Speaker 1: Welcome to zero, I am Akshatrati. For the past three decades,
Speaker 1: the UK has led the world in reducing emissions. It's
Speaker 1: still true, but you might think otherwise given the political
Speaker 1: rhetoric coming from the government in power. One big reason
Speaker 1: why the home of the Industrial Revolution has been ahead
Speaker 1: in the race to reign in emissions is the Climate
Speaker 1: Change Act of two thousand and eight. It bound the
Speaker 1: government to carbon budgets that forced it to limit how
Speaker 1: much planet warming emissions it can spew In any five years,
Speaker 1: each budget is smaller, taking the government to zero emissions
Speaker 1: by twenty fifty. Those budgets are informed by the science
Speaker 1: and overseen by the Climate Change Committee. For the past
Speaker 1: six years, the committee has been led by Chris Starr.
Speaker 1: As the chief executive of the CCC, He's had a
Speaker 1: delicate job to do, advising on policies that would put
Speaker 1: government back on track to meet climate goals, and admonishing
Speaker 1: the government when necessary. That job has become harder over
Speaker 1: the past year as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has tried
Speaker 1: to back peddle on green policies. It has empowered a
Speaker 1: partisan media to create doubts around the political consensus to
Speaker 1: Act on Climate Change, something that has been a hallmark
Speaker 1: of UK politics for the past fifteen years. Stark is
Speaker 1: stepping down from his role later this month, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear how he has navigated the growing divisions
Speaker 1: and what might be ahead for his successor That matters
Speaker 1: a lot with the UK holding an election this year
Speaker 1: that could determine whether Sunak remains in power or is
Speaker 1: replaced by a more climate friendly government. We also talked
Speaker 1: about how the CCC has played outside the UK, shaping
Speaker 1: the way many governments around the world approached climate policy. Chris,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me action well before.
Speaker 1: We come to the net zero and the sort of
Speaker 1: phase under your leadership at the CCC. The institution itself
Speaker 1: is sixteen years old. It was created as part of
Speaker 1: the UK's Climate Change Act, and it was created at
Speaker 1: a time where all political parties came together to back
Speaker 1: the Act and back the creation of the CCC. Can
Speaker 1: you just talk through what made that moment so special
Speaker 1: given the politics of today which seem a lot more divided.
Speaker 3: The Climate Change Act in the UK is the product
Speaker 3: of a particular period in Britain politics. So the Act
Speaker 3: was put into low in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 3: therefore the work on it was happening in the year
Speaker 3: prior to that. So if you cast your mind back
Speaker 3: to British politics, we had a different type of British
Speaker 3: politics at the time on climate change. We had a
Speaker 3: feeling that the UK was in the lead intellectually at
Speaker 3: least on the story of climate change, and the UK
Speaker 3: could in place this piece of legislation.
Speaker 2: But the bill was supported.
Speaker 3: By David Cameron's government in preparation a few holdouts, but
Speaker 3: not many, and that led to a very strong piece
Speaker 3: of legislation which essentially set out the idea in a
Speaker 3: nutshell that the government needs to act on this. It's
Speaker 3: their responsibility to tackle it. They need some rules to
Speaker 3: do that. But that in itself was not enough that
Speaker 3: you needed something else to stand over that, which is
Speaker 3: the CCC, the Climate Change Committee, just to keep providing
Speaker 3: the evidence, also give the advice on the targets, and
Speaker 3: then to check the government's homework essentially for Parliament.
Speaker 2: And that works.
Speaker 3: I think we've demonstrated in sixteen years that it works,
Speaker 3: not least because we've upgraded the long term target over
Speaker 3: the time of the Act to a net zero target
Speaker 3: from what you used to be an eighty percent target,
Speaker 3: and that I think is a demonstration that politics also
Speaker 3: comes around eventually periodically to support that. And I think
Speaker 3: it's important to say that we have these moments regularly
Speaker 3: in British politics, and I've been in this job during
Speaker 3: one of them. It's quite you can despair when you
Speaker 3: see the politics going in a different direction. But my
Speaker 3: view generally of climate politics is that it's a bit
Speaker 3: like a ratchet. You get periods of really increasing ambition
Speaker 3: and then it falls back a bit, but it never
Speaker 3: falls back to where you started. So I think there
Speaker 3: is an ongoing progress in climate politics that you can
Speaker 3: see playing out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was only three members of Parliament who voted
Speaker 1: against the Act, more than four hundred who voted for it,
Speaker 1: and there were a bunch of absenties. Now in the
Speaker 1: creation you've got the Climate Change Committee. It's an independent
Speaker 1: government funded but independent body that has goals and policies.
