The UK was supposed to be a global leader on climate. The Climate Change Act, passed in 2008, set legally binding targets. The country hosted COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. Ministers talked about leading by example. So why, according to analysis published this week by the Climate Change Committee, is the country on course to miss its 2030 targets by roughly 40 per cent?
The short answer is that the easy wins have been taken. Cleaning up the electricity grid — replacing coal with renewables — was achievable because it required policy changes at the level of large infrastructure, where government intervention is relatively straightforward. The next phase of decarbonisation is harder: it involves changing how 28 million households heat their homes, how people travel, and what they eat. These are choices that touch daily life in ways that energy policy does not.
The heat pump rollout is the clearest example. The government set a target of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028. Last year, around 85,000 were installed. The gap is not primarily a technology problem — heat pumps work, and they work well in British housing stock when properly installed. The gap is a cost problem, an installer shortage problem, and a public awareness problem. Solving all three simultaneously requires a level of coordinated policy effort that has not been forthcoming.
None of this means the target is unreachable. But it does mean that the pace of change needs to accelerate significantly, and soon. The Climate Change Committee's report is not a counsel of despair — it is a detailed account of what would need to happen. The question is whether there is political will to make it happen.