At the end of 2020, Prime minister Boris Johnson declared the UK would recover green from the coronavirus pandemic, laying out a 10-point plan to reboot the economy and create green jobs. In December, he announced plans to cut emissions by 68% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, in a bid to set the UK on course to achieving its 2050 net zero goal.

But climate campaigners say recent policy announcements are at odds with Johnson’s proclaimed green vision.

“We have strong ambition and good rhetoric on building back better. But there is still a gap in funding and policy in order to get us on track for the [climate] targets and give investors a really clear signal as to which way the government is moving,” Roz Bulleid, deputy policy director at the Green Alliance, told Climate Home News. 

From slashing foreign aid to greenlighting a new coal mine, here are five policies that undermine the UK’s leadership credentials.

1. Airline support 

Johnson plans to cut air passenger duty on domestic flights to revive the airline industry after air travel collapse in 2020. Proposals, set out in a UK transport review on Wednesday, include halving the current levy of £13 per domestic flight. The announcement comes a week after rail fares increased by 2.6%. 

The decision has been widely criticised by environmental groups who say it undermines the government’s 2050 zero target.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) advised in December that if the UK is to meet its 2050 net zero goal, it will have to reduce its overall aviation emissions. Aviation is likely to be the UK’s highest emitting sector by 2050, according to the CCC.

Hall of shame: 9 countries missing the chance of a green recovery

“There is no way to bring emissions within safe limits without constraining flights. The easiest place to start is with domestic flights that have transport alternatives,” Leo Murray, director of innovation at environmental group Possible, told Climate Home News. 

Murray described the government’s decision as “embarrassing”, given the UK’s role as president of the Cop26 climate summit this year. 

“It makes us look like we don’t know what we’re doing. The government is very committed to announcing ambitious targets but there is no evidence that it is prepared to implement any policy to follow through on those targets,” he said. 

2. New coal mine

In January, the UK government was accused of “rank hypocrisy” for greenlighting a project to build the country’s first deep coal mine in 30 years while seeking to lead on climate action. 

Cumbria county council suspended the project last month following mounting criticism. The mining company said it plans to seek legal action over the suspension.

Lord Deben, head of the CCC, wrote a letter to minister of housing and communities Robert Jenrick in which he warned the project “gives a negative impression of the UK’s climate priorities in the year of Cop26”.

Amid the rising controversy, Jenrick “called in” the decision on 11 March, meaning central government will consider overruling the council decision.

“It’s a really bad look for a government who claims to be a climate leader and who is hosting the most important climate summit ever to be telling other governments what to do and then supporting a coal mine in its own backyard,” Rebecca Willis, professor in practice at Lancaster University, previously told Climate Home News. 

“At best that’s confusing and at worst it’s hypocritical,” she said. 

3. Foreign aid cuts

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in November that the government planned to slash its overseas development assistance from 0.7% to 0.5% of its national income.

Leaked documents from the UK’s foreign and development office obtained by openDemocracy show cuts are planned across some of the world’s most climate vulnerable nations this year. Cuts of around 60% are planned in South Sudan and Somalia. Aid programmes in Syria will be cut by 67% and Nigeria by 58%. 

The lack of UK finance threatens climate progress in countries such as South Sudan which is in the grips of a humanitarian crisis. The world’s newest country is drafting plans to raise its climate ambition by rolling out renewable energy and mass tree planting, but relies heavily on international support to deliver.

South Sudan plans to raise climate ambition amid ‘dire’ humanitarian crisis

In an open letter in November, environmental groups warned the cuts would worsen the climate crisis and undermine a core aim of Cop26: increasing support to vulnerable countries. 

Tom Evans, from the think tank E3G, described the UK aid cuts as “a major strategic mistake” and warned it would erode the trust between the Cop26 host and developing countries.

4. Green homes U-turn

One of the government’s flagship schemes to decarbonise heating for 600,000 households and support 100,000 jobs was axed for falling short of its target by the end of March. 

