New strategy "dereliction of duty", says climate emergency politician

Tuesday 02 November 2021

The Government’s plan to shift emphasis from carbon neutrality by 2030 to net-zero-emissions by 2050 is a “dereliction of duty”, according to the politician who successfully called on the States Assembly to declare a climate emergency.

In May 2019, Deputy Rob Ward’s proposal for the Government to chart a path to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 was adopted and in December of that year, Ministers published a ‘carbon neutral strategy’, which established a ‘people-powered approach’ to tackling the issue.

Having set up a Citizens’ Assembly to make recommendations, which published its findings in June, the Government has now released its ‘preferred strategy’ on how decarbonisation will be achieved. 

This will be followed up by a ‘carbon neutral roadmap’ which will be published by the end of this year, which will detail pollution-reduction policies by theme and what specific measures the Government will take between now and 2026, in terms of projects and how they will be funded.

But Deputy Ward said that, with this approach, the island was missing an opportunity to be a “test-bed” for innovative decarbonisation.

Pictured: The new 'preferred strategy' on carbon neutrality establishes five 'strategic priorities'.

“Yet again, the Government has brought forward a generic policy which has no detail,” he said. “My concern is twofold: firstly, the detail will come after the Government Plan debate, so anything brought as an amendment will just be batted away by ministers because 'you’ll have to wait for the roadmap'.

“Secondly, the £250m cost of decarbonisation, which has been given by the Government, seems to have been plucked out of the air and makes absolutely no sense to me.

“But even if it is true, spending £25m a year over the next decade to improve the island's infrastructure and secure green energy for all islanders doesn’t sound that expensive to me, especially when you read in the Government Plan that £19.2m is being returned to the Consolidated Fund for unspent capital projects.

“And saying that it will cost millions to move everyone over to, say, electric boilers is a smokescreen because there are transitional biofuels available that require a £100 adaptation.” 

Deputy Ward said that, rather than seizing the opportunity to innovate, the Government was instead “hiding behind a smokescreen” of arguing that achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 would require significant offsetting. 

“During the pandemic, islanders changed their travel habits, but the Government failed to capitalise on that and now they have decided that it’s better to do very little between now and 2030. I would go as far to say it is a dereliction of duty.”

In its ‘preferred strategy’, which is published today, the Government says that Jersey will have to double its rate of decarbonisation in the next eight years if the Island is going to achieve its new target to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The strategy sets out how the island should remove fossils fuels from its economy – something that is the focus of global attention this week with COP26 being held in Glasgow.

In setting out ‘five strategic policies’, ministers have updated its ‘carbon neutral strategy’ which States Members approved in early 2020.

Indeed, the whole notion of ‘carbon neutrality’ has been replaced with a new definition: ‘net-zero emissions. 

Often used interchangeably, these two phrases are, however, subtly different. ‘Carbon neutrality’ incorporates the ability to purchase ‘offsets’ to balance what cannot be reduced locally.

Hypothetically, if a jurisdiction cut its own carbon emissions by 30%, it could then ‘buy’ the other 70% by paying another country to cut carbon on its behalf, perhaps through planting trees or protecting a forest from logging. 

The former could then declare itself to be ‘carbon neutral’.

Pictured: The 'preferred strategy' recommends local 'sequestration' projects to capture carbon rather than buying offsets from elsewhere.

‘Net-zero emissions’, however, does not take account of carbon offsetting and only refers to when a jurisdiction has the ability to trap any greenhouse gases that it does produce by ‘sequestration’, which is the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. 

The Government says that carbon neutrality remains a “legitimate milestone” on its path to net-zero emissions, meaning that it is not discounting offsetting, but it says that the focus should be on local sequestration projects.

It adds that carbon offsetting markets are currently too volatile and if the island did aim for carbon neutrality by 2030, the cost of offsetting would be around £12m a year by 2030.

It argues that it would be much better to spend that money locally than hand it over to external carbon-trading markets.

However, its policy is to commit to carry out further work to ensure Jersey can become carbon neutral should that decision be taken later this decade. 

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