Speaker 1: Eventually you provide the technical know how of how to
Speaker 1: meet goals and then policy advice on what needs to
Speaker 1: be done, but you also act as a watchdog just
Speaker 1: making sure that the government is actually making progress on
Speaker 1: these goals. And the advice that you give can have
Speaker 1: big implications. Right. The straightforward one is governments do what
Speaker 1: you say, but if they don't, then nonprofits can use
Speaker 1: your advice to show governments are failing. For example, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, a number of NGOs sued the UK
Speaker 1: government for not being on track to meet its climate goals.
Speaker 1: They won the case and the government was forced to respond.
Speaker 1: What are other good examples of the impact that CCC's
Speaker 1: work has had on the UK's that zero trajectory?
Speaker 3: Gosh, that's a difficult one to answer quickly. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've raised one of them. So the watchdog rule is
Speaker 3: laid out very clearly in the Act, but it's become
Speaker 3: very important and you write the ng us and others
Speaker 3: civil society uses ours as a means to encourage more
Speaker 3: action from the government. I think the bit that's not
Speaker 3: so well understood is that we have this advisory role.
Speaker 3: But what's really interesting is that we basically every five
Speaker 3: years we package up the latest piece of advice. We
Speaker 3: do a fresh piece of analysis what we call bottom
Speaker 3: up piece of analysis, and across every bit of the
Speaker 3: economy to look at how you can decarbonize it. What's
Speaker 3: been really interesting and I frankly inspirational actually, But the
Speaker 3: UK Act and that model is that turns out there's
Speaker 3: a lot more going on than just a piece of
Speaker 3: analysis when you give that advice on the carbon budget.
Speaker 3: What we're looking at is a fundamental shift in every
Speaker 3: corner of the economy, and the private sector has a
Speaker 3: real interest in that work. And what's happened over the
Speaker 3: sixteen years of having a Climate Change Act is really interesting.
Speaker 3: It's not what you see written in the Climate Change Act.
Speaker 3: We now do a piece of work where we're trying
Speaker 3: to build consensus sectors of the economy for the transition
Speaker 3: and the change that lies ahead. And if I take
Speaker 3: one example of that, when I started in this job,
Speaker 3: we had a very difficult discussion as an institution with
Speaker 3: the aviation sector. So it's a high misting sector. We
Speaker 3: don't have the answer as to how we can get
Speaker 3: to zero emissions, certainly not by twenty fifty, and we
Speaker 3: were essentially in opposition with that sector because we were
Speaker 3: a threat. We in recent years have turned that into
Speaker 3: a much more productive discussion with aviation sector. We're essentially
Speaker 3: saying to the aviation sector, look, here's how we see
Speaker 3: the path ahead for aviation emissions. We also agree on
Speaker 3: a lot of the technologies that the aviation sector itself
Speaker 3: will deploy to make aviation more efficient.
Speaker 2: That basically means the aviation.
Speaker 3: Sector, when we produce our report, will say we agree
Speaker 3: with the CCC, now please put policy in place to
Speaker 3: support it. And that is a very powerful message to government.
Speaker 3: And I suppose I didn't anticipate that when I started
Speaker 3: this job. And it's not just an aviation You see
Speaker 3: that in the energy sectors, you see that in the
Speaker 3: industrial sectors. You even see that in one of the
Speaker 3: hardest areas.
Speaker 2: Which is buildings.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of consensus now behind the analysis
Speaker 3: that we produce, and that's how change happens. Essentially, that
Speaker 3: we've become much more of a change agent than I
Speaker 3: think was envisaged when the Climate Change Act was first written.
Speaker 3: But we've got to wear that very carefully. We are
Speaker 3: not advocates. There is a line that we must never
Speaker 3: cross in the CCC between advice and advocacy, and one
Speaker 3: of the challenges of my job is to make sure
Speaker 3: that we're policing that line carefully.
Speaker 2: We walk close to it, of course, but we can't
Speaker 2: cross it.
Speaker 1: That's a less appreciated advantage of having a body like
Speaker 1: the CCC, But at its core, from a public perspective,
Speaker 1: you still remain an advisor and a watchdog. And while
Speaker 1: you're independent, even though you're fully funded by the government,
Speaker 1: your advice and your reports on progress on government can
Speaker 1: ruffle a few feathers. But in doing your job over
Speaker 1: the last six years, you've also lived through increased political
Speaker 1: polarization on the net zero issue, and that shows up
Speaker 1: not just in the politics but also in the media discourse.
