Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 493

One problem the UK has is that while its emissions are slowly reducing, its depend-
ence on fossil fuel has barely reduced from the long-term 1965-2010 mean (see Figure
8.5b). How can this be: a reduction of emissions yet near-constant dependence on
fossil fuel? The answer to this illusion of carbon dioxide emission reduction is 2-fold.
First, the UK has increased its gas consumption at the expense of oil and (mainly)
coal. Methane gas (CH 4 ) has four high-energy carbon-hydrogen bonds per carbon
atom whereas coal and oil have less than two. So natural gas provides more energy
when burnt (oxidised) to form carbon dioxide than either coal or oil. The problem
is that natural gas remains a finite fossil fuel and so has all the energy security
problems associated with oil in addition to its use as a fuel being a source of green-
house gas. What is needed is for Britain to increase its non-fossil fuel energy use
and it is not doing this with any significance: nuclear energy is set to decline in the
2010s as no new reactor programme has been instigated since the Central Electricity
Generating Board was privatised in 1989, and renewable energy, though growing in
the UK, provides (2011) less than 3% of the nation's energy. Second, the UK had
been reducing its industrial and manufacturing energy consumption. Yet British cit-
izens were still purchasing manufactured goods but these were being imported and
overseas manufacturers were emitting the carbon dioxide instead: this is economic
carbon leakage (as opposed to ecological carbon leakage). In short, while the UK's
stated goal of reducing greenhouse emissions is admirable and the realisation of this
seemingly manifest (albeit modestly), the reality is that the UK has not put in place a
long-term energy strategy reducing reliance on fossil fuel or ensuring its population's
consumption of goods whose manufacture is not reliant on fossil fuel. Having said
that, it is further along the road (again albeit modestly) to reducing its reliance on
fossil fuel compared to nations such as those in North America.
In 2009 a policy move was made to begin to address this with the White Paper
The UK Renewable Energy Strategy (H. M. Government, 2009). It promoted the
security of UK energy supply, reducing its overall fossil fuel demand by around 10%
and gas imports by 20-30% against what they would have been in 2020. It also
aimed to provide opportunities for the UK economy with the potential to create up to
half a million more jobs in Britain's renewable energy sector, resulting from around
£100 billion of new investment. Whether these ambitious policy aspirations will be
realised remains to be seen.
In 2010 Britain's Climate Change Committee published its The Fourth Carbon
Budget: Reducing Emissions Through the 2020s (Climate Change Committee, 2010).
It called for a 2030 target to reduce emissions by 60% relative to 1990 levels (46%
relative to 2009 levels). Interestingly, its perspective was one of carbon dioxide equi-
valents (which is the more accurate way of looking at emissions; see Chapter 1)
and to consider land-use change and ecological sinks. (The problems with the lat-
ter are difficulty with accurate measurement and ecological leakage, especially as
encouraging carbon sequestration by ecosystems can make them prone to be car-
bon emitters with further warming and, as warming is expected over the next two
centuries, this is a likelihood.) In May 2011, the newly elected Conservative-Liberal
coalition government accepted The Fourth Carbon Budget in full.
From a purely policy-analysis perspective it is also worth noting that, reminiscent
of its earlier contribution to the discussion of a possible European carbon tax, the UK