The £2bn green homes grant, which allow people to apply for vouchers to cover the cost of installing energy efficient improvements to their homes, was promoted as a key pillar of Johnson’s plan to align the UK’s short-term actions with its carbon neutrality goal. 

Analysis by the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think tank shows the government issued vouchers to just 49,000 households, 8% of its target, despite more than 69,000 applying to the scheme.

In a written answer to British lawmakers, business minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said the unspent £2bn would not be rolled over to the next financial year and would instead be replaced by a £320 million funding pot. 

China makes no shift away from coal in five-year plan as it ‘crawls’ to carbon neutrality

“This colossal failure to deliver the tens of thousands of jobs promised really demonstrates how, by scrapping the green homes grant funding, the government has got it wrong on so many levels,” said Kate Blagojevic, head of climate at Greenpeace UK. 

“It’s imperative for jobs, rebalancing the economy, creating warm homes and tackling the climate crisis that this scheme is rebooted and properly funded,” she said.

5. Fuel duty freeze

In the latest UK budget unveiled last week, a fuel duty on petrol and diesel was frozen for the 11th year in a row.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak was expected to increase the fuel tax in a signal of the government’ seriousness to lowering emissions. But at the last moment, Sunak changed his mind. 

“To keep the cost of living low, I’m not prepared to increase the cost of a tank of fuel, so the scheduled rise in fuel duty is cancelled,” Sunak said at the budget presentation. 

“Future fuel duty rates will be considered in the context of the UK’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050,” the budget said. 

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Campaigners argue the freeze further weakens the government’s green recovery plans.  “Fuel duty rise is disastrous. We aren’t doing the things we need to be doing to erode car dependency,” said Murray.

According to analysis by Carbon Brief, the freeze in fuel duty since 2010 has increased UK carbon emissions by as much as 5% over the past decade.  

“Fuel duty could be a fantastic way to pay for transport alternatives,” Murray said, adding that for many people driving is the only option due to a lack of affordable and accessible public transport.

This article was updated after publication with the information that the planning minister had called in the Cumbria coal mine decision.

The post Five ways the UK is failing to walk the talk on a green recovery ahead of Cop26 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Awaiting the appointment of a new president for Cop26 in Glasgow, Nick Bridge, the UK’s foreign secretary special representative for climate change, said: “We have been able to do a huge amount” abroad already, citing work with civil society and businesses.

“Every ambassador and high commissioner is out there working out what that drum beat of action is and a lot of it is already happening,” he told an event organised by the think tank Green Alliance in London on Tuesday.

The role of Cop26 president has been vacant since UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson abruptly sacked Claire O’Neill from the role at the end of January. A new Cop26 president is expected to be announced on Thursday, as part of a cabinet reshuffle.

Bridge said 50 new people had been recruited within the climate diplomacy service to drive the UK’s efforts to shift the world into taking more ambitious climate action. The Cop26 unit team is also “approaching 200 people,” he said.

“The resources are there,” he said, adding the whole diplomatic mission had been “instructed to have [climate change] as their top international priority this year”. “This is a whole government mindset.”

On a less global front, the UK is also aiming to negotiate trade deals in the wake of Brexit.

UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start

After she was sacked, O’Neill made a blistering personal attack on what she called Johnson’s lack of understanding of the importance of the talks, accusing Number 10 of failing to provide the necessary leadership to make the talks a success.

Last week, both former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and former foreign secretary William Hague refused to lead the UK’s presidency of the talks, raising concerns no senior candidate would take the job.

Cop26 is billed as the most important climate talks since countries signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. Governments are under pressure to submit toughen climate plans to the UN before the summit in November and bridge the gap between current levels of commitment and what is needed to limit global warming “well below 2C” by the end of the century.

At a time when global politics are not aligned with greater climate ambition, the UK presidency faces a steep climb to leverage the world’s largest emitters into greater action.