Speaker 1: Places like the Daily Mail has been using CCC's advice
Speaker 1: is people have to now give up meat because the
Speaker 1: CCC says so, or the Telegraph has been trying to
Speaker 1: find emails about CCC's bias on certain topics. So what
Speaker 1: have you done to be able to stand your ground
Speaker 1: and continue to have that independence and credibility in this period?
Speaker 3: I feel we have a platform and that's legitimate, and
Speaker 3: that's provided by the Climate Change Act. And the second
Speaker 3: thing is that I don't think we should use that
Speaker 3: platform unless we've got analysis to support a statement. So
Speaker 3: the temptation is to comment on everything, and you're right
Speaker 3: to raise the newspapers in the UK particularly we have
Speaker 3: a particular brand of newspaper, a tabloid outlook on it
Speaker 3: that leads often to a request for us to comment
Speaker 3: on literally everything. Most of my job when it comes
Speaker 3: to comms, as we call it, is saying no to things, actually,
Speaker 3: but where we have analysis, where we have numbers, where
Speaker 3: we have a view, I also feel it's legitimate, in
Speaker 3: fact necessary for us to make sure that people understand
Speaker 3: that and to project that as loudly as we feel
Speaker 3: we need to, and that has taken us into different discussions,
Speaker 3: certainly in the time I've done this job, because prior
Speaker 3: holders of this job didn't take that view, and I
Speaker 3: had a chairman, Lord Deebon, John Selwyn Gummer, a member
Speaker 3: of the Thatcher government and now in the House of Lords,
Speaker 3: who really supported that view that it was important for
Speaker 3: the Climate Change Committee to state its view where it
Speaker 3: had the analysis, but where we don't, we've got to
Speaker 3: shut up. So and there's lots and lots of areas
Speaker 3: where we don't have the sporting analysis, and I think
Speaker 3: that often frustrates, particularly my friend in the green movement,
Speaker 3: that we go so far but not as far as
Speaker 3: they might like. And I think that's the challenge really
Speaker 3: is that our role is only going to be defensible
Speaker 3: if we stick to our knitting, as we say in Scotland,
Speaker 3: and stick to where we have the analysis. Some of
Speaker 3: the newspapers in the UK now make me a target
Speaker 3: is because I'm determined that where we've done the analysis,
Speaker 3: i will defend it and I'll put it out there,
Speaker 3: and I am frustrated when there are nefarious interest to
Speaker 3: take pot shots of the analysis on without the same
Speaker 3: analytical basis, because I feel it's important that we stand
Speaker 3: our ground.
Speaker 1: Now, you do this for government, but if you look
Speaker 1: at your own work, those are very good lessons to have,
Speaker 1: which is you want to be backed by data, have
Speaker 1: clear communication, give options, give advice and not be an advocate.
Speaker 1: Very important lessons in divided times. But how effective has
Speaker 1: that strategy been, especially in the recent years. Right even
Speaker 1: though the UK can legitimately claim that it has reduced
Speaker 1: the most emissions among large economies since nineteen ninety, the
Speaker 1: CCC has been warning the UK government for a few
Speaker 1: years now that it's not on track to meet its
Speaker 1: end of decade goals. And despite those warnings, Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Rishisunak has approved new Orlean gas licenses, delayed a ban
Speaker 1: of fossil fuel cars, and even approved a new coal mine.
Speaker 1: So all things said and done, the cecc provides advice
Speaker 1: and then the government doesn't follow it. So is the
Speaker 1: era of climate consensus over? And is CCC's credible advice
Speaker 1: now not worth what it used to be.
Speaker 3: I don't think the era of climate consensus is over.
Speaker 3: There is always a risk that it might be soon, though,
Speaker 3: and I think we've got to keep thinking about that.
Speaker 3: We've got a general election coming up in the UK
Speaker 3: at some point, probably this year. I don't think climate
Speaker 3: change itself will be an electoral issue, the manner in
Speaker 3: which we approach net zero might be, and that is
Speaker 3: probably the first time that's been the case. And I
Speaker 3: still believe there is a political consensus behind net zero
Speaker 3: and behind addressing climate change. But I also believe that
Speaker 3: the minute that you get complacent about that, you risk
Speaker 3: losing it, and you've got to keep remaking the arguments
Speaker 3: for the age. So we're in an interesting moment where
Speaker 3: I feel the narrative has shifted on net zero, and
Speaker 3: of course that's a political concern, but political concerns eventually
Speaker 3: turned into concerns in the real economy too, so we
Speaker 3: need to keep working at this. My own view on
Speaker 3: net zero is we're probably past the point where net
Speaker 3: zero itself is enough as a reason to do something.
