Dec 2009 18

New research: The economic cost of a 42 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 202021

The recent TaxPayers’ Alliance report Ending the Green Rip-Off: Reforming climate change policy to reduce the burden on families showed that existing climate change policy is imposing an excessive and inefficient burden on families and businesses.  The report cited Citigroup analysis which suggests climate change policy is already heading for an “affordability crisis”. 

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has now offered, at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, a cut of 42 per cent in Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.  That would be a massive increase from the current 20 per cent target.  This research note shows that meeting such a target could mean massive cuts in Britain’s national income.

For details of the calculations, download the research note here (PDF).

Key findings

  • If Britain continues a strong performance relative to other advanced economies in cutting emissions intensity, the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide produced per million pounds of GDP, we can expect emissions intensity to fall by nearly 30 per cent by 2020.
  • With economic growth in line with Treasury expectations, that will mean that carbon dioxide emissions can be expected to fall to around 489 Mt by 2020.  That means the cut from 1990 emissions levels will be nearly 18 per cent (the current target requires a 34 per cent cut in British emissions).
  • To meet a 42 per cent target at the present rate of improvements in emissions intensity, the size of the economy in 2020 would need to be cut by 30 per cent from expected levels, or nearly £507 billion (2005 prices).  That would leave GDP lower than it was in 2004.
  • The rate of carbon intensity improvement would need to nearly double to meet a 42 per cent target without compromising national income.  That is highly unlikely given that even existing technologies such as nuclear and tidal power, or carbon capture and storage, are unlikely to be able to make a major contribution by 2020.

For details of the calculations, download the research note here (PDF).

Matthew Sinclair, Research Director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“It is absolutely incredible that Gordon Brown is still pledging ever more extreme and expensive emissions cuts on Britain’s behalf.  The Government are relying on rapid economic growth to help restore the public finances to health, but meeting such an ambitious target for emissions cuts could require a recession of unprecedented ferocity.  Governments shouldn’t sign up to international targets unless they have a serious plan to meet them, and they definitely shouldn’t sign a death warrant for the British economy.”

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  • Ethan

    Gordon Clown is pursuing a scorched earth policy indeed. It’s akin to the last days of the Hitler in the bunker ordering Speer to ensure that every town and village is demolished so that the victors win nothing.
    Clown has clearly lost whatever marbles he had and needs sectioning asap if the nation is ever to be saved!

  • http://www.order-order.com Taxed to Death

    Matthew Sinclair said:
    “It is absolutely incredible that Gordon Brown is still pledging ever more extreme and expensive emissions cuts on Britain’s behalf.”
    Why is it incredible that Gordon Brown is doing something incredibly stupid?
    He’s been doing monumentally stupid things since 1997 (at least!)

  • Marcus Aurelius

    what is McBroon’s mandate from the people for signing such a Treaty? wouldn’t we need a say, just as we did in the EU Constitution?

  • Ken Hall

    marcus @01:42,
    Don’t be silly. Since when have this government EVER wanted to give us a say on anything, that this party ever thought we could object to?
    Scottish devolution. They only asked the Scots.
    Welsh assembly. A talking shop that they only asked the Welsh. And only 20% of them voted for it.
    London Assembly. A labour stronghold at the time of the referendum, a way to remove London from any future tory control (they did not think that one out!)
    Regional assemblies. Hmmmmm they stopped granting us any referenda when we started rejecting them.
    Now we have an unelected President, (Rompuy) telling an unelected Prime Minister what he can and cannot do. Mugabe has more democratic legitimacy to lead Zimbabwe, than Brown has to lead the UK. Ahmedinejad has far more democratic legitimacy too. As do Hamas, come to think of it. Hamas not only won their election, but they achieved an outright majority.

  • Tiresias

    I can think of only two Chancellors since the second world war who had any real grasp of tax policy or Government finances: Roy Jenkins and Nigel Lawson. Well, Ken Clarke, perhaps. The rest just treat tax policy as a kind of vanity project.

  • Mercian

    Presumably anything he signs up to will have to be ratified by Parliament? Mind you, that bunch of stooges will probably just nod it through.

