Webinar: What are the key climate priorities for the new UK government?

Following the Labour party’s historic win in the UK general election, Carbon Brief put together a panel of climate and energy experts to discuss the key climate-related priorities for the new government. 

More than 900 people joined the webinar to hear about the huge list of issues facing Keir Starmer’s government, including everything from Labour’s plans to reach zero-carbon power by 2030, to its climate-related industrial strategy and adaptation. 

Carbon Brief’s deputy editor and senior policy editor Dr Simon Evans, as well as section editor for policy Molly Lempriere, were joined by three panellists: 

• Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive, Energy UK
• Camilla Born MBE, independent climate advisor and former UK senior official at COP26
• Adam Bell, director of policy at Stonehaven

A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.

The conversation quickly turned to the rise of populism and its impact on climate action. Bell said that voters have resorted to populism because they have felt ignored by successive governments, and that tackle this rise needs a push to improve people’s lives. 

Climate action can form a key part of this, he said, in particular the decarbonisation of energy, but there are other areas of climate action that can play a part. Bell explained: 

“[O]ld seaside towns [feel they] have been ignored by government after government for decades upon decades. How you support those towns is, I think, going to be key, and that is through funding for adaptation, because some of those towns will be threatened by sea level rises.”

He added:

“You will need to find ways of encouraging culture to flourish in those towns as well…Margate is now a hub for hipsters, for example. How do you replicate that across Hastings, across Clacton and change the features of these towns so that they can feel as though the government is on their side and therefore the climate policy is on their side too.”

Born noted that the percentage of people who voted for a populist party in the UK in the recent election was roughly the same as voted for UKIP in 2015 and Brexit in 2016. While this vote share had not increased, it did suggest that the underlying problems have not been tackled, she said. 

Beyond populism in the UK, Bell argued that one of the most important things the country could do over the coming years internationally is demonstrate the “politics of pace, demonstrating what is possible, [and] retaining public support for very, very rapid change”. 

The Labour party’s 2030 net-zero electricity target will be core to this, he said, as “delivering that would mean that we have done what no nation has ever done, fully decarbonised our power system within five years now”. 

Pinchbeck agreed, noting that the decisive factor in terms of global climate goals was around how fast emissions fall, driven by the rollout of renewable energy. She added: 

“I think we need to see a massive roll out of infrastructure of the kind that we haven’t seen for the past decades – decades plural – [we’re] talking about sort of seven times the amount of infrastructure over the next 10 years that we built over the previous three, largely in the power sector.”

Born highlighted that the last time there was a Labour government in the UK, the Paris Agreement had not been made, marking how significantly things have changed over the period. She added:

“[The new government has to] really show what we’re doing at home, [because] the UK massively punches above its weight on what we’re doing on the transition internationally, people watch what we’re doing, and that is in both policy terms, but also in political terms.”

The panellists agreed that the 2030 net-zero electricity target is challenging, but doable, with Pinchbeck noting that it is not that much more ambitious than the previous government’s 2035 target. Bell added that efforts towards achieving the goal were likely to trigger “pylon wars”, given the need for infrastructure build out. 

Nearly 200 questions were submitted during the webinar, ranging from food security to distrust in politics, making the conversation wide ranging across the hour.

Concluding the session, Born said “the shakeup is a really good opportunity” for the UK. 

Pinchbeck highlighted that the UK is ahead of the curve in terms of power decarbonisation and this presented a raft of potential benefits that the new government should continue to pursue. She said: 

“If you go early, you get the industrial benefits, the jobs, the growth and the industries in the country,  and that’s the reason – apart from the altruism – that we should go faster. There’s loads of reasons the UK could still massively benefit from [decarbonising], even if we’re small and windy and rainy, cynical and tired, there’s still massive amounts of hope for us here. So don’t [let] anyone tell you otherwise.”