Speaker 2: In British politics, there.
Speaker 3: Was a period in the early part of it where
Speaker 3: once we'd established net zero as the goal, you could
Speaker 3: simply slap net zero on a program and say that's
Speaker 3: why we're doing it, and that would be enough to
Speaker 3: earn it political support in the government, certainly within the government,
Speaker 3: So your policies coming out of government solely for the
Speaker 3: reason they suppy to net zero. And the next stage
Speaker 3: of this, I think is probably to use net zero
Speaker 3: or climate as almost a secondary concern and get into
Speaker 3: the question of why you might want to do something
Speaker 3: else first and for there to be a benefit to
Speaker 3: net zero too. You know, the set of issues that
Speaker 3: we face as a country when it comes to the
Speaker 3: economy are driven by the usual concerns about jobs, investment.
Speaker 3: They need to regenerate parts of the UK. You can
Speaker 3: use net zero as a way to think that through.
Speaker 3: We need jobs in places that have suffered from not
Speaker 3: having investment in industry up and down the country outside
Speaker 3: of the southeast of England, and we need to do
Speaker 3: this for those reasons and it will help net zero.
Speaker 3: So we can look at the places of the UK
Speaker 3: where we will develop green industries, low carbon industries. We
Speaker 3: should do it for that reason, and net zero is
Speaker 3: a secondary concern. You can extend it further. There are
Speaker 3: people in this country quite rightly who worry about things
Speaker 3: like energy security, in fact, more fundamentally the security of
Speaker 3: the country. We need to do the right things to
Speaker 3: develop an energy secure country and help net zero. You
Speaker 3: can extend that further. People cared deeply about landscape beauty
Speaker 3: in this country, as they should. We should be developing
Speaker 3: beautiful landscapes, rewilding, supporting regenerative farming, doing all those things
Speaker 3: and helping net zero. One of the most interesting things
Speaker 3: I've done in my six years in this job was
Speaker 3: the Climate Assembly, which was a process, a hugely interesting
Speaker 3: process commissioned by the Select Committees in the Commons, six
Speaker 3: Select committees in the Commons. Just after the net zero
Speaker 3: target was set. They asked a question, look, how can
Speaker 3: we understand what voters think? Were people in this country,
Speaker 3: citizens of the country think about net zero? And the
Speaker 3: Citizens Assembly that we did on that was fascinating because
Speaker 3: we gathered together one hundred or so people of very
Speaker 3: different views, and some of them really didn't care too
Speaker 3: much about climate action, and in fact, we overstated that
Speaker 3: in the group that we had those views. What's interesting
Speaker 3: is many of the people who don't care about climate
Speaker 3: change do care about some of the other things I've
Speaker 3: talked about, energy, security, landscape, beauty, jobs, And I think
Speaker 3: we're in a world where the evidence was there in
Speaker 3: that assembly that if you go hard at those topics
Speaker 3: and then tell them that this is also good for
Speaker 3: the climate, it actually increases their support for that action.
Speaker 3: So we're missing a trick, I suppose, if we're not
Speaker 3: speaking to people who have different values and outlooks on this.
