Sirs,
I felt I must respond to Professor Dave Waltham’s letter to Danny Kruger.
For the first time in many years commonsense and realism were demonstrated by our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, last week re some moderate amendments to NetZero 2050 targets.
When the Government under Theresa May enacted Net Zero 2050 into law with just a nod from Parliament, no vote was taken, no meaningful discussions were held and no impact statement produced as to costs and benefits.
Ordinary people need to understand fully how we are going to achieve this target and at what personal cost and economic cost to the UK over the next two decades.
At a macro level, in reality, until the major global polluters, China, Russia, the USA and India start reducing their carbon emissions then our efforts will have minimal effect globally. Equally at macro level most NetZero 2050 supporters never mention population which is constantly increasing with India alone forecast to increase their population from 8bn to 14bn by 2050, staggering as all these people will need food, water, energy and housing. As India’s PM has already pointed out if the world wants India to decarbonise then the West must support financially!!
Now turning to the micro action, currently fully centred on electric vehicles and heat pumps in the UK. Re. EVs there is natural resistance because of cost, range, and charging infrastructure and for heat pumps, huge costs when you add in new radiators and piping / re-configuring our homes. Neither are the total answer but will help and nothing Rishi Sunak said last week will stop people buying either but give them more time to plan and possibly see some alternatives emerge.
The major problem is whether our national grid can increase capacity to cope with increased EVs and more homes and this needs resolving in the short to medium term but the building of small nuclear reactors complemented with renewables.
However, alternatives needs to be researched and developed, hydrogen is one possibility or biofuels so perhaps we might be able to adapt petrol / diesel cars and even continue to use existing gas/oil boilers, after all there are only 28 million of them that will need disposing of along with 22 million petrol and diesel cars.
Our housing stock is one of the oldest in Europe and evidently leaks heat so why are we not encouraging people to insulate better and lower energy usage.
The Professor mentions the 2015 Paris agreement to which the UK signed up but so did most of Europe and yet ‘their target dates’ have been moderately relaxed.
I applaud our Prime Minister for starting to produce a measured and realistic approach to Net Zero 2050 and await fuller details on the strategy for the next 10/15 years. Targets are always a moving number!!
Yours,
Colin Gratton
Marlborough
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