“Our analysis suggests that electric cars will play a major role in helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – we think that it is both feasible and desirable that there are up to 1.7 million electric cars on the road by 2020.

But how do they compare to conventional cars when you are in the driving seat?

This month, I attended the Renault Roadshow to give some of the latest models a test-drive.

I have to be frank – I attended the event as an optimist.

And my optimism was borne out in practice as I drove the Renault Fluence on the streets around Russell Square. It is a beautiful vehicle, both from the outside and inside, and is great to drive, if slightly odd in that there is no engine noise. All in all, the driving experience was superior to that in my own Vauxhall Zafira.

In terms of vital statistics, the Renault Fluence has a range of 100 miles, and will cost the same as a conventional alternative. The battery will be leased to the car owner, and replaced if it is faulty. Renault will guarantee to buy back the car, and enrol you in a car club for longer journeys.

I will be queuing up to buy an electric car as new models come to market from Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi and others in the next several years.

But I and others will only be able to afford this if the Government maintains transitional price support through the Spending Review – this funding is crucial in developing a key technology for meeting carbon budgets, and to provide a future for the UK vehicle industry, and should be protected”.

To find out more about the role that electric cars could play as part of a low-carbon transport system, visit our website.

CCC team visit Anaerobic digestion plant at Crouchlands Farm

Members of the CCC Secretariat last week visited Crouchlands Farm, a 750 cattle dairy farm located in West Sussex, to tour the farm’s newly installed 1 MW anaerobic digestion (AD) plant and to discuss GHG emissions reduction from agricultural activities with representatives of the National Farmers Union (NFU).

Faced with increased Nitrate Vulnerable Zone restrictions, which would require installation of expensive manure storage facilities, farmer (and NFU Vice President) Gwyn Jones opted to invest in a £2 million AD plant which converts agricultural waste into renewable energy.

The plant consists of two digester towers, which are fed on a combination of slurry collected from the dairy farm as well as maize (produced at a local arable farm on poorer quality land) and grass silage, which together form an optimal feedstock mix.

The feedstocks are mixed in the towers on a 90-day cycle, producing a biogas which is then converted into electrical energy, which is sold directly into the national electricity grid.
At completion of the digestion process, a nutrient-rich digestate is produced from the waste products which is then separated into solids and liquids. The solid digestate is spread back to cropland (used to grow maize) and the liquid slurry to pasture land, providing a nutrient recycling system and saving the farm in fertiliser costs.

As a renewable energy generator, the plant will earn returns from the ROC scheme as well as tariffs received from selling the electricity generated. Gwyn anticipates a payback for his investment in 4 to 5 years.

The CCC’s 2010 progress report to Parliament identified cost-effective opportunities to reduce methane emissions arising from livestock manures by increased installation of on-farm and centralised anaerobic digestion plants (approximately 0.6 MtCO2e in savings). At present methane emissions arising from manures account for 3 MtCO2e, or 6% of total agricultural GHG emissions.

The CCC report also noted that achieving greater uptake of abatement measures in the agriculture sector will require new approaches to address current barriers. Gwyn and NFU colleagues noted a number of potential barriers faced by farmers interested in installing AD systems, ranging from planning and compliance processes to accessing financing for smaller scale plants.

Alex Kazaglis, CCC Economist

This is an extract from an article written by Alex Kazaglis, an economist at the CCC, first published in The Punch, where he gives his personal view of Australian PM Julia Gilliard’s proposals to create a Climate Change Commission

“The debate during the first weeks of the election campaign has been dominated by the controversy surrounding Gillards proposed “Citizens Assembly”. Gillard needs a body with teeth to tackle climate change

Despite this, it is one of Gillards other proposals that could prove much more important: the creation of a Climate Change Commission to provide “evidence and information about climate change to all Australians”.

At first, the Climate Commission may not appear a compelling and visionary proposal for the future of climate policy. However in the UK a highly successful prototype- the Committee on Climate Change – has begun to create the deep and lasting consensus that Julia Gillard so strongly desires…..”.