Speaker 1: More from the conversation after the break. I actually attended
Speaker 1: one of those sessions of the Assembly in February twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: just before the COVID lockdowns began, and of course some
Speaker 1: of that assembly then went virtual. But you once told
Speaker 1: me a story about anonymous in that very assembly. What
Speaker 1: was that story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the members of the assembly. We didn't
Speaker 3: name them, but within the assembly we had we knew
Speaker 3: who everyone was. One of the members of the Assembly
Speaker 3: wished to go unnamed. Even in the physical meetings. And
Speaker 3: his name was Anonymous, and he was quite an interesting
Speaker 3: chat because he was definitely fearful of a lot of
Speaker 3: the things that come with net zero, fearful of the
Speaker 3: people who might implement those things, and are maybe not
Speaker 3: fearful suspicious of the reason for all of this, I
Speaker 3: might say, maybe a slight paranoia about that, the role
Speaker 3: of government and all of this. Now, there are many
Speaker 3: many people out there in the UK and around the
Speaker 3: world who take that view. What was interesting the set
Speaker 3: of things that Anonymous was interested in are things like
Speaker 3: nuclear power, the nation's security. He didn't wish to see
Speaker 3: changes to behavior, didn't want to see any of that
Speaker 3: push through policy, and I think there's a big wedge
Speaker 3: of people living in the UK who feel that way. If, however,
Speaker 3: you frame up what's necessary for net zero in the
Speaker 3: right way for him, he was very supportive of it,
Speaker 3: really really supportive. When you say to him, look, nuclear
Speaker 3: is a big part of the mix potentially in the future, Okay,
Speaker 3: I support that. And if you say to them, look,
Speaker 3: if we take that particular strategy that will be more
Speaker 3: beneficial to the climate than this particular strategy. He would
Speaker 3: typically choose the pro climate strategy as a preference. The
Speaker 3: public support for it is there. We're actually trying to
Speaker 3: do something that every country in the world will need
Speaker 3: to do and therefore is a broader set of concerns
Speaker 3: about trade and competitiveness and how the economy works that
Speaker 3: really will matter, and we in the UK and really
Speaker 3: needed to provide a template I suppose for other countries
Speaker 3: to do that, and that argument. I think we've won that,
Speaker 3: but we need to keep winning it if we want
Speaker 3: other countries to follow suit.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned Lord Davin, who was the former chair
Speaker 1: of the CCC. He had said that last year lost
Speaker 1: its leadership on climate and if that's the case, then
Speaker 1: there's likely to be a change in government. Say a
Speaker 1: Labor party comes in power here in the UK, what
Speaker 1: would be your advice to Labor so that the UK
Speaker 1: can regain the leadership on climate.
Speaker 3: So in this podcast, I will not predict the outcome
Speaker 3: of an election, but I'm happy to speculate. So in fact,
Speaker 3: most of the things that we can speculate about, it
Speaker 3: doesn't really matter who the government will be because after
Speaker 3: the general election, whenever it is, let's assame, it's the autumn.
Speaker 3: Nothing changes. We are still in the same position, and
Speaker 3: you're right. Lord Deben made great play of the fact
Speaker 3: that he felt the UK had lost its climate leadership.
Speaker 3: The reason he said that is not because of looking
Speaker 3: backwards where the UK is, because the UK has done
Speaker 3: more than any G seven possibly in a G twenty
Speaker 3: country to decarbonize itself, genuine decarbonization, not squeezing out carbon
Speaker 3: to other parts of the world. This is actually decarbonization,
Speaker 3: particularly through what we've done in the power sector. When
Speaker 3: you look at that record as a very strong record.
Speaker 3: His view on that comes to the fact that that's
Speaker 3: not the outlook the Climate Change Committee takes. We don't
Speaker 3: project forwards. What we do is project backwards from a
Speaker 3: position of hitting the targets, and this idea of instead
Speaker 3: of forecasting, we are hindcasting. We're standing in twenty fifty
Speaker 3: and we're looking back to where we are today. We
Speaker 3: know that we've hitting at zero in this world, and
Speaker 3: we're asking ourselves a different question, which is, well, what
Speaker 3: would we be seeing if we were on the right
Speaker 3: path to that goal? What do I wish in twenty
Speaker 3: fifty that we'd done sooner to get ourselves on this
Speaker 3: low cost pathway with the minimum of friction with the
Speaker 3: maximum of advantage and we're not seeing those things today
Speaker 3: and that's the key thing the government. When we hosted
Speaker 3: COP twenty six in Glasgow, my hometown, we set a
Speaker 3: goal for twenty thirty to reduce emissions by sixty eight
Speaker 3: percent from the nineteen ninety levels. You can use that
Speaker 3: as a marker for where we need to be. We
Speaker 3: would need to on recent progress. We need to increase
Speaker 3: the pace of decarbonization in every sector, accept the power sector.
Speaker 3: So take the power sector out of it, because we
Speaker 3: know we're doing okay on that. Look outside that, beyond
Speaker 3: the POWA sector. We've got to quadruple the pace of
Speaker 3: decarbonization over the next six or seven years if you
Speaker 3: want to hit that twenty thirty goal. We are not
Speaker 3: seeing a policy package that will deliver that. And that
Speaker 3: in Lord Deebn's framing also my own, is climate leadership.
Speaker 3: It's about where you want to be in the future,
Speaker 3: it's not where you've been in the past. And real
Speaker 3: climate leadership is scaling up the policies now to deliver
Speaker 3: that and encouraging the private sector response that comes with it.
