Which way to Net Zero?: The influence of politics on the creation of Net Zero pathways and the implications for delivering a zero carbon future

Abstract

Following the collective agreement to limit global warming at the Paris Agreement and the adoption of net zero targets at the national level, country level net zero pathways have been developed to inform how economies can decarbonise. In the UK, there have been a plethora of decarbonisation pathways produced, including by the government, independent advisors, businesses and academics. The development of these pathways is primarily seen as a technical exercise and the role of politics in influencing both the development, analysis and reception of different pathways has typically been overlooked. This thesis contributes to the study of how economies reach net zero by centring the role of politics in the development and analysis of decarbonisation pathways in the UK. Based on a literature review covering the development of UK climate policy and politics over the last two decades, the analysis of climate policy and pathways, and consideration of the two fields of study central to this question: sustainable transition studies and political economy, three research questions are identified. The first research chapter asks how politics influences the creation and implementation of net zero pathways. Based on 22 interviews with political actors this section shows how two competing narratives around climate action constrain the development of climate policy. The lack of a single, dominant policy paradigm identified in the interviews also explains the inconsistent and changing approach to mitigation action observed since the net zero target was introduced. Based on the limitations of the techno-economic framing found in current narratives, the work suggests that non-techno-economic narratives are needed if climate action is to be delivered at scale. Two additional narratives are proposed: climate change as a ‘health and safety problem’ and the need for greater action to ‘leave a better future for our grandkids’. The second research chapter identifies how politics block the creation of alternative pathways. Here the energy and residual emission characteristics of 15 different UK net zero pathways are analysed. It shows how the expectation of technology innovation and low carbon energy abundance closes down the space that potential pathways can occupy. Specifically, analysis of UK government pathways, shows how different narratives are used to suggest a range of different pathways that all occupy the same high energy demand space when analysed quantitatively. Finally, this section explores how the politics of specific low carbon technologies, carbon capture technology and zero carbon fuels, block the creation of alternative pathways. The final research chapter asks how new forms of analysis can provide new insight into different net zero pathways and inform policymaking. The chapter uses a disruption based framework to reveal the disruption to consumer spending and government revenue plus spending assumed by decarbonisation pathways. By using a disruption based approach, in contrast to conventional cost-benefit based analysis, our findings begin to explain why net zero action has been slow and resistance to action remains high despite the long term net benefits of many of the actions. These findings show that reducing the cost of technology may be insufficient to drive adoption and a broader set of policy measures will be necessary to drive deployment at the required speed to meet UK decarbonisation targets. The contributions of this work are threefold. It clearly demonstrates the role that politics plays in the development of new zero pathways, breaking with the view of pathways as merely technical modelling exercises. It shows how the aggregate creation of pathways blocks the creation of alternative pathways and how the politics of particular technologies influence pathway creation. Finally, it uses the framework of disruption to show that policy actions that reduce the cost of new technologies may be insufficient, in isolation, to drive decarbonisation at the required speed. This has three implications for research that should be considered going forward: (1) A solely techno-optimistic framing of climate mitigation limits the type of policy considered legitimate; (2) The promise of current unproven technologies in net zero pathways delays the need for immediate action; (3) current methods of analysis do not capture the full range of impacts from net zero pathways and therefore limit the type of policy considered to support clean technology deployment.