“We are anti aviation” says UK Government as of yesterday. Actually it says “We are anti-aviation emissions”. It is looking at 70% passenger demand growth by 2050 on 2018 levels and claiming aviation will be net zero by 2050. What the 2022 Jet Zero Strategy calls ‘net zero aviation’ amounts in fact to an aim to reduce emissions by around 50% by 2050.

Yesterday the UK Government’s response to the Climate Change Committee’s June 2023 Progress Report on reducing emissions was published.

As a reminder, the CCC said “Our confidence in the achievement of the UK’s 2030 target and the Fifth and Sixth Carbon Budgets has markedly declined from last year”.

The Government’s response is that it “acknowledges the challenges of meeting future carbon budgets but is working hard to ensure delivery”.

Working hard in the face of marked decline in confidence is “partly or fully acting upon 85% of the CCC’s priority recommendations”. That doesn’t sound like 100% commitment, does it?

Well of course it can’t be because: “As the Prime Minister set out in his speech on 20 September, we will take a pragmatic, proportional and realistic approach to net zero. That means not taking forward CCC recommendations on policies that force families to make costly and burdensome changes to their lifestyles.”

The CCC said in June:

“Overall, CCC aviation indicators are not showing progress that can be attributed to policy implementation”

“The Jet Zero Strategy approach is high risk due to its reliance on nascent technology”

“Demand management is the most effective way of reducing aviation CO2 and non-CO2 emissions”

The Government response:

“DfT analysis shows that in all modelled scenarios we can achieve our net zero targets by focusing on new fuels and technology, rather than capping demand, with knock-on economic and social benefits.”

And don’t worry because: “The Government has committed to reviewing its approach every five years in the Jet Zero Strategy to reflect the latest developments.” And it’s also committed to a £20 billion investment in magical Carbon Capture and Storage (a sum that dwarfs all other investment figures liberally quoted in yesterday’s report).

And to close, no signs that this Government response was hurried out without any proof reading. Well, maybe a couple! The Foreword (quite important you’d think) has mixed paragraph formatting – perhaps the civil servants wrote the fully justified paragraphs and the politicians the left justified ones (the ones referring to our ‘green and pleasant land’ and ‘Putin’s weaponisation of energy’). The soothe-sayer of the future, McKinsey, said in 2021 that “Supplying the goods and services to enable the global net zero transition could be worth £1 trillion to UK businesses by 2030”. However, the Government has reduced £1 trillion to $1 trillion in yesterday’s response to the CCC – only 83% of what was suggested in 2021 – perhaps reflective of only acting upon 85% of the CCC recommendations?!