Speaker 3: And I suppose my final point on this is that
Speaker 3: other countries will beat us at this if we don't
Speaker 3: get at it. My biggest frustration as I leave this
Speaker 3: job is the one I came in with when I started,
Speaker 3: is that we cannot seem to see that it's happening.
Speaker 3: The transition is underway, and the biggest risk to us
Speaker 3: is that we miss out. I think actually that we
Speaker 3: don't get on board with this, and that quadrupling of
Speaker 3: effort is a way of framing the set of things
Speaker 3: that you would want to see happen in the broader
Speaker 3: economy anyway to be on board with this transition, to
Speaker 3: be in the lead of a pack of countries that
Speaker 3: will see the benefit of this.
Speaker 1: First, a lot of your work is technical, but you
Speaker 1: have to figure out a story that you tell after
Speaker 1: doing that technical work that would land with policymakers, that
Speaker 1: will land with the public. So in China, it's BID
Speaker 1: the largest electric car maker, or COTL, the largest battery maker.
Speaker 1: In the US, it's Tesla, well, until recently, the largest
Speaker 1: electric car maker in denmarket's austered. We can go through
Speaker 1: a list of countries that have these national champions that
Speaker 1: are bringing jobs, that are bringing economic advantage, that are
Speaker 1: playing a trade advantage. The national champions enable those countries,
Speaker 1: those politicians in those countries to tell a story of success,
Speaker 1: of being able to show exactly what leadership could look
Speaker 1: like if we applied what Tesla has done in the
Speaker 1: US to other sectors of the economy. Even though the
Speaker 1: UK does have some leadership on things like doing grids
Speaker 1: with high renewable penetration, there isn't a national champion. Do
Speaker 1: you think we're missing a storytelling ploy in not having
Speaker 1: a national champion.
Speaker 2: I think you're probably right on that.
Speaker 3: It would be so much easier to have a national
Speaker 3: champion like Tesla to point to, and if you go
Speaker 3: to Denmark, that is definitely part of the narrative there.
Speaker 3: And the great advantage in advert commas that the UK
Speaker 3: has is that our transition from fossil fuels is largely
Speaker 3: designed or influenced by geology. We have demonstrated to the
Speaker 3: rest of the world how you develop a renewables based
Speaker 3: power system and see advantage from that. We're going to
Speaker 3: run out of gas, in particular from the North Sea
Speaker 3: over the course of this transition to net zero, and
Speaker 3: we will have at the end of that depleted oil
Speaker 3: and gas fields to put something back into So there
Speaker 3: is an obvious discussion, but what can you do with that?
Speaker 3: And it takes you quite obviously to storing hydrogen and
Speaker 3: storing carbon and we need to try that, I think.
Speaker 3: So there is a potential for the UK to have
Speaker 3: some proper global leadership again in those areas and to
Speaker 3: develop those national champions. Trouble with both of those sextes
Speaker 3: is that the commercial opportunity and it's not quite as
Speaker 3: clear as it is, for example, in Tesla, and I
Speaker 3: think it still rests ultimately on policy and that's I
Speaker 3: think the next Parliament's discussion actually is what do we
Speaker 3: do about those things?
Speaker 2: We're going to need to have them in the mix.
Speaker 2: Do we see.
Speaker 3: Commercial advantage growing out of that? Do we have that
Speaker 3: kind of national champion that can go into other parts
Speaker 3: of the of the world.
Speaker 1: Well, when Tesla started, or Orsted was created, or BYD
Speaker 1: was transitioning from being a battery maker to a karme,
Speaker 1: none of the commercial advantages were quite clear as they
Speaker 1: are now looking back. But if we stick to advantages
Speaker 1: that could be brought in other economy advantages, the motivations
Speaker 1: to stick to net zero while the other priorities which
Speaker 1: are usually higher on the list for politicians can be met.
Speaker 1: You've talked about this idea where think about economic policy,
Speaker 1: the Treasury is so involved in shaping it. Right, it's
Speaker 1: either the Treasury, it's central banks that will say, while
Speaker 1: inflation is too high, we're going to ramp up interest rates.
Speaker 1: That's going to affect how the treasury behaves. There's all
Speaker 1: this economic financial stuff that enables the politics to happen.
Speaker 1: Why does the Treasury not think of the carbon budget
Speaker 1: as something that also needs to be managed?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It is very good at managing budgets and the Net
Speaker 1: Zero Act gives the UK a carbon budget. You advice
Speaker 1: on the carbon budget as the CCC, but why is
Speaker 1: the Treasury not taking part in those discussions.
