I know – you can’t take any more. Madness reigns. But here’s a slide deck on how we’re doing on road transport decarbonisation in the UK.

Mark Frost asked me to present today at an Urban Design London online event, alongside Aoife Dudley & Esther Kurland. Mark sensibly suggested adding ‘timely’ to the title. I updated the slides again this morning but they are probably already out of date (Tory Party Conference today).

The presentation is peppered with dates because it’s quite hard to keep up. It tries to bring together what the Climate Change Committee has to say, what Department for Transport (DfT) / HM Government has to say, & what Rishi Sunak has to say. Compatability is not a strong descriptor of the result.

I asked the audience some questions at the start – you can see the results in the slides. Main barrier to UK road transport decarbonisation? Politics. Main enabler? Technology. Words describing PM speech on 20 Sept? Disappointed, angry, horrified (& more).

Here’s a rough timeline from the presentation in brief:

📢 June 2022 – CCC progess report: world class UK leadership on (binding) targets but implementation must be prioritised

📢 March 2023 – Government acknowledges need for swift delivery in this decisive decade with timely transition to zero emission vehicles a principal risk

📢 March 2023 – Government’s Carbon Budget Delivery Plan *does* include a policy called ‘increasing average road vehicle occupancy’ IF needed to stay in track

📢 June 2023 – CCC Progress Report: confidence in achievement of targets “has markedly declined from last year” – concerns regarding lack of attention to car demand reduction & modal shift

📢 20 September 2023 – PM speech: critical of how Interim Carbon Budgets set, keen to resist “short-term political needs of the moment” (??!!), scrapped proposals, easing of transition to electric vehicles

📢 28 September 2023 – ZEV Mandate unveiled (with adustments)

📢 2 October 2023 – DfT publishes ‘The Plan for Drivers’ (which doesn’t bode well for still awaited local transport planning guidance)

So how to move the dial (apart from going back in time & erasing the 20 Sep speech & 2 Oct Plan for Drivers)?

We know the levers we have: Avoid, Shift, Improve & we need to use all three. Reality is mainly focused on Improve & even that has been weakened.

Move from a mobility mindset to an access mindset & change the narrative (not in the way currently being done). Instead of ‘eco-zealots want to reduce our car use by 20%’, reframe as ‘we can still have 80% of our pre-pandemic car use, the access we need, AND help avert a nightmare future. Great!’.

Given the ‘Pentagram of Influence’ between politicians, public, mainstream media, fossil fuel industries & professionals, my closing message is this:

In our different roles and with the agency we each have we must look to play our part in helping move the Overton window – climate action to enable climate action.

#decarbonisation#politics#waroncars#ZEV#BEV