Read the full article online

Adrian Gault - Chief Economist

Discussion at the 9th July meeting was spread over two main topics – the Committee’s report into low-carbon innovation in the UK and preparatory work to inform 4th budget recommendations later this year.

The Committee signed off its report into ‘Building a low-carbon economy – the UK’s innovation challenge’, subsequently published on 19th July. Unsurprisingly, and in the context of current public spending constraints, the level of “low-carbon” spend in the UK – and what to say about it – received some attention. The need for public spend to increase, as fiscal constraints ease, was informed by analysis showing current UK spend is low against main international competitors, and that global spend is itself low against benchmarks suggested by, for example, the Stern Review and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

In relation to the 4th carbon budget (covering 2023-27, Committee recommendations due by the end of the year), we presented analysis on commitments under the Copenhagen accord, looking at consistency with the Committee’s climate objectives (to limit global average temperature rise at or close to 2°c, and keep the probability of an extreme 4°c change to very low levels). Delivery of these Copenhagen commitments are being called into question at present, with various reports downplaying prospects for Cancun. But if these commitments could be delivered, and with very deep emissions cuts beyond 2020, our analysis suggests they could be consistent with those climate objectives. Minutes of this meeting can be seen here

“The CCC is the first institution of its type in the world – an independent statutory body established under legislation (the Climate Change Act, 2008), to provide advice to Government on climate change.

The establishment of the CCC illustrates an acknowledgement by policy makers that the problem of climate change requires a long term and strategic solution, independent of politics and short term election cycles.

Lessons from the first two years of operation of the CCC are potentially important to policy makers in other countries, both in terms of general strategic approaches to climate change policy, and the specific possibility of setting up similar independent organisations.

With this in mind, I recently undertook a masters dissertation to investigate the role of the CCC as an independent body in providing advice on climate change policy.

In providing its first advice on the level of carbon budgets and the 2050 target, and monitoring progress reducing emisisons, the CCC acted as a Knowledge Broker. Such a body is an intermediary between expert knowledge and policy, tasked with translating complex information into policy relevant terms. The CCC has fulfilled this role, assessing and developing a vast evidence base in developing its advice, and translating this to specific and clear recommendations, all of which have been accepted by the Government to date.

Professor Michael Grubb, member of the Committee on Climate Change

This is an excerpt from review written by Michael Grubb, published in  Nature magazine (NATURE|Vol 465|10 June 2010)

“Pricing Carbon is a long-awaited analysis of the first major attempt to set a price on carbon emissions through the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). With its empirical focus, this myth-busting book demonstrates the scheme’s achievements and flags its ongoing challenges. These are set out in careful studies by international experts in energy policy and environmental economics, including primary authors Denny Ellerman, Frank Convery and Christian de Perthuis.

The book centres on the first phase of the EU ETS that ran in 2005–07. It explains how the scheme was set up to place a price on carbon by capping carbon dioxide emissions, thus demonstrating a key mechanism in market-based economies.  The EU ETS dwarfs all other similar developments. It introduced a legally binding CO2 cap covering almost half of the emissions from 27 European countries (30 are included in the scheme today) and more than half a billion people. It is also the lynchpin of the Kyoto system of emissions control. As such, the EU ETS has become a political football.

The way in which carbon-trading allowances were allocated remains the most contentious issue.

Pricing Carbon dispatches the widespread assumption that this surplus of allocations implies that the scheme has not cut emissions. The book estimates that the EU ETS saved 120 million to 300 million tonnes of CO2 over those three years — an overall reduction in emissions of up to 5%.

However, there is a gap here in the book’s discussion. I have argued elsewhere that there is an intrinsic risk in trading systems of giving away too many emission allowances. This is suggested by four pieces of evidence: a historical tendency to inflate projections of industrial emissions; the inherent advantages that industry has in the bargaining process; past experience in setting industry emission targets; and the accumulating history of cap-and-trade allocations.

It is a pity that the book doesn’t examine the nature and cause of the first-phase permit surplus more closely — although it is comforting to find that it didn’t matter as much as common sense would suggest”.

