Government Must Publish LTP Guidance, Says CCC

The new government must publish Local Transport Plan (LTP) guidance, says the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

It is one of the recommendations in the CCC’s Progress in Reducing Emissions 2024 Report to Parliament published today.

Press Release

The CCC’s press release is titled UK Off Track for Net Zero.

It says that only a third of emissions reductions needed to achieve the UK’s 2030 target are currently covered by credible plans.

Plans are needed not just for the energy sector, but for transport, buildings, industry and agriculture.

Some of the achievements needed by 2030 include:

• triple offshore wind installations, double onshore wind installations, and increase solar installations by five times
• increase UK homes with a heat pump from 1% today to 10%
• increase share of new electric cars from 16.5% today to 100%

The 2030 target is a 68% reduction in emissions from a 1990 baseline. This is the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution, and it is more ambitious than the carbon budgets which had previously been set.

The CCC notes the damage done by the government of unprincipled opportunist Rishi Sunak.

‘The Committee has drawn attention to the damage done by the previous government’s policy rollbacks.

These have increased the gap between the UK’s plans and its targets, leaving us further off track.

The broader messaging, both domestically and internationally, also caused significant uncertainty about the country’s commitment to Net Zero.

The Committee urges the new government to address this, with a clear commitment to the Net Zero transition, backed with rapid policy action and a sharp-eyed focus on removing barriers’.

Ten Priority Actions

The CCC recommends ten priority actions to take this year, to get the UK back on track. They include:

• making electricity cheaper, which will lower the costs of running heat pumps compared with gas boilers
• reverse recent policy rollbacks, including phasing out new ICE cars by 2030 not 2035
• decarbonise public sector buildings
• accelerate electrification of industrial heat
• scale up tree-planting and peatland restoration
• open the market for engineered removals (of greenhouse gases, presumably)
• improve the latest adaptation plan

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary has criticisms of Mr Sunak’s approach to delaying and diluting necessary actions.

‘…last year, despite some progress, the previous government signalled a slowing pace and reversed or delayed key policies’.

It goes on to say:

‘The previous government gave inconsistent messages on its commitment to the actions needed to reach Net Zero, with cancellations of, and delays and exemptions to, important policies.

It claimed to be acting in the long-term interests of the country, but there was no evidence backing the claim that dialling back ambition would reduce costs to citizens’.

The Executive Summary stresses the damage global heating is already doing.

‘Recently, we’ve seen the wettest 18 months on record in England.

Thousands of acres of farmland have been submerged for extended periods, leading to a the loss of crops and animals. The impact of this is expected to be felt well into 2025.

Livelihoods have been disrupted and lives lost in the UK and overseas as a direct consequence of climate impacts, which are becming more severe’.

It points out the upside of tackling climate change.

‘The cost of key low-carbon technologies is falling, creating an opportunity for the UK to boost investment, reclaim global climate leadership and enhance energy security by accelerating take-up.

British-based renewable energy is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce vulnerability to volatile global fossil fuel markets. The faster we get off fossil fuels, the more secure we become’.

The UK’s adaption plans in the third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) are criticised.

‘NAP3 lacks the pace and ambition to address growing climate risks which we are already experiencing.

NAP3 must be strengthened with a vision that includes clear objectives and targets. Government policy making needs to be reorganised so that adaptation becomes a fundamental aspect and is embedded in other national policy objectives’.

The Executive Summary notes that the UK has achieved its Third Carbon Budget, 2018-22.

Greenhouse gas emissions now need to reduce by 4.6% a year over the next 7 years to meet the UK’s 2030 target.

Transport

The CCC notes (Chapter 1, page 17) that transport emissions fell slightly in 2023, even though vehicle kilometres rose. This is the first time that electric vehicle take-up has had a meaningful impact on emissions.

Nevertheless, electric cars’ market share failed to grow in 2023.

The rate at which transport emissions need to be cut must increase over the next 7 years. Depressingly, the CCC says that this requires an increase in EV uptake, without mentioning modal shift.

The annual rate of reduction in transport emissions needs to be four times that seen in 2023 (page 27 of the CCC report).

Part of the reason transport emissions are stubbornly high (just a 15% reduction from 2008 to 2022) is the increasing size of vehicles. This nullifies improvements to efficiency (page 36).

Due to the pandemic, car traffic levels are slightly below where the CCC expected them to be. This is what the CCC says on the subject (p52).

Local Transport Plan Guidance

LTP guidance should have been published a long time ago.

It will include instructions to local authorities to achieve Quantifiable Carbon Reductions. While the delay in publishing the guidance persists, councils continue to do nothing and carry on with high-carbon business as usual.

I speculate that the reason for the delay was an irreconcilable conflict between what Mr Sunak wanted to do (continue with high-traffic, high-carbon business as usual), and what the LTP guidance will need to say to cut transport emissions (reduce traffic).

The CCC references the failure to publish LTP guidance and other backward steps.

‘Various developments this year, including the continued delays to LTP guidance, the inconsistency of the revised roads policy statement with emissions objectives, and the redistribution of some HS2 funding to road-building schemes have further weakened the policy landscape around transport demand.

Most actions in this area feature in the CBDP’s list of unquantified policies and plans, but current policies and plans are insufficient for us to have confidence in them delivering substantial additional abatement’.

By contrast, in Wales the government’s National Transport Delivery Plan emphasises that scheme development should focus on minimising emissions not increasing road capacity or vehicle speeds.

Disappointing Focus on Electric Cars

The transport elements of the CCC’s report are disappointing in their near-exclusive focus on electric cars.

If all we do is change from petrol and diesel cars to electric cars, the places where we live, work and shop will continue to be dominated and ruined by excessive motor vehicle traffic.

There should be far more focus on modal shift to public transport and active travel, but this is not mentioned by the CCC.

There is just an oblique reference to this area of policy in the paragraph about LTP guidance and road-building quoted above.