Finally we have a plan to reduce emissions, but much of it rests on technology that is yet to be tested at scale
Two weeks before the most important climate conference in history, the UK government has finally published its long-awaited net zero strategy, alongside a bevy of other policy documents upwards of 2,000 pages. By its own calculations, this is the first time the government has produced a package of measures that will help achieve its interim five yearly carbon targets leading up to net zero by the middle of the century.
The scale of transformation that the strategy is set to unleash across the entire UK economy is breathtaking. Our electricity is expected to be fully clean by 2035. Our homes will no longer have new gas boilers fitted after then either. No new polluting car will roam our roads from 2030 and we will plant trees in an area the size of Milton Keynes every year from 2025, and all of this at a cost that is less than what we spend on defence each year. Across industry, finance, farming, waste and every other imaginable sector, carbon reduction is set to be the new mantra.
Chaitanya Kumar is head of environment and green transition at the New Economics Foundation
