Why is Britain’s net-zero economy booming?

CGTN Europe interviewed Kingsmill Bond, Energy Strategist for Ember

Transcript

00:00Separate research by Imperial College London shows that the UK is set to

00:04overtake Canada and France this year to become the leading low-carbon economy in

00:10the G7. Kingsmill Bond is an energy strategist at the think tank Ember and

00:15joins us now. Hello. So the UK net zero sector growing three times faster than

00:21the overall UK economy. Why is it leaping ahead and who gets to take the credit?

00:26Well this is a global phenomenon. All over the world we're seeing people

00:32grabbing huge amounts of growth as solar and wind and EV and heat pump and

00:39electrification industries surge in growth everywhere from China to Europe

00:43to United States to the global south and the UK we're also taking part in

00:49that great race. Is the current pace of growth in the UK enough to get us to the

00:54goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 though? Well whether

01:00or not it's enough to get us to net zero is some kind of secondary to the huge

01:05amount of growth and jobs which are being created. I think it's very hard to

01:10look forward 25 years but the main point is that we need to get on with deploying

01:14these technologies and finding the solutions before our global competitors

01:19do and as we do that then new opportunities will open up but it makes

01:22it possible, makes net zero possible. What's opening the way? Is it government

01:28policy or is it investors making the push? The main thing that's opening the

01:33way is the very rapid fall in the costs of clean energy technologies in large

01:41part because of the investment made by China and the falling costs of the

01:46technologies coming out of China. People are deploying these

01:50technologies, the solar panels, the cheap electric vehicles, the cheap wind

01:55turbines, the cheap electrification technologies and they're able to do

02:01so at much lower cost than the fossil fuel alternative and that in turn drives

02:05growth. Yeah you're saying earlier it's a global phenomenon but also Imperial

02:09College research suggesting the UK is going to soon overtake Canada and France

02:15as the leading low-carbon economy in the G7. What is the UK doing differently to

02:22give it that edge in competitiveness? So well one thing the UK does have to its

02:28advantage is we've got adults in the room running the show and so the

02:34policies of Ed Miliband and this current government to drive solar and wind

02:40deployment have been very effective. That's the primary reason why one of

02:45the primary reasons why we've been able to overtake our competition but

02:49we shouldn't sit on our laurels. Don't forget that we're doing a lot of work to

02:53decarbonize the electricity system but we're not yet electrifying the economy.

02:58That's stage two and I think this is something that the government needs to

03:02focus on considerably more to the second vector of the energy transition to

03:07electrify stuff that's heat and transport and and every other aspect of

03:12the economy. All right thank you so much for your views that's Kingsmill Bond an

03:16energy strategist at the think tank EMBA.