Analysis: Boris Johnson’s 2035 clean energy goal shows Britain as unenthusiastic leader on climate

As his government prepares to step into the full glare of the international spotlight during the the UN’s Cop26 summit, Boris Johnson has sought to cast Britain as a “climate leader”,

At this week’s Conservative Party conference, under pressure to respond to Labour’s strong stance on the environment at their own conference last week, he pronounced that all UK electricity should be produced by “clean” sources by 2035.

It means Britain has 14 years to phase out all use of fossil fuels in the energy mix – a process that is already well underway with coal, but is stalling when it comes to gas, which remains the biggest single source of electricity generation.

As countries across the world struggle with energy supply issues, Mr Johnson took the opportunity to highlight how a shift to homegrown renewable electricity would protect consumers from fluctuating import prices for oil and gas.

“The advantage of that is that it will mean that, for the first time, the UK is not dependent on hydrocarbons coming from overseas with all the vagaries in hydrocarbon prices and the risk that poses for people’s pockets and for the consumer,” he said.

Stripping fossil fuels out of the energy mix is no small task, but as the demise of coal has shown, it can happen relatively quickly.

Fossil fuels supplied 98 per cent of Britain’s energy needs in 1965, and even as recently as 2014, fossil fuels provided 60 per cent of electricity generation — half of which came from coal.

Just six years later, in 2020, coal accounted for just 1.6 per cent of the energy mix, and the UK had a record-breaking 68-stretch without any coal contributing power to the grid – the longest period since the industrial revolution.

Meanwhile, renewables have surged. In 2014, wind accounted for 9.5 per cent of the energy mix, and solar, just 1.2 per cent. By 2020, this had risen to wind contributing 24.8 per cent, and solar 4.4 per cent.

The UK’s current reliance on gas is significant. Last year, gas was used to generate over a third – 34.5 per cent of the electricity mix.

Despite this high proportion of fossil fuel usage, experts from the National Grid have said they believe the UK will begin to see short periods of 100 per cent carbon-free electricity generation beginning from around 2025 – giving an entire decade to reach Mr Johnson’s goal of entirely fossil-free energy generation by 2035.

To date, the lowest usage of fossil fuels in the energy mix occurred on 23 May 2020, when fossil fuels only accounted for 17 per cent of the mix.

So there is little doubt Mr Johnson’s ambition is achievable.

Instead, the relatively long timescale is likely to infuriate those who want to see greater levels of ambition, as well as those who want to see the UK to move away from nuclear power.

Although nuclear is ‘clean’ in that its production does not produce greenhouse gases, it presents considerable other environmental risks if not extremely carefully managed. It also saddles future generations with dangerous radioactive waste to take care of, has various other environmental impacts and remains highly controversial.

Nuclear power remains expensive to produce, and as the generation of renewable energy becomes ever cheaper, investment in energy storage – huge batteries – will help maintain a steady supply of energy during less windy and sunny periods, instead of nuclear power stations.

Greenpeace UK chief scientist Doug Parr said: “The government remains unhealthily attached to nuclear technology, hoping against all experience that it will improve to the point where it becomes competitive with renewables.

“As we have learned over the last 70 years, nuclear just doesn’t get cheaper. The case for large-scale reactors is weakening day by day as it becomes more and more obvious that the future of energy is a decentralised, flexible grid that makes use of new storage technologies whose costs are falling sharply, as well as cheap and rapidly deployable renewables.”

Instead of the government pushing for rapid changes, there is frustration that the government is not investing in the areas which could speed up the UK’s transition away from fossil fuels.

Dr Matthew Lockwood, a senior lecturer in energy policy at the University of Sussex, said: “The commitment to 100 per cent green electricity is in line with what the Climate Change Committee says will be needed to meet the 6th Carbon Budget, so that is positive that the government is responding to that.

“The challenge is that a large proportion of the government’s plans focus on wind, which is intermittent. This raises the question of how generation is going to be matched with demand, both in the short term (by hour) and across the seasons. The detail of the government proposals that has been made public so far says nuclear will provide baseload capacity ‘to provide a ‘baseload’ of electricity to cope with variable supply and demand’ but this doesn’t really make any sense as nuclear power cannot be ramped up and down if you want to keep costs low, so they are not a good match technically.”

He added: “In practice the answer will be a mix of demand response, short term battery storage and some form of inter-seasonal storage, which may or may not be hydrogen. This plan makes storage and demand response absolutely centre stage, so if the plan is to work that will have to be the next major focus.”

Also remarkable was that Mr Johnson’s clean energy future was not backed up with any strong fiscal support or even any palpable interest from Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who addressed the Conservative Party conference on Monday.

This did not go unnoticed by Labour’s Ed Miliband, the shadow business and energy secretary, who said: “​​Rishi Sunak’s near total silence on climate, the biggest economic challenge we face, is deeply worrying.

“The sole mention went to the green homes grant – which he slashed funding for. Climate action offers huge potential to create jobs - it’s terrible he fails to recognise this.”

Meanwhile, the government has still failed to rule out the construction of a new deep coal mine for exporting to European steel manufacturers, and is also exploring new oil opportunities in the North Sea.

As Cop26 looms, the government is still failing to make any policy announcements that could help galvanise global action, positioning itself as an unenthusiastic leader on the world’s most pressing issue.