In 2021 the United Nations Secretary-General issued a ‘Code Red’ warning for humanity, with the risks of exceeding 1.5 degrees of warming perilously close. That year saw the publication of the Department for Transport’s Decarbonisation Plan (TDP) and the UK’s Net Zero Strategy as the UK hosted COP26. Transport is the largest emitting sector of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and for the first time, projected pathways to zero emissions had been produced. The publication of the Transport Decarbonisation Plan and other key strategies such as Bus Back Better, the Williams-Shapps Review and Gear Change spelt an optimistic picture for a more sustainable, equitable and balanced decarbonisation of the transport sector.
In March 2023, just 21 months after the publication of the Transport Decarbonisation Plan, the revision to the whole of government Net Zero Strategy – the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan (CBDP) – was released. It set out a new carbon reduction pathway for transport. Analysis here reveals that 72 percent of the potential ambition set out in the TDP has been lost in the CBDP. As policies to lock down the transition to electric vehicles have been advanced, demand management has largely been abandoned. This is not gear change, this is reverse gear.
Transport has been the laggard sector in carbon reduction for 30 years. It is now the largest emitting sector. The direction set out in the CBDP to go slower is a continuation of the exceptionalism mindset on transport emission reduction. It may be argued that other parts of the economy can go faster and take up the slack. It is the job of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to assess those arguments from a carbon perspective across the whole economy. It would, though, be surprising if the paring back of ambition was deemed acceptable given the short time that has passed and the seeming lack of commitment to demand management relative to the CCC’s view of what was possible. Whatever assessment the CCC reaches, from a transport system perspective, the current strategy makes little sense. Pursuing a technology-led strategy, with no adjustment to prices will increase congestion and widen transport inequalities, missing the opportunity to deliver a fairer transition which drives up well- being and productivity.
This report shows that pathways which achieve the Government’s aims on electrification could still be consistent with the CCC’s Balanced Pathway if a 20% reduction in road traffic levels were also to be achieved by 2030 relative to current plans. The policy goal in Scotland is for an absolute reduction in car kilometres of 20% by 2030, although progress against the goal is yet to be substantially realised. Such an outcome cannot be wished for; it needs to be made to come about. In 2021, the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) published a series of scenarios, referred to as Positive Low Energy Futures (PLEF). The PLEF transport report set out alternative pathways which could save energy and carbon but still allow society to flourish (Brand et al., 2021). Pathways with reductions in car mileage will require a step change in funding and delivery of alternatives to car travel which are not currently being planned for. However, every year that passes with a business as usual transport delivery mindset, reduces the potential to shift to such pathways.
Much is being made of the next round of Local Transport Plans (LTPs) as offering additional carbon mitigation through a process of declaring “quantifiable carbon reductions’’. However, there is no indication that there will be anything more than business as usual funding made available. If that is correct, then most of the savings from the LTPs will have already been factored into the baseline conditions and so will not accelerate the mitigation effort. The policy portfolio, as currently constructed, means that government is planning for traffic growth. The ambitions of the CCC for the 6th Carbon Budget for surface transport are, therefore, off the table.
Local, regional and sub-national bodies have declared climate emergencies and set ambitious transport carbon reduction targets. The level of ambition they thought was in scope when setting their targets has gone. Where next? Two options stand out:
- The national position is accepted, local targets are re-interpreted as ‘aspirations’ and the real carbon ambition is pushed back by a few years.
- Local authorities, businesses and citizens insist on a different approach from national government. Significant transport demand reduction is put back on the agenda which enables the delivery of a fairer and faster transition.
The choices taken in the next couple of years will either open up new opportunities to rethink how society gets around or lock us into a more car-dependent future.
In order to write this report, it has been necessary to force the Department for Transport (DfT) to open up the data surrounding the TDP. Only through transparent accounting and careful scrutiny can the shifts in policy position be understood and communicated. It might be tempting for the DfT to push this report to one side as it does not recognise the numbers in it. If the assumptions held by DfT differ from those presented in the report and the data sheets published alongside it then they should be published.
The recent Transport Data Strategy (DfT, 2023) says many of the right things about open data but the principles are not yet routinely put into practice on decarbonisation projections. National and local governments need to be held to account for the actions they propose and the ones they avoid. The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are only affected by the delivery of policy, not the storylines.
To read the report, click on the following: