27 November 2007Larry Elliott and Ashley Seager
Global temperatures would rise by up to 5C and dangerous climate change would be inevitable if other developed countries followed Britain's flawed blueprint for reducing its carbon footprint, the United Nations warned yesterday in its annual flagship report on global development.
Calling for urgent action on a post-Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the UN accused the government of a lack of ambition.
It cited the upward trend in emissions from the energy and transport sectors and the lack of progress in developing renewable sources of energy.
The UN's Human Development report said "radical new policies", such as carbon taxes, tougher regulations to phase out heavily polluting coal-fired power stations and higher vehicle excise duty for gas guzzling cars, would all be needed if Britain was to have any chance of hitting its target of cutting CO2 emissions by 26% to 32% by 2020.
While praising the government for a "bold and innovative" climate change bill that would legally bind ministers to mandatory cuts in emissions, the UN said there were "serious questions about the level of ambition - and about the UK's capacity to meet its own carbon reduction targets".
The report comes barely a week after the prime minister, Gordon Brown, said Britain was committed to the European Union target of a 20% cut in carbon emissions by 2020 and a 20% use of renewables for energy by the same date.
In the summer, the Guardian uncovered government documents saying the 20% target was unachievable and ways should be found to undermine it at a European level.
The UN said that "Britain also lags far behind best EU practice on renewable energy: it currently produces only 2% of its overall energy from renewables".
It accused the government of a lack of ambition, stressing that rich countries would need to cut carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050 if dangerous climate change was to be avoided. Developing countries would have to start cutting emissions after 2020 and reduce them by 20% by 2050, the UN said.
Climate change has moved up the political agenda in Britain, with the government seeking to find ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions without harming prospects for economic growth.
Ministers believe that a mix of energy sources - including nuclear and renewables - will be needed in the future and that greater fuel efficiency in aviation can offset the impact of the expansion of Heathrow airport.
The UN report criticised the government for excluding shipping and aviation from the UK's target. Taken together, the UN said, the two sources of greenhouse gases would increase the UK's carbon budget by 27% by 2050, cancelling out half the planned 60% reduction.
"Emissions targets in the climate bill are not consistent with the objective of avoiding dangerous climate change," it says.
"If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the UK's climate change bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable"."
The outcome, the UN said, would be greenhouse gas concentrations rising from 660 parts per million to 750ppm by 2050, giving possible global temperature increases of 4-5C, well above the 450ppm and 2C rise that experts say must be the limit.
The report says that the UK is on track to meet its Kyoto protocol targets because emissions are 5% lower than in 1990, the base year. But it says all the reductions were achieved before 2000, when power generation switched to gas from coal. But coal consumption is rising again and carbon emissions have been increasing since 2000.
"The upshot is that the national target of reducing CO2 emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2010 is unattainable; the likely outcome is a reduction less than one-half this target," it says.
The UN report says Britain needs to signal a move to greater use of carbon taxation as well as participation in the European "cap and trade" scheme which also aims to reduce emissions but which has proved unsuccessful so far.
The UK should also phase out highly polluting power stations and rapidly increase the use of renewable energy, particularly wind and tidal power, it says.
The report criticises the government's renewable obligation scheme as having only achieved "mixed results" in boosting alternative energies and says the government should move to a "feed-in tariff" system which has been used so successfully in many other countries, particularly Germany.
Higher fuel taxes and vehicle excise duty should be implemented as a way of curbing use, particularly of more polluting cars. It also says that energy use in British homes remains "highly inefficient" with the average house using four times as much energy as new homes. This offers a big opportunity for carbon reductions, it adds.
"Rising emissions from transport also reflect weaknesses in the public transport infrastructure and a decline in the cost of private transport relative to public transport."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/27/climatechange1?gusrc=rss&feed=11