  • Stanley Wood

    If you take a ball of cheese, or bread, (or any other substance that will support a life form) and then introduce on to that ball a life form, it will not take long until that life form has reproduced to the point of “suffocating” itself to the point of extinction….even before the nutrient is used up.
    These stupid fools who are parading up and down with or without banners inside the conference or outside it are all totally blinkered and really have little concept of what they are trying to do….but by hell they are going to do it!

  • Brian Smith

    The list of things that are wrong about policy designed to address the push that comes from the climate change lobby is long but one thing needs mentioning and not letting out of our sight.
    The current justification for us cutting back on CO2 output is so that developing nations can continue to produce theirs until such time as they have “caught up”.
    Pacific and Indian ocean islanders, Bangladeshi river bank dwellers and low lying coastal city populations in the developing world are thus spared from restrictions.
    If we don’t cut back, however, they will drown (along with their kittens and puppies).
    As well as being total nonsense, this policy hides a very real truth for Europe. Our energy bills are already inflated by 14% (government figures) as part of the ever growing tax on emissions.
    We know that every winter, additional numbers of our old people aren’t relocated but die mainly because they (think they) can’t afford to heat their homes. Every percentage increase in the cost of energy will increase the number dying early from fuel poverty (real or imagined).
    Gordon Brown’s showboating and his desire to save a few thousand people who live on islands a foot or two above sea level or on transient river mud banks that get washed away every year, from being (sensibly, I would say) having to be relocated is actually killing people in Europe.
    We should not lose sight of this inescapable trade-off. Your nan and grandad for Gordon Brown’s ego.

  • Bill Duff

    The Scottish Parliament has passed just such an Act this year unanimously!
    And we’re well on our way to meeting it.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/reid01 PeterP

    @Bill Duff.
    The report didn’t say that it couldn’t be done; the point is the cost.
    As far as Scotland is concerned, at what cost? Inter alia, carpet bombing huge swathes of our beautiful countryside with windmills and pylons. Swinney is a numerically illiterate moron, and apparently thick to boot. I watched, with utter disbelief, his speech to the pretendy parliament in Embra. The fact remains that even if Scotland’s CO2 emmissions were cut to zero, it would make not one iota of difference to global CO2 levels. Yet, purely for the purposes of grandstanding, the SNP administration is saddling us with all these costs, both financial, and environmental.
    As for Salmond, an agreement with the Maldive Islands, sheesh! What planet is that tube on?

  • BGarvie

    The sycophantic Brown is determined to leave his name highlighted in history. Unfortunately, his pledges of money, at the expense of Britain, demonstrates his total disregard for the welfare of our country.The Government debt he has built up is unsustainable and will take our next two generations to repay through swinging taxation. Climate change Science has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt and statistical analysis has been ‘cherry picked’ by the climate taliban to engineer this whole phantom crisis. Taken as a whole, statistical analysis for the last 80 years has proved climate warming is static. Brown will be remembered as the most reckless, the most pathetically unpopular PM in the history of our country.

  • gildedtumbril

    Our Glorious Cretin Braun sincerely believes he will be remembered as The Saviour of The World. He will actually be remembered as the Great Arsehole who bankrupted Britain. Many people believe our grandchildren will pay off the debt… More like our grandchildren’s grandchildren will not even manage it. The wee scots jessie is a traitor, and must pay. Immutable Common Law has the penalty.

  • http://political-graffiti.blogspot.com Tube_Thumper

    Bum sniifer mystery solved. Brown though he was supposed to be brownosing in the Co-OP instead of COpenhagen.
    http://political-graffiti.blogspot.com/2009/12/brown-nosing-way-to-climate-change.html

  • Les

    Broon is mentally unstable and unfit to lead a cub pack. He is also viciously unpleasant to his secretaries and anyone else he regards as inferior, which is almost everyone. This assessment came from a recently departed Number 10 staffer who worked for Johnny M (good bloke) and Bliar (arrogant arsehole). He or she gave me chapter and verse on the SOLEMN PROMISE I did not speak to anyone in the press. I was brought up to keep my word and I wish I had never given it.