Pricing Carbon: The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is by A. Denny Ellerman, Frank J. Convery, Christian de Perthuis and contributors Cambridge University Press: 2010

It has been a busy spring and summer for the Scottish Parliament where further legislation relating to the Scottish Climate Change Act has been made.  

Before the Act received Royal Assent on 4th August 2009, Scottish Ministers asked the Committee for advice relating to a number of the key provisions of the Act, including on the highest achievable interim target (for 2020), how international aviation and shipping emissions should be accounted for and the levels of annual targets that are required to be set in legislation.

This report was published by the Committee in February 2010.

On 21st April 2010 a package of secondary legislation was brought before the Scottish Parliament which closely followed the advice provided by the Committee. Amongst other provisions it reaffirmed the Scottish Government’s commitment to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases in Scotland by 42% by 2020 and proposed annual targets for 2010-22.

While most of this legislation was passed, the statutory instrument setting annual targets was narrowly voted against in the Scottish Parliament in May 2010.

The Scottish Government is now convening a short-life cross-party working group to consider the issue further and report back to Minister Stewart Stevenson in early September. The Minister has asked the Committee to sit on the working group and we will provide advice to the group as required and feed in findings from our 2010 Progress report.

A Report on Proposals and Policies to achieve the required emission reductions will also be published by the Scottish Government later in 2010.

Adrian Gault - Chief Economist

I’m the Chief Economist at the CCC. Each month, I will update you on the latest analytical discussions from our Committee.  Members of the Committee are experts in climate science, economics and engineering. They direct our work programme and each month, meet to review and debate emerging findings in order to ensure our work is robust and credible. They also guide and contribute to future work plans.

Top of the agenda in our latest meeting (11 June) was the Committee’s 2nd report to Parliament on the progress that has been made in meeting carbon budgets (to be published 30 June). The latest data that we have shows UK greenhouse gas emissions falling by 8.6% over the past year. The Committee debated what the key drivers might be behind this – is this reduction due to recessionary impacts or other factors, such as the implementation of new policy measures?

We also discussed some of the emerging messages from the work that we are doing to advise Government on the second phase cap (2013-18) for the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme (we are publishing a report on this in September).

The Committee has also been looking at how analytical work plans are developing for our 4th carbon budget  report (to be published by December). This report will include a review of developments in climate science since 2008, and will consider options – amongst other things – for heat decarbonisation in the 2020s (including the potential role of heat pumps and biomass), plus the potential for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to be applied to gas generation (read our recent letter to Chris Huhne on this).

Lastly, the Committee were provided with an update on emerging findings from a report into low carbon innovation. Is the UK investing enough in the right technologies and research in order to meet carbon budgets? We were asked to conduct this review by the Government’s Chief Scientist Professor John Beddington. The report should be published in July.

These minutes will be agreed at the next meeting and made available in more detail on our website in July. For previous minutes of all of our Committee meetings please see our website. http://www.theccc.org.uk/about-the-ccc/minutes-of-meetings

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The study suggests that the offshore renewable energy industry in the UK, using less than a third of the total available resource, could:

•    Generate electricity equivalent to1 billion barrels of oil annually, matching North Sea oil and gas production

•    Result in cumulative carbon dioxide savings of 1.1 billion tonnes by 2050

The report reveals that rapid development of the UK’s offshore resource – using fixed wind, floating wind, tidal stream, tidal range, and wave technologies – could by 2050 generate an amount of electricity equivalent to a billion barrels of oil per year, or the same as the average annual output of UK North Sea oil and gas production seen over the past four decades.

If developed still further to tap their full practical potential, offshore renewables would allow the UK to power itself six times over at current levels of demand.

Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, David Kennedy said:

“In order to meet our climate goals, we need to decarbonise electricity. There is an important role for nuclear, renewables and Carbon Capture and Storage driving required power sector emissions cuts over the next two decades. This report reinforces the view that offshore renewables, and in particular offshore wind, could have a potentially major role to play”.

The full report is available for download from: www.offshorevaluation.org

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