The UK successfully bid to preside over the Cop26 with Italy, which is due to host a preparatory meeting and youth event in Milan.

Bridge said said the UK needed to understand how every major country was taking decisions on climate action and “translate that into an economic vision” to provide “the positive momentum we need”.

Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway upgrade climate plans before Cop26

Michael Gove, the UK’s former environment minister, also set out his vision for summit. He is heavily tipped to become the next Cop26 president.

But asked whether he wanted the job, Gove replied: “I am very happy of the job that I have and there are many, many, many talented people who could do the job of Cop president better that I ever could.”

However, Gove insisted he wanted to make sure the Glasgow talks “live up to the expectations of all those people who’ve so often felt let down by this process”, adding that the UK had “a moral responsibility to lead on climate” as the first country to industrialise.

He added domestic action from the US and Brazil at the sub-national level will be vital in driving ambition. The US will formally leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November – a day after the US presidential election. A Democrat victory could see the US re-join the deal within a couple of month.

Gove described his aspiration for success at the talks as the acceptance that “the need to act leads to action that is irreversible, accelerating and inclusive”, insisting that adaptation and resilience, nature-based solutions and greening of financial flows would need to be at the heart of the UK’s strategy.

He also suggested making the talks “the most transparent ever” by livestreaming key meetings in the negotiations, which he said would prevent governments from saying one thing in public sessions and another in private meetings.

UN Climate Change already livestreams all plenary negotiations as well as a number of public meetings and press conferences. But governments and negotiators have long used closed door meetings to make progress and flesh out contentious issues outside the public eye.

The post UK climate diplomacy ‘already happening’ for Cop26 despite leadership vacuum appeared first on Climate Home News.

With nine months to go before the summit, or Cop26, the UK faces a steep climb to provide the confidence and diplomatic lift the world needs to galvanise political leaders into taking more ambitious action and curb greenhouse gas emissions growth.

But preparations for the summit have been off to a rocky start – and the job of rallying countries into bolder action could prove to get tougher yet.

Last week, UK prime minister Boris Johnson sacked former clean growth minister Claire O’Neill as Cop26 president. Her replacement is expected to be announced as part of a cabinet reshuffle in the coming days.

As she went, O’Neill slammed Johnson for showing no leadership over preparations for the summit, which she said were “miles off track”. “He doesn’t get it,” she told the BBC of the summit’s diplomatic gravitas.

Johnson launched Cop26 on Tuesday without a president to oversee the summit, nor a clear strategy to leverage the world’s largest emitters into submitting tougher climate plans before the Glasgow talks.

He urged all countries to follow the UK’s lead in setting net zero emissions goals before the end of the year – a goal that the UK itself is not on track to meet and that none of the world’s large emerging economies have signed up for so far.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is also failing to show enthusiasm for upgrading their climate plans.

Under a UN decision to implement the Paris Agreement, February 9 is the theoretical deadline for countries to communicate new or updated climate plans this year. Only the Marshall Islands and Suriname have so far met the deadline.

In a must-read report, Alister Doyle looks at the legality and implications of the missed deadline.

Back in the UK, Johnson does have a vision, one of a “global Britain” after Brexit.

How the government balances this double act of re-defining its place in the world while calling on leader to take greater climate action will be key to the success of its leadership this year.

Indeed, some confidence remains that the UK’s diplomatic leverage could still deliver a positive outcome at Cop26. But in private, negotiators are expressing concerns that time for action is now strikingly tight.

African youths’ call

When African youth activist Vanessa Nakate was cropped out from a picture at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it was one example too many of the lack of attention to the voices of those that are most affected by climate impacts.

The incident, which sparked outrage across the world, also led young African activists to highlight the lack of action by both African and world leaders to tackle the climate crisis on the continent.

“The biggest threat to action in my country and in Africa is the fact that those who are trying as hard as possible to speak up are … not able to tell their stories,” warned Nakate.