Speaker 3: So there's two ways of framing the rule of the
Speaker 3: Treasury in the last six years, let's stick to the
Speaker 3: time I've done this job. One is that they are
Speaker 3: a malign force in this and they continue to be
Speaker 3: a barrier to progress.
Speaker 2: The other is the.
Speaker 3: One I take, which is that over the last six
Speaker 3: years in particular, they have dramatically changed their outlook on
Speaker 3: this and they're on a journey. I'm sure as an institution,
Speaker 3: if you're not in the treasure I used to work
Speaker 3: in the Treasury, So if you work in the Treasury,
Speaker 3: it's an amazingly creative place to be because the leavers
Speaker 3: are there for you to do pretty much anything in
Speaker 3: policy terms. Albeit it's a fiscal institution first and foremost.
Speaker 2: But if you're.
Speaker 3: Outside of that, if particularly you're in the department that
Speaker 3: deals with climate policy, it looks like it looks like
Speaker 3: a bit of gunment that holds you up, And it's
Speaker 3: seductive to come back to that. And no doubt the
Speaker 3: Treasury has over the years been a problem. But what's happened,
Speaker 3: I think, and I've certainly worked personally quite hard at this,
Speaker 3: is to develop the idea that net zero is not
Speaker 3: the same as other policy objectives. It is more fundamental.
Speaker 3: It is something that must be done that has a
Speaker 3: deep implication for the economy. And previously, the time that
Speaker 3: CCC was created, we would have framed that as a
Speaker 3: cost that was worth incurring. But increasingly we're now viewing
Speaker 3: it as a benefit to the economy, and the Treasury
Speaker 3: I think has accepted that. They've absolutely moved to see
Speaker 3: it that way. I think I would say on this,
Speaker 3: and you're right to frame it in the way that
Speaker 3: you did actually, which is that they care about every
Speaker 3: budget but one, and that is the carbon budget. And
Speaker 3: I think it is interesting to think in the next parliament,
Speaker 3: with potentially a new government, about the way in which
Speaker 3: the Treasury might be given incentives to think more clearly
Speaker 3: about that. My main criticism of the Treasury isn't that
Speaker 3: they're a barrier. The main challenge I put back to
Speaker 3: the Treasury is that they need to be more responsible
Speaker 3: for their decisions. So if they I'm going to use
Speaker 3: a very extreme example here, if they cancel a carbon
Speaker 3: capture program and they have done because it's too expensive,
Speaker 3: what do we do instead? And that's the beauty of
Speaker 3: carbon budgeting is it gives you constrained decision making. We've
Speaker 3: got to do a thing by twenty fifty and we've
Speaker 3: got to achieve targets on the way to that. That's
Speaker 3: carbon budgeting, and what the Turgury has not done is
Speaker 3: confront the implication of its own decisions. I don't think
Speaker 3: that anywhere in the world we have a finance ministry
Speaker 3: that thinks that way, and I think it would be
Speaker 3: brilliant for the UK to model that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the Finance ministry is supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to constrain these things. Right, if money was unlimited,
Speaker 1: everybody would have candy and unicorns, but we do act
Speaker 1: as if the carbon budget is unlimited in many places. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that we should talk about, which is not
Speaker 1: UK related but has had massive impact, is the Climate
Speaker 1: Change Committee after its creation has led to a mushrooming
Speaker 1: of other climate change committee type bodies around the world.
Speaker 1: Talk us through some of the examples of where these are,
Speaker 1: what kind of impact they've had, and how you have
Speaker 1: worked with many of them, advising them on what your
Speaker 1: best practices have been and how that's help shape net
Speaker 1: zero or climate policy in other places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something when I took this job I
Speaker 3: didn't think I would be working on, and it's ended
Speaker 3: up being one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.
Speaker 3: So you're right in a sense, the UK is the
Speaker 3: sort of granddaddy of how you can approach climate change domestically.
Speaker 3: So we were the first of the major economies to
Speaker 3: have climate legislation. It's probably still, i think, the most
Speaker 3: complete piece of climate legislation that you will find. It's
Speaker 3: quite remarkable actually that economy the size of the UK
Speaker 3: has it in place, especially given our politics, but it's there.
Speaker 3: And one of the aspects of that climate change legislation
Speaker 3: is that there's a climate change Committee. So there's huge
Speaker 3: interest in that in other parts of the world. I'll
Speaker 3: give you a few takes on this. I've been involved
Speaker 3: in lots of things. So if you go to New Zealand,
Speaker 3: you have essentially almost an exact template of the UK
Speaker 3: Climate Change Act that has been developed with strong reference
Speaker 3: to the UK, and we helped establish the Climate Change
Speaker 3: Committee that there.
