countries essentially only have four options: reducing their population, cutting back economic activity, taking positive steps to increase energy efficient technologies, or expanding the role of less carbon intensive energy sources.

Recognizing that no climate policy will focus on depopulation or reducing wealth generation, Pielke argues that setting objectives for efficiency gains in specific economic sectors and for the expansion of carbon-free energy supplies would be a first step in the right direction to make the UK a world-leader in the actual practice of carbon policy.

…To be on pace to achieve these targets, the UK would have to become as carbon efficient as France by no later than 2015, which would require a level of effort comparable to the building and implementation of about 30 new nuclear power plants in the UK in the next 6 years. It took France about 20 years to decarbonise to its current level, largely due to its investment in nuclear energy

EurekAlert