Committee on Climate Change

Independent advisors to the UK Government on tackling and preparing for climate change

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Reducing Emissions
Over the first three budget periods up to 2022, significant investment is required in low-carbon ways of generating electricity, that is in wind, CCS and nuclear. Under the scenario set out by the Committee, emissions fall by around 50% from current levels and emissions intensity is on the path to deep emissions cuts required by 2030 and beyond.

The Committee will assess the Government’s progress towards reducing emissions in the power sector by looking at a set of key power indicators. These are outlined in brief below:
  • Wind is the only low-carbon technology that is ready for deployment now – 23GW of new wind capacity is required between 2009-2020.
  • Nuclear is a cost-effective form of low-carbon generation and early entry into the mix will contain the costs of decarbonisation through the 2020s and beyond – up to  three new nuclear plants will be required by 2022.
  • CCS should make an important contribution to long-term power sector decarbonisation, both in the UK and internationally – up to 4 CCS demonstration plants will be required by 2020.
The power sector is included within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The EU ETS places a cap on the emissions that can be produced by the sector up to 2020, and will thus deliver the emissions reductions required in the sector to 2020. However,  it will not automatically bring forward the low-carbon investment to deliver required emissions cuts in the 2020s and beyond. This is because the cap could be met to 2020 through a shift from coal-fired to gas-fired generation, rather than any new investment in low-carbon plant. Beyond 2020, the level of the cap is uncertain, and thus there is no strong long-term signal to investors.  

The risk that the EU ETS will not deliver low-carbon investment is of concern because failure to invest in low-carbon generation now would make it much more difficult and costly to reduce emissions beyond 2020. In order to ensure that the UK meets its climate change commitments and has security of energy supply for the future, it is therefore necessary to look forward to likely low-carbon power requirements in the 2020s  , and to put domestic energy policy in place now which could meet these.



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