Turbines

A record 3.6 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity was installed across Europe in 2019. As the cost of building offshore wind farms continues to fall, the economic incentive for the continent to embrace wind power should be a given.

But the pace of deployment is too slow to meet the EU’s 2050 net zero emissions target, according to the industry.

The EU Commission estimates Europe will need between 230 and 450 GW of offshore wind by 2050 to decarbonise its energy system. At the end of 2019, total capacity reached 22 GW. Still a long way to go.

This week’s top stories

• World misses symbolic February deadline to ratchet up climate action before Cop26
• UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start
• Offshore wind deployment boom ‘too slow’ to meet EU climate target
• Democratic contenders in Iowa caucus aim to rejoin Paris accord in green goals
• UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020
• UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit
• Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change

The post ‘Miles off track’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The tension between the UK government’s priorities was on display this week as Prime Minister Boris Johnson both set out his vision for a global Britain and formally launched Cop26.

Outlining his “global Britain” campaign, Johnson declared his government was “ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once”.

Much hope rides on the expectations that the game will include climate diplomacy.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of UN Climate Change, told Climate Home News that Cop26 in Glasgow “was a post-Brexit opportunity to show that despite Brexit, Britain continues to have important leadership on global issues”.

But nine months before the UK is due to preside over the biggest diplomatic event it has ever hosted, there are no clear indications of how the government will deliver the confidence lift the world needs to deliver tougher climate targets.

UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020

At the Cop26 launch on Tuesday, Johnson, who had just sacked Claire O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, as Cop president, had little to say about the government’s diplomatic strategy for the summit.

He called on every country to follow the UK’s lead by setting net zero emissions goal this year and announced plans to bring forward a UK ban on sales of new diesel and petrol cars by five years, to 2035.

The climate talks in Glasgow have been billed as a critical moment for countries to revive the multilateralism that underpinned the Paris Agreement and leverage the world’s largest emitters into taking bolder climate action.

O’Neill, who was appointed Cop26 president in July, would have been the first Cop president not to hold any ministerial role.  The government said a minister would be replacing her.

Some observers interpreted the move as a positive signal that Johnson’s team understands the need for a political heavyweight to take the lead.

But the fallout between Johnson and O’Neill has also raised questions about the Prime Minister’s grasp of the diplomatic gravitas of hosting such an important climate meeting.

In a strongly worded rebuke letter, O’Neill accused Johnson of not giving the summit the attention and resources it needed, with preparations “miles off track”.

“In my judgement this isn’t a pretty place to be and we owe the world a lot better,” she wrote, calling on the government to make the climate talks the top of its priorities.

“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done….Please get this done too,” she urged. Johnson has called on the EU to agree a Canada-style free trade deal with the UK before the end of the year.

UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit

Diplomats have told CHN the UK’s work on Cop26 had only just started when O’Neill was dropped from the role. They expressed eagerness for the UK to start its diplomatic work as soon as possible.

Speaking to CHN before O’Neill was removed, Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said the UK was “expected to be able to do joined-up governance” without having to start again from scratch.

Johnson is anticipated to announce a new Cop26 president as part of a cabinet reshuffle, reported to take place next week.

The late timing of the announcement is putting more pressure on the UK to deliver greater ambition while finalising a number of negotiation issues left unresolved at the last UN talks in Madrid.

“Time is tight, but there is still enough time and enough leverage in the mix for the UK presidency to make some headway,” David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative, told CHN.

Once a new Cop26 president is appointed, it will be “a matter of rolling out that diplomatic effort as quickly and assertively as possible,” he added.

Possible candidates to replace O’Neill are already under intense scrutiny. For Jennifer Tollmann, an expert in climate diplomacy at think tank E3G, the new appointment will be “key to signalling to the rest of the world how serious [the UK government] is about the Cop”.

The new president will need to have good background understanding of the climate process, diplomatic experience and the commitment and determination to make the summit a success, Waskow and Tollmann agreed.

