The Welsh Government is not on track to meet its emissions targets according to a new report. The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK's independent adviser on tackling climate change, has warned the Welsh Government has made insufficient progress on emissions reduction with the policy powers available with a report arguing that action should now be focused on those sectors where Welsh ministers have the greatest capacity to effect change.
The Welsh Government has set the target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but the report states that if this decarbonisation is to happen then Wales must now accelerate. The plan to reach net zero is mapped out by a series of legislated five-yearly carbon budgets and with other interim targets.
The Welsh Government has managed to achieve its first carbon budget between 2016-2020 but is "not yet on track to meet its targets for the second half of this decade and beyond”. The report states that while “some positive steps have been taken” there “are too many areas where the Welsh Government has policy responsibility but progress is slow”.
Where is the Welsh Government falling short?
The report says that the tangible progress has been insufficient “in many areas that are dependent on Welsh Government policy powers”. It says that “most notably” tree-planting rates and peatland restoration rates are far too low and development of the charging infrastructure needed to support the transition to electric vehicles is not happening quickly enough.
On the rate of new woodland creation in Wales the report said it had “been consistently very low and is currently less than a third of the Welsh Government’s target of 2,000 hectares per year, which in turn is significantly less ambitious than the CCC’s pathway”.
It does however praise them for work done in the waste sector noting that “recycling rates remain higher than in the rest of the UK, but improvements have stalled in recent years”. The report also highlighted the “positive steps” such as the recent decision to cancel all major road projects on environmental grounds” while adding that the “Welsh Government is not using its policy powers to full effect”.
The report also said: “In those sectors where policy is mostly controlled in Wales the effort is insufficient to achieve the emissions reduction required. In particular, agriculture and land use are missing an overarching decarbonisation strategy and the Welsh Government’s plan for the Second Carbon Budget (2021-2025) projects a slight increase in emissions from agriculture. Low ambition in this sector puts the later targets at risk and increases Wales’s reliance on emissions reduction in sectors with reserved policy powers, such as industry.”
What needs to happen to hit these targets?
The report said that “policy action in all sectors across the economy is now needed” including:
Addressing the funding gap in 2024 for agri-environment financial support and overcoming non-financial barriers related to woodland creation through capacity-building and skills development;
Delivering a widespread, reliable, and high-quality electric vehicle charging network and developing a full delivery plan for achieving Wales’s target of a 10% reduction in car-km per person compared to 2019 levels by 2030;
Improving recycling policies to increase the currently stalled rates in Wales to ensure future recycling targets are met, and;
Developing a detailed plan for delivering energy efficiency measures and low-carbon heat, drawing on local area energy plans, including clear deployment targets and investment costs, and enabling delivery of long-term plans to decarbonise public buildings, social housing, and fuel-poor homes.
According to a recent poll the environment is one of the few policy areas where the public have net approval of Welsh Government policy though this is very marginal. First Minister Mark Drakeford has made a series of high-profile decisions regarding the climate emergency including cancelling the M4 relief road.
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “We welcome the report and will now carefully consider its conclusions before publishing our response. On publishing our final statement for Carbon Budget One in December we highlighted we had lived within our first carbon budget and met our interim target for 2020.
“We also recognised the need to take more action ourselves and by others to meet future challenging targets. The Climate Change Committee has highlighted the further steps we are taking, such as the recent roads review, but also where we can do more.”
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