Speaker 2: Is in New Zealand.
Speaker 3: So that's one way in which we can have that
Speaker 3: kind of influence and it's really rewarding and valuable to
Speaker 3: see that. But we do more than that. So you
Speaker 3: can look at places even like Germany. For example, Germany,
Speaker 3: I remember having a very live discussion in our first
Speaker 3: year in this job what German climate law could be,
Speaker 3: the importance of there being an independent authority, and all
Speaker 3: of that was really the message I was taking out.
Speaker 3: You go to Denmark, they've essentially copied the UK Act.
Speaker 3: You can go to Korea has a piece of legislation
Speaker 3: that looks very similar to the UK's and it has
Speaker 3: a similar climate Advisory Council in place all of that
Speaker 3: good stuff. What's come out of this generally is the
Speaker 3: kind of most interest bit of all in this discussion
Speaker 3: is that there are lots now of Climate Advisory Councils
Speaker 3: around the world. We don't have a full number, but
Speaker 3: there might be as many as thirty. Now. None of
Speaker 3: them are exactly the same. Many of them are technical
Speaker 3: bodies like us. Some of them are not so independent,
Speaker 3: some of them are part of government. Some of them
Speaker 3: look more like think tanks. But they're all doing a
Speaker 3: similar job of bringing some independent view of what the
Speaker 3: transition needs to look like. And in particular they're trying
Speaker 3: to transcend often the change in Parliament. You need something
Speaker 3: that looks across for the longer term and the climate transition.
Speaker 3: That's the nature of climate change, and they all do
Speaker 3: that in some shape or form.
Speaker 1: The Climate Change Commantee might not have as sexy a
Speaker 1: name as Tesla, but if the UK does have a
Speaker 1: national champion, I feel like the CCC is one in
Speaker 1: the transition. Now you're going on to a new job.
Speaker 1: You're going to be the CEO of Carbon Trust. Tell
Speaker 1: us about Carbon Trust and why did you choose to
Speaker 1: go there as your next gig.
Speaker 3: I do one thing alone, which is just to look
Speaker 3: constantly at the transition and ask questions about how it
Speaker 3: can be achieved. And when you do that that very
Speaker 3: unique privilege. I definitely have views on how it can
Speaker 3: be done. And my frustration is that more and more
Speaker 3: of a time you can see that the action now
Speaker 3: is in the private sector. And what I want to
Speaker 3: do is to shift to an organization where I feel
Speaker 3: I can have more of a role in actually getting
Speaker 3: the private sector to act on this. So the Carbon
Speaker 3: Trust is quite an interesting place to go and try
Speaker 3: and do that.
Speaker 2: Karben Trust itself used to be part.
Speaker 3: Of the UK public sector and during the austerity years
Speaker 3: of government it was pushed out of the public sector
Speaker 3: and it now operates outside of the public sector, working
Speaker 3: on that transition with corporates, but also doing a set
Speaker 3: of things that are about forcing the pace of change
Speaker 3: across various sectors. And it's quite a unique institution because
Speaker 3: it doesn't have any shareholders.
Speaker 2: It's not a charity.
Speaker 3: It's a company limited by guarantees, so all the money
Speaker 3: he generates goes back into the mission to address climate
Speaker 3: change and that is very exciting for me.
Speaker 2: I think we can do something cool with that.
Speaker 3: And the other part of it that's cool is that
Speaker 3: it's global based in the UK, but it's got offices
Speaker 3: right around the world. And that story that we've just
Speaker 3: told actually of the relative immaturity of the institutional frameworks
Speaker 3: and how we address this in other parts of the world.
Speaker 3: I definitely think the Carbon Trust can help with some
Speaker 3: of that too. So there's just a set of issues
Speaker 3: here is a sort of soup of issues where I
Speaker 3: feel that I can go to the Carbon Trust and
Speaker 3: try and make more of an impact there, and I'm
Speaker 3: excited about it. So I'm going to take all this
Speaker 3: stuff that I've learned from the CCC and try and
Speaker 3: apply it actively at the edge of government, but definitely
Speaker 3: focused on that private sector transition.
Speaker 1: I look forward to having you back on the show
Speaker 1: to tell us about what you've achieved at the CAB
Speaker 1: and Trust. Thank you, Chris, Thanks Cecha, Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please take
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