“It’s really important that the Prime Minister is fully attached to the outcome of the Cop because otherwise we will not get the top political attention that the Cop needs,” Nick Mabey, chief executive of E3G, said in an event at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London last month.

Among those rumoured for the job are former environment minister Michael Gove, former foreign secretary William Hague and environment and climate minister Zac Goldsmith.

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Inside the Cop26 presidency team, about 150 civil servants have been brought in to push ambition to the rest of the world. “Diplomats are ready to go, they are waiting for marching orders,” a UK official told CHN.

Even with the best geopolitical outlook, the scale of the Cop26 challenge is enormous.

Countries are under pressure to enhance their climate plans to bridge the gap between current emissions reduction pledges and what is necessary to limit global warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times.

Global emissions need to fall by 7.6% every year until 2030 for the world to be on track to limit warming to the toughest goal in the Paris Agreement of 1.5C, according to UN Environment. And global carbon emissions rose 0.6% in 2019 to a new record high.

Under the Paris deal, countries are due to “communicate or update” their 2030 climate plans by the end of the year. Countries have also agreed that successive climate plans “will represent a progression” and reflect their “highest possible ambition”.

This rachet-up mechanism, which underpins the Paris accord, is being tested for the first time.

But the geopolitical momentum for climate action is stalled, making the task ahead even greater.

The US will officially leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November, a day after the US presidential election, under a withdrawal by President Donald Trump. Leading Democratic candidates say they will immediately apply to rejoin if they beat him.

Irreconcilable rift cripples UN climate talks as majority stand against polluters

Meanwhile, entrenched nationalism, a trade war and slower growth have seen China and India bump climate action down their priority list.

Efforts to bolster momentum last year have failed. At Cop25, countries failed to agree on the rules to set up a global carbon market – an issue that needs to be resolved this year – and failed to make a clear call for more ambition.

“Cop25 really increased the diplomatic and confidence lift the UK needs to provide,” Mabey said.

The UK presidency is now largely dependent on the outcome of an EU-China summit in October, when the EU is hoping to broker a climate deal with Beijing to inject momentum into the process.

At home, the UK’s credibility lies on its own ability to develop a concrete plan to achieve its 2050 net zero emissions goal.

Last year, the UK was the first major developed economy to set a net zero goal into law. Under the Paris Agreement, all countries are expected to work out “mid-century, long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies” by the end of 2020.

“The year ahead is an acid test of the new [UK] government’s climate credibility,” Chris Stark, chief executive of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, wrote last week.

But analysis by the environmental think tank Green Alliance published on Monday found the UK to be off track to meet its 2050 target.

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For Mabey, the Paris Agreement hangs in the balance of the Cop26 outcome. “Failure is really on the agenda for Glasgow. If Glasgow fails then the Paris regime fails, and we lose another five to ten years building another regime,” he said.

In her letter to Johnson, O’Neill outlined a seven-point action plan to ramp up climate action. Strengthening countries’ climate plans and establishing carbon neutrality as the climate ambition goal topped the list.

Introducing a “properly-funded global package for adaptation and resilience building”, a focus on nature-based solutions and decarbonising finance flows also made the list.

The appointment of former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney and incoming UN special envoy for climate action and finance and former We Mean Business CEO Nigel Topping as the UK’s climate action champion has further boosted the UK’s finance agenda.

Kyte told CHN it was “absolutely appropriate to put finance right at the top of [Cop26’s] agenda” both in a real economy sense but also as part of the negotiations.

“Finance is the essential ingredient in moving the transition forward quickly,” said Kyte. “It is the essential glue for speeding up the action that we need.”

The post UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start appeared first on Climate Home News.

“We were the first to industrialise, so we have a responsibility to lead the way,” he told the audience of selected reporters at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday to outline plans for Cop26 in Glasgow.

