U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a £12 billion ($15.9 billion) plan to boost green industries and tackle climate change in a blueprint he says will create or support as many as 250,000 jobs.
As he seeks to relaunch his premiership and revive the economy, Johnson aims to use his plan for a "green industrial revolution” to deliver on his pledge to invest in former industrial heartlands that voted for him at last year’s election.
Under the wide-ranging proposals, sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2030, the government will back investment in electric vehicles, hydrogen, wind and nuclear power, and measures to make homes more energy efficient.
"Although this year has taken a very different path to the one we expected, I haven’t lost sight of our ambitious plans to level up across the country,” Johnson said in a statement released by his office. "My ten-point plan will create, support and protect hundreds of thousands of green jobs, whilst making strides towards net zero by 2050.”
Climate summit
The U.K. is due to host next year’s COP26 global climate change summit in Scotland and has committed to a net zero carbon economy by 2050. The premier also intends to use his commitment to tackling climate change to help build a strong partnership with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden.
The most radical policy is perhaps the phasing out of diesel and gas car sales by 2030, 10 years earlier than previously scheduled. This puts the U.K. ahead of France and Spain, which have 2040 target dates, and in line with Ireland and the Netherlands. The only country with a more ambitious target for such a ban is Norway, with a date of 2025.
A U.K. government spokeswoman said the plan included at least £3 billion of new government spending.
Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the plan represented "a crucial next step” to a low carbon economy, but called for more spending to deliver it.
"The U.K. must accelerate strongly from here in the coming two or three years. Time is of the essence. It is important that the forthcoming Spending Review brings policies and financial structures to support these investments and to help create a more efficient and productive, zero-emissions and climate-resilient economy,” he said.
The government will invest £1.3 billion on speeding up the roll-out of charging points for electric vehicles in residential streets, homes and highways in England, with £582 million in grants to encourage consumers to buy zero or ultralow emission vehicles.
Nearly £500 million will be spent in the next four years to boost the production of electric vehicle batteries.
Cooking on hydrogen
The government will spend as much as £500 million on trial programs to test the use of hydrogen for heating and cooking at home.
Some £525 million of state funding will go to help develop large and smaller-scale nuclear plants, and research and develop new advanced modular reactors.
Britain needs both small and large-scale nuclear technologies to meet its climate change commitments, according to the plan being drafted by officials. That could be good news for Electricite de France SA and its Sizewell C plant — the only project still in the development pipeline after Hitachi Ltd. exited a development in Wales.
The government says it wants to see small-scale reactors built, too. Small modular reactors have been promoted by the nuclear industry as a way to blend steady atomic generation with intermittent renewable energy.
How Sizewell will be financed remains an open question with the government expected to draw a conclusion on its preferred financing model in the energy white paper before the end of the year.
The hydrogen target is in line with industry demands. RenewableUK had urged the government to set a target of 5 gigawatts of renewable electrolyzer capacity by 2030, rising to 10 gigawatts by 2035.
Johnson announced new investment including an extra £200 million on carbon capture, usage and storage technology, designed to catch carbon dioxide and bury it underground to stop it entering the atmosphere.
This will see two new carbon capture and storage "clusters” built by the middle of this decade, helping to support 50,000 jobs, potentially in parts of northeastern England where heavy industry has been in decline.
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