The transport Decarbonisation plan won’t decarbonise transport
It’s OK, we’ve decarbonised
There is, unfortunately, a flaw at the heart of the Government’s decarbonisation plan.
And it’s likely to be fatal to its ambitions.
The flaw is that it ignores the effect of demand generation on car travel from the Government’s own policies.
Carry on as normal
There is - obviously - a lot of focus on decarbonising vehicles, with strategies to get road and rail vehicles to zero tailpipe emissions by 2050.
But the plan is also explicit that there should be no attempt to change behaviours: As the plan puts it:
It’s not about stopping people doing things: it’s about doing the same things differently.
In the context of surface transport, that means:
We will still drive on improved roads, but increasingly in zero emission cars.
The problem is that improving roads will cause more people to drive. and zero-emission cars are not zero-emission.
The flaw
It’s ironic that the plan makes the mistake that it does, given that the plan acknowledges exactly the issue that will prevent success. But it only acknowledges it when looking back into the past. In noting why carbon emissions haven’t fallen in the last 30 years, the plan notes:
Better engine efficiency has been made up for by increasing numbers of journeys
Precisely! It’s no good making vehicles more energy-efficient if people make more journeys. Indeed, the plan starts off by acknowledging this truth:
We cannot simply believe that zero emission cars and lorries will meet all our climate goals or solve all our problems
And stating that
We will use our cars differently and less often.
The problem is that this ambition is not matched by any policies to support it.
The cycling, bus and rail strategies all get a lot of airtime; with the idea that improving bike infrastructure, bus services and trains will drive modal shift. The improvements in cycling infrastructure, rail and bus services promised in the various strategies are all welcome, but modal shift is a question of carrot and stick.
If you improve one mode without creating incentives to switch, you don’t create modal shift - you simply create new journeys.
People still drive down the M40 from Oxford to London, even though Oxford to London now has arguably the best intercity transport in Britain (two competing rail lines and the best coach service in the country). All that extra transport has made Oxford to London a dynamic transport market in which people shuttle between the cities constantly; for work, business and pleasure. But many of those journeys are by car.
I discussed these issues properly here, so I won’t rehash them, but the fact remains that by spending £27 billion on roads, the Government will encourage more car journeys.
The plan tries to claim congestion is a cause of carbon:
Continued high investment in our roads is therefore, and will remain, as necessary as ever to ensure the functioning of the nation and to reduce the congestion which is a major source of carbon.
But it simply doesn’t wash. After all, congestion on roads is an incentive to use lower-carbon modes. If congestion were (by some miracle) eliminated, it would incentivise people back into cars.
But, of course, we know that congestion isn’t eliminated through more roads. What always actually happens is that more roads incentivise more journeys. And it’s not like the base level of road use is declining. The Government’s 2018 road use forecasts uses as a starting methodology to simply extrapolate forward existing trip rate trends. On that basis, the forecast shows increases in road use by 2050 of between 17% and 51% (depending on scenario). The road investment programme will only increase this further.
The Government believes that
A fleet of fully zero emission road vehicles will remove the source of 91% of today’s domestic transport GHG emissions.
But when I dialled into the car lobby’s own conference, they said that they believe that electrification only reduces carbon emissions by 50% due to production, disposal and the batteries.
If electrification reduces emissions by 50% but road use goes up at the upper end of the Government’s estimate of 51% (and it will. given the roadbuilding programme) then you don’t need to be a mathematician to work out that you’ve not decarbonised.
The plan does acknowledge that the plan may not actually decarbonise transport:
Ultimately, this depends on how quickly zero-emission technologies, fuels and efficiency measures are deployed, as well as the impacts of our policies to increase the numbers of journeys made by cycling and walking and on public transport.
The report also refers briefly to:
potentially of increases in driving when electric and autonomous vehicles become common.
But nowhere does the report explain how the carbon impact will be mitigated.
Have your cake and eat it
The plan is a classic “have your cake and eat it strategy”. It describes how carbon emissions could be eliminated if everyone behaved the way the Government models tell them to behave for the purposes of writing this plan. In those models, improving roads doesn’t incentivise more road use, meaning that the Government can continue to give drivers more roads while claiming to decarbonise the economy.
The problem is that it won’t work.
This isn’t just a transport issue. Lord Deben, Chair of the Government’s own Climate Change Committee, recently gave the Government 9/10 for setting targets but only 4/10 for action to achieve the targets.
This plan will make this problem worse, not better.
As an illustration of the fantasy element, let’s look at this pictogram:
As someone who’s run a coach travel startup for the last five years, I have used similar graphics many times. And it’s entirely true.
But, of course, we all know it won’t actually happen in the real world. Drivers won’t shift from cars to coaches. Not really. Because they’d rather drive.
They might if road pricing changed the price balance between the modes. They might if priority measures changed the journey time balance between the modes. They would if both of these happened.
But without either (as per the plan), a graphic like this is ultimately meaningless.
The plan feels well-argued and almost convincing, but this graphic is a great illustration of how it is - ultimately - designed to sound convincing as opposed to actually decarbonise transport. Unless anyone can point to the policies in the plan that will actually cause meaningful modal shift from cars to coaches on trips from London to Edinburgh, this graphic can only have been included to sound good.
Global leadership
Moreover, this isn’t just a UK issue.
Decarbonisation has to be global or it is pointless.
Britain is the most important country in the world right now, as we’re hosting the COP26 climate summit that has to agree on a meaningful global plan.
Our leadership must come from our example, or how can we command the moral weight to negotiate a global plan?
And a British decarbonisation strategy based around facilitating everyone to drive as much as they want is a disaster.
After all, Britain currently has roughly one car for every two people and its population is forecast to remain roughly stable. Bangladesh currently has roughly one car for every 25 people and a population that is forecast to grow to 192 million by 2050. If the British answer to decarbonisation is that everyone should drive as much as they want, then why shouldn’t it be Bangladesh’s? And if Bangladesh goes from one car per 25 people to one car per two people, that’s going to cause carbon emissions to skyrocket; no matter which set of assumptions you believe on the carbon impact of electrification.
Low carbon transport
The reality is that whether vehicles are powered by diesel, petrol, hydrogen or electricity, the lowest carbon forms of travel are those that are shared. Cars are the wrong answer for decarbonisation because - in general - an entire vehicle is used to transport one family (and, frequently, one person). Unless the British Government can get away with a COP26 message of “do as we say, not do as we do”, the transport decarbonisation plan makes transport decarbonisation at a global level less likely. And that’s a global shame.
