The Climate Change Committee’s assessment of the Labour Government’s work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions attracted plenty of press this week. “The UK can be proud of our progress in reducing emissions,” said CCC interim chair professor Piers Forster as he delivered a rather more positive analysis than reports gone by. Emissions fell 2.5% in 2024.
But laurels will not be sneaking away for a short rest. The price of energy remains a concern, with electricity costs discouraging heating electrification for homes, businesses and the public sector (which is essential in order to meet net-zero). The way in which levies to support renewables are applied to bills is a major problem. As The Guardian explained: “These disproportionately affect electricity bills, rather than gas bills, helping to make electricity artificially more expensive compared with gas.”
Those seeking a full but digestible analysis of this should check out the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ comment. “There are huge differences in how emissions from gas are taxed compared with emissions from electricity, as well as significant differences by who is emitting, with households being relatively undertaxed and non-energy-intensive businesses taxed much more,” explained IFS experts Lucy Gadenne and Bobbie Upton. “This means that certain costly emissions reductions will likely take place while cheaper reductions will not, purely for tax reasons. This pushes up the overall cost of achieving net-zero.” They suggested that it would “be better to fund these subsidies through a uniform tax on all energy sources, gas and electricity alike”.
Over to you, Ed Miliband. The energy secretary this week reiterated the government’s commitment to decarbonising the economy and stimulating green business growth. The urgency of the climate imperative “is clearer than ever but that urgency is not the only reason to act. It has now been matched by the urgency of an energy security and bills imperative,” he told the flagship conference at London Climate Action Week (this week). And this is a government with “a hard-headed determination to get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets with cheaper, clean, homegrown energy that we control”, he added.
Weaning the world off fossil fuels is the number one priority in keeping those temperatures steady. However, a series of slides presented during a webinar led by the Changing Markets Foundation this week did its best to suck methane and food companies into the picture. The world’s largest meat and dairy companies produce vast amounts of the short-lived but powerful gas through their supply chains, most of it from ruminant livestock (the single largest source of methane from human activity). And yet it is a real blind spot in reporting.
The accountability is “abysmal” explained Greenpeace expert Shefali Sharma, as she and others took shots at the likes of JBS, Tyson, Nestlé, McDonald’s and others. The ‘others’ included the major coffee shop chains, like Starbucks and Costa, who are the subject of an analysis by CMF called ‘Running latte’. All these businesses “need to be regulated” said CMF; they have “significant revenues” to invest in on-farm and in-shop initiatives to reduce methane, the campaigners claimed.
Plant-based milks should for example be cheaper than dairy ones, they said. Starbucks and Dunkin have recently announced price parity on these products but the CMF assessment of “recognition of the role of livestock methane emissions in climate change, their efforts to reduce reliance on traditional dairy products, and their strategies for boosting plant-based dairy sales” across these two businesses as well as Costa, McCafé and Tim Hortons is pretty damning (Look out for more on that report and emissions reporting rules in August’s Net Zero Notebook, published on August 4th).
All of which leads rather smoothly to this week’s other Footprint news this week, which includes more bad news for the voluntary carbon credits market. Absolut also announces that it has the bottle for paper-based containers after a successful trial. And sticking with packaging, Jane Martin from City to Sea, offers an optimistic outlook on the expansion of reusable cup schemes.
· Carbon credit market reforms are failing; investors and companies are encouraged to pull out. More.
· Paper-based bottles (and caps) are just the tonic for Absolut following trials. More.
· Why City to Sea CEO Jane Martin’s cup is half-full on reusable cups. More.
