Emma Pinchbeck: The short-term politics of net zero is not our job

Less than six months into her tenure as chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, Emma Pinchbeck has seen the sort of global changes you might expect to make her job more difficult. US President Donald Trump – who promised to “drill, baby, drill” while on the campaign trail – was quick to remove the world’s largest economy from the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global emissions, while in the UK, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described net zero targets as “impossible” without what she called a “serious drop” in living standards. And earlier this month in response to the introduction of damaging US tariffs, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pronounced the era of globalisation – the prevailing economic norm since the end of the Second World War – was now over.

It’s the sort of turbulent backdrop against which maintaining a focus on the environment becomes more challenging. And yet for Pinchbeck, who replaced Chris Stark as the head of the climate watchdog in November, it’s been business as usual when it comes to the UK meeting its climate ambitions. Next month, the CCC will publish its latest advice for Scotland, advising the devolved government on its emissions targets. Last year net zero secretary Mairi McAllan announced the government would scrap its annual and interim targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It followed a CCC report which said the 2030 goal – of cutting emissions by 75 per cent against 1990 levels – was “beyond what is credible”. Earlier this month figures published by the government showed Scotland’s carbon footprint in 2021 (emissions from all greenhouse gases) was at its highest level since 2015.

“The short-term politics of net zero is literally not our job,” says Pinchbeck. “We exist partly to make sure we’re still progressing on decarbonisation in a multi-decade, long-term way outside of politics. The debate on net zero in the short term was much more impactful and necessary for me to respond to in my last job where I was chief exec of the energy trade body because that kind of noise on net zero does affect investment. But for the CCC, our job is to offer advice outside of politics...”

It’s undoubtedly the case that net zero – the goal of achieving a zero balance for greenhouse gas emissions – has become heavily politicised in the past few years. There was a broad consensus in favour when the UK Government introduced legislation under then prime minister Theresa May in 2019, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. Scotland’s climate change legislation, which dates back to 2009, was toughened up in 2019 to introduce a target of 2045. But in the run-up to last year’s general election, Reform UK vowed to scrap net zero targets and accelerate the extraction of North Sea oil and gas. In March, Badenoch said the goal set by the previous Conservative government would not be achieved “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.

“I can remember people in the climate movement being really sceptical about whether we’d get a global agreement [on emissions] in 2015,” says Pinchbeck. “That rolled through into the first Trump presidency and concerns about global commitments on climate – it was the era where David Cameron’s government was making noises about ‘cutting the green crap’ [and] we lost a couple of flagship green policies… Politics on decarbonisation, like politics on anything else, changes over time. The smart thing about the CCC and the carbon budgets is that they were deliberately designed to acknowledge that circular thing happens in politics and you need a body to keep doing work regardless of the political noise.”

Pinchbeck believes there is more of a consensus around net zero in Scotland, with an opportunity for the country to take a “confident leadership” role in the debate. However, that consensus may not last for long with Reform poised to make gains at next year’s election and the Scottish Conservatives backing Badenoch’s U-turn on net zero. 

There is also growing unhappiness about the energy transition, both in terms of the future of North Sea oil and gas and in the more immediate term, the Grangemouth refinery, which is due to close by the summer with the loss of 400 jobs. Last year, Labour pledged to save the jobs at the refinery but both Keir Starmer’s government and its SNP counterpart at Holyrood have failed to find an immediate solution for the plant. Last month a long-awaited report from Project Willow, a £1.5m feasibility study, set out nine future options for the refinery, including plastics recycling, biorefining and hydrogen fuel switching. Each would require significant private sector investment and would take time to become operational.

“De-industrialisation is not a successful decarbonisation strategy,” Pinchbeck says. “There is an energy transition coming and it will come whether or not you’re progressing net zero. In the case of refineries, oil demand in China is already being hugely impacted by the rollout of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles now account for one in four UK car sales – these technologies are growing and that will affect demand for [oil] and the supply chain. 

“Sensible governments move early to do something for those workers and those industries. Industrial strategy isn’t technically in the CCC’s mandate, but we’ve said that alongside a decarbonisation strategy you need a strategy for those industries and those communities that will need additional support. 

“The public thinks the transition needs to be fair but they recognise there are communities that will not benefit from this transition. If you’re in Aberdeen, for example, the transition away from oil and gas feels very different than it will UK-wide.”

Before taking on her current role, Pinchbeck held positions with organisations including WWF, RenewableUK and industry body Energy UK, where she was chief executive until last year. The priorities as she sees it now are electrifying heating, electrifying transport, and making electricity cheaper for consumers. But if Scotland failed to meet its 2045 net zero target, instead managing to get 95 per cent of the way there, would that be failure?

“This is a politician’s answer, but I wouldn’t deal in a hypothetical like that,” she says. “Our job is to advise them on the target… If you’re making really good progress on decarbonisation, that’s great. I don’t want to speculate on where [Scotland] may or may not get to. The much more important thing for the Scottish Government to focus on right now is progress right in front of their faces in the next five to 10 years. Long-term goals are important… but Scotland, as with Westminster, has not made progress on the short-term stuff to deliver on any targets. I don’t like entertaining hypothetical conversations about 2050 because we’ve got lots of short-term action to do and that’s where the focus should be.”

One of those immediate tasks – and one of the most difficult – is decarbonising heating in homes across the UK. Last year Audit Scotland, the public spending watchdog, warned it would be impossible to completely phase out fossil fuel heating systems such as gas boilers by 2045 without a “significant increase in the scale and pace of activity”. The Scottish Government has already committed £1.8bn in this parliament to delivering its Heat in Buildings strategy, with the total cost to the public sector, businesses and homes in the long run currently estimated to be around £33bn. While the issue is a huge challenge across the UK, there are particular difficulties in Scotland with large parts of the urban population living in ageing tenements.

“People need cheap electricity,” says Pinchbeck. “Not least because they currently can’t pay their bills but also because the technology in people’s homes will be more electric [in the future]. The conservative advice from us is that the government will probably need to step in for some households on the capital cost of installing a new heating system. This only applies to people when they replace their heating system – we want them to get a heat pump [then] not tear out a boiler that’s working.”

There will be discussion of Scottish property types such as tenements in the advice being published by the CCC next month, but Pinchbeck is unable to share it at this stage. As for the US under Trump, Pinchbeck remains optimistic, saying the Americans continued to deliver on climate commitments during his first presidency. 

“People underestimate the energy transition,” she says. “The politics will come and go but the underpinning economic drivers will continue and so will climate change. The energy transition is going to happen. The question for policy makers is whether it’s going to happen in your country.”