The Green Transition: Goodbye 2023. It was a very good year?
Weekly analysis of the shift towards a new economy.
Dear Readers,
Happy Friday and happy Christmas from the Spotlight on Policy team. As ever, you can find our excellent policy coverage here.
Since it’s that time of year, and we were feeling generous, we’ve done a run-down of 2023’s best Spotlight comment pieces from MPs, mayors and trade union leaders. Maybe your piece even made the cut.
Anyway, welcome to the final edition of the Green Transition for this year, in which I will categorically not be shoehorning festive jokes into the draft copy for our editor Alona Ferber to painstakingly fish out. We’ll be back with more weekly updates on the transition to a new, green economy, in January.
But first, some short reflections on the year gone by, and the year ahead.
All the best, and thank you for reading and subscribing,
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
2023 was a hell of a year for climate news and net-zeronomics (I’m sure one day this will catch on, so apologies in advance). Probably the biggest event in the calendar was the newsletter-formerly-known-as-the-Green-Times becoming The Green Transition and moving to Substack. Next to that, everything else seems rather puny. But in all seriousness, the outlook on humanity’s gallop (or is it a canter?) to net zero has been mixed, at best.
If Egypt’s hosting of Cop27 at the end of last year ended up being a bit of a damp squib, at least the UAE’s effort might have been a… sunny squib? Whatever it was, we just had a Cop28 agreement that was billed as both “historic” and “inadequate”. Make of that what you will – or, read the on-the-ground updates and analysis from the GT in Dubai, which should have hit your inboxes over the last few weeks.
In October, the scientists behind the Copernicus satellites informed us that 2023 was set to be the hottest year on record — but was it also the year that the world finally woke up to the historic challenge of the green transition? For the first time, the UN’s Congress of Parties jointly agreed on language around “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner”. And yet many criticised the agreement for a so-called “implementation gap”, meaning the wording of a draft text doesn’t always correlate with actions on the ground.
Record Chinese investment in renewables began to bear fruit, and led to predictions that the carbon emissions of the world’s biggest polluter would peak next year. But meanwhile, in Britain, Rishi Sunak used a set-piece speech to renege on key climate commitments and promised to permit scores of new oil and gas exploration licenses in the North Sea, which most people agree is totally incompatible with this country’s climate commitments.
Everybody collectively lost their minds over the Ulez (or was it Uxbridge?) by-election, when a safe outer-London Tory seat once belonging to a guy called “Boris Johnson” — and a constituency that had been held by the Conservative Party for several decades — was won by, er, a Conservative candidate, by a huge 495-vote margin. For context, the Green Party won 893 votes, which is nice for them I suppose. Belated congratulations, guys.
Still, the level-headed master strategists at the helm of our two main political parties wouldn’t let a result like that fool them into abandoning a consistent element of public policy that industry had been planning investment around for several years, would they? Well, as you know, they would. And they did. No sooner had the count been announced, the prime minister went into full UK drill mode, meaning he became very keen on fossil fuel drilling, not that he started an alter-ego rap career in a sub-genre of grime (if you don’t know what I’m on about, ask your kids).
But at least Sunak got his massive poll bounce from it all, and is now neck-and-neck with the tree-huggers in the Labour Party. In his dreams, of course. But Keir Starmer hasn’t been immune to green polling jitters, either. He threw his old pal Sadiq Khan under a non-electric diesel bus after Uxbridge, and came out against anti-traffic measures. And he’s gone a bit cold on big action on global heating.
And therein lies the big question awaiting an answer in 2024: what will Starmer really do on climate? The £28bn-per-year Labour originally pledged is now only £20bn of new spending. That’s not to be sniffed at. However, even that sum is conditional on getting the requisite growth needed for borrowing an extra £100bn over a five-year parliament — without increasing the proportion of debt-to-GDP (that’s the old fiscal rule conundrum). Will Labour prioritise fiscal prudence over climate radicalism? The party would certainly like us to think so. Will they get the required growth for an extra £100bn of spending? Well, they’re putting a lot of faith in the magic bullets of planning reform and vague-sounding industrial strategies to get the engines firing on UK plc, while very much playing down expectations on what will be possible in a hostile global environment after the party’s hypothetical election victory.
But Labour has also talked up its plans to “do a Biden”, in the technical parlance, and implement a UK version of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). For those of you who haven’t been paying attention (doubtful, but you never know), the IRA is one of the most consequential and economically radical pieces of US domestic legislation in years. It has altered the way the world thinks about the limits of state intervention and economic policymaking in advanced, large economies.
If the polls are to be believed, 2024 will be the year we find out which Labour we’re going to get. And the GT will be here to guide you through it, all the way.
Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year.
In Brief
Lifelines for pipelines: Our very own Samir Jeraj investigates the phenomenon of the stranded assets of the fossil fuel economy. As we press ahead with new renewable technologies, could the redundancy of oil and gas infrastructure pose a threat to the wider economy?
On the buses: If we’re going to successfully reach net zero then we need to rapidly decarbonise our transport sector, which is currently responsible for around a third of the UK’s emissions. That means we’re going to have to dramatically improve public transport — something Labour has promised via a commitment to more TfL-style franchising bodies for local authorities outside of London. Matthew Topham from We Own It, has everything you need to know in this great piece.
Gridlock: Carl Trowell, head of National Grid strategic infrastructure, contributed an insider piece on how and why the move to renewables requires a major upgrade of the UK’s electricity network.
Show me the money: Polly Bindman, of Energy Monitor, wrote for us about the UK’s failure to live up to its climate finance promises. A must-read, post-Cop.
It’s still not to late…: Our policy blog competition, in partnership with TxP and Civic Future, is still open. The deadline for your big ideas on getting Britain moving again is 7th January. There is a cash prize and publication in New Statesman Spotlight for the winner. That could be your Christmas 2024 come early….
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See you next year.
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