“We have to deal with out CO2 emissions and that is why the UK is calling for us to get to net zero as soon as possible – for every country to announce credible targets to get there [sic]. That is what we want in Glasgow,” he said during the event attended by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and British naturalist broadcaster David Attenborough.

The UK and Italy won a joint a bid to host this year’s critical climate summit, with Milan hosting a preparatory meeting and a youth event and Glasgow hosting the summit.

The UK was the first major economy to set a net zero emissions target by 2050 in law last summer and Johnson said he would “lead a global call to reach net zero”.

Johnson launched Cop26 despite the fact the summit is lacking a president to facilitate it.

His speech was overshadowed by an intensifying fallout with Claire O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, who was sacked as Cop26 president on Friday evening.

UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit

Hours before Johnson’s speech, O’Neill made a blistering personal attack on Johnson accusing him of failing to understand the diplomatic gravitas of the summit.

“We have seen a huge lack of engagement and leadership,” she told the BBC of Johnson’s attitude towards Cop26. “He also admitted to me that he doesn’t really understand it,” she said, adding that “others around him do”.

In an explosive letter addressed to Prime Minister Johnson, O’Neill said preparations for the summit she was in charge of were “miles off track” and accused Johnson of not giving the summit the attention and resources it needed.

In her letter, O’Neill described government in-fighting over who should be accountable for the talks preparations, ballooning budgets and the lack of planning for international engagements to the summit.

“In my judgement this isn’t a pretty place to be and we owe the world a lot better,” she wrote, calling for “a whole government reset” which would move the summit to the “Premier League” of the government’s priorities.

“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done. Please get this done too,” she added.

Johnson did not respond to questions over his motives for sacking O’Neill.

Rebecca Newsom, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, said the UK government needed “to rise above petty politics” and “lead by example” by “get[ting] its own house in order”.

Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change

Some observers had hoped O’Neill’s replacement would be announced during the summit’s launch given the short timescale to the November summit. The next Cop26 president is now expected to be announced during a UK cabinet reshuffle tipped to take place next week.

Alex Scott, senior policy advisor on Cop26 for the environmental think tank E3G, told Climate Home News a new appointment needed to be made as soon as possible.

“We are really hoping that there is some clarity on this as soon as possible because of how late in the day it is now and the gravity of the diplomatic task ahead,” she said.

“What this process is going to need is a little more Boris Johnson level engagement. We need to see a lot more commitment from the prime minister on the Cop strategy,” she added.

Cop26 is widely considered the most important climate summit since the Paris summit in 2015.

Countries are under pressure to increase their climate plans to bridge the gap between current emissions reduction pledges and what is necessary to limit global warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times.

Current temperature projections set warming to be on track for more than 3C by the end of the century.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are also due to publish their long-term decarbonisation strategies before the end of the year.

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Last year, the UK won praise for setting a national carbon neutrality goal for 2050 but has taken few steps to develop a comprehensive plan to meet it.

Analysis by the environmental think tank Green Alliance published on Monday found the UK was off track to meet its 2050 target.

Much of the UK’s credibility for demanding the world to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of the century relies on its own ability to come up with a meaningful plan to reach its own 2050 target.

Johnson used his speech to launch a “year of climate action” in the UK. He also announced plans to bring forward a ban on petrol and diesel cars, which includes hybrid cars, to 2035 – five years earlier than initially planned.

Responding to the announcement, the Green Alliance said this was a “move in the right direction” but “isn’t nearly ambitious enough” to meet the UK’s decarbonisation goals. Instead, it called for the ban to come into force in 2030.

Newsom said cars were “an important piece of the puzzle” towards decarbonising the UK economy but could not be seen in isolation.

“Expanding airports, handing out new licenses for oil drilling, and putting billions of taxpayers’ money behind climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects all over the world will not get us to the right destination,” she added.

On Tuesday, the UK’s aviation sector also announced a commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050 mainly by offsetting flights’ emissions – a measure that heavily relies on the use of carbon offsets.

The post UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020 appeared first on Climate Home News.