Raising UK's climate ambitions for 2035 would put net-zero within reach: committee

London — The United Kingdom can raise its climate ambitions for 2035 in a move that would put the country's legally binding 2050 net-zero emissions target within reach, the independent Climate Change Committee said Dec. 9.

The committee issued a report on the UK's sixth carbon budget for the period 2033-2037, representing the world's first ever detailed route map for a fully decarbonized country.

"The sixth carbon budget is a clear message to the world that the UK is open for low-carbon business. It's ambitious, realistic and affordable," said the committee's chairman and member of the House of Lords, John Gummer.

"As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the sixth carbon budget is a chance to jump-start the UK's economic recovery. Anything less would shut us out of new economic opportunities. It would also undermine our role as President of the next UN climate talks," he said in a statement.

The committee's chief message to government is that the 2020s must be a decisive decade of progress on climate change action.

"Modern low-carbon industries will grow; producing hydrogen; capturing carbon; creating new woodlands; renovating and decarbonizing the UK's 28 million homes. These provide hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the UK," the committee said.

The UK's Climate Change act requires the UK to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and requires the government to set a new carbon budget every five years, following the advice of the Climate Change Committee.

Under the law, the sixth carbon budget must be legislated by June 2021.

Expansion needed for wind, hydrogen

The carbon budget can be met through four key steps, the committee said.

First, people and businesses will take up low-carbon solutions as high-carbon technologies are progressively phased out. All new cars and vans and replacement boilers in homes and other buildings must be zero carbon by the early 2030s, it said.

Second, all UK electricity production must be zero carbon by 2035, it said, with offshore wind becoming the backbone of the whole UK energy system, with capacity growing from the Prime Minister's pledged 40 GW in 2030 to 100 GW or more by 2050.

Clean electricity will find uses in transport, heating and industry, raising electricity demand by a half over the next 15 years, and doubling or even trebling demand by 2050, it said. Low-carbon hydrogen scales up to be almost as large in 2050 as electricity production is today, it said.

The committee's balanced net-zero pathway for fuel supply involves a transition from producing 1,100 TWh of fossil fuels and 170 TWh of bioenergy in 2018 to producing 425 TWh of low-carbon hydrogen and bioenergy in 2050, for sectors of the economy that are likely to use fuels rather than electricity, it said.

Third, demand for carbon-intensive activities will fall, with the UK wasting fewer resources and cutting its reliance on high-carbon goods. Buildings will lose less energy through better insulation and diets will change to be less carbon intensive, it said.

Fourth, a transformation in agriculture and use of farmland can remove carbon from the atmosphere while maintaining the same levels of food production per head produced today, as well as producing wider environmental benefits, it said.

260,000 hectares of farmland will shift to producing energy crops, and woodland coverage rises from 13% of UK land today to 15% by 2035 and 18% by 2050, the committee said.