  • Jim

    Fuck off you Tory twats
    You have been exposed. Gideon is so shit he has to hide behind you lot

  • Will

    (Quote = Fuck off you Tory twats
    You have been exposed. Gideon is so shit he has to hide behind you lot)
    There you go, another liberal tree hugger. How come these people are incapable of discussing anmything politely and rationally?
    As far as Im concerned Jim, you are the only twat that has posted here. Why dont you go and do yourself a favour and crawl off and die? Or why cant madmen kill vile excuses for humans like yourself, rather than respectable people?

  • frankos

    Fuck off you Tory twats
    You have been exposed. Gideon is so shit he has to hide behind you lot
    ———————————–
    Mmmmm –a typical Socialist response to common sense and sensible debate.
    Suprised you didn’t mention Eton as this seems to be the vogueish insult for you braindead jealous types.

  • Tom Wise

    This cut in emissions is not beyond reasonable achievement. To start with we can heavily incentiveise a reduction in car size and unnecessary power. We now have viable “green” cars which simply just deploy all of the best of available technology like Ford’s Econetic, Volvo’s Drive, Seat Ecomotive and Volkswagen’s Blue Motion ranges which are achieving 70 miles per gallon.
    Thats before we look at the new technologies being developedby companies like Honda, Toyota, General Motors in the hybrid area.
    It’s time selfish people got out of their gas guzzlers.
    Far from having a negative effect on business these vehicles will reduce fuel costs and will additionally help address the issue of energy security which is right now impacting on business.
    All businesses have to do is ensure they finance their energy recovery investments in line with the recovery times.
    With fossil fuel prices rising as scarcity increases and with it the cost of recovery going green early could give the UK the kind of head start we had in the industrial revolution.

  • Tom Wise

    Although I am not a Labour supporter I happen to think that broadly Brown has done the right thing in addressing the down turn. People on here who are attacking the debt need to tell us what they would have done instead?
    Would they have let the banks go out of business? Yes a big debt has been run up that will take a long time to repay, BUT the debt would have been even bigger and taken even longer to repay if we had, as suggested by George Osborne, allowed “moral hazard” to apply and let then banks go down the pan.
    Two world wars cost a lot of money – but the alternative was unthinkable to all except a tiny minority of Conservatives and Fascists.
    Much as some less thinking supporters of the Tax Payer’s Alliance might like to live in the 18th century, we do not.
    There are large numbers of industries which represent a vital strategic interest to the nation, which true Conservatives (as opposed to Neo Con Classical Liberals) would understand. For this reason we (taxpayer) had the Westland Affair, for this reason we have nationalised banks and high expense and for this reason we have taken over the East Coast railway.
    Brown/Blair undoubtedly did fail in the longer term by not undoing some of the risky reforms of finance undertaken by the Conservatives in the 1980′s and 90′s, but their real mistake was to continue the the Conservative’s high risk approach.
    There is undoubtedly some truth in the comments above that few politicians actually understand the economy or banking well enough to deal, but it is also the case that our leaders, of both parties, chose to grow financial services to a size not supported by our underlying economy, at the expense of manufacturing industry and higher financial risk. This fundamental change in the composition of our economy was undertaken by the Conservative Party under Thatcher and inherited by Labour Party.

  • Steve

    Peak oil dictates that our long term CO2 emissions are going to decrease whether we like it or not. Much better to go down this path willingly rather than have it forced on us.
    As for the debt, the astute commenters above have noted that taxes will only pay it off if the GDP increases. It won’t, hence spending has to be slashed instead. Obvious to all but Brown!

  • http://profile.typepad.com/lechdharma Lech Dharma

    The entire debate about the associated costs resulting from the reduction of CO2 emissions hinges upon the actual “value” of mankind reducing its CO2 emissions. Is it really the consensus of well-educated, well-informed people in the EU that a reduction of “man-made” CO2 emissions will have a measurable effect on global climate temperatures? If the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere has a miniscule effect on planetary climate temperatures (compared to un-controllable natural causes), then there would be no “legitimate” need for carbon trading markets or CO2 emission reductions….other than for money to change hands. http://lechdharma.blogspot.com/search/label/global%20warming