Independent Review of Net Zero…it’s out
Review of Net Zero
I first heard Chris Skidmore talk in the The OR Society 2020 Blackett Lecture. This was at a time when we were all still in the grip of COVID, I’d just finished my MSc in Operational Research (‘OR’), the UK government had just reached 1000 OR Researchers in its GORS department- and we’d newly set up our Company. Chris talked widely for ~an hour around the additional funding required for research, the importance of OR in solving messy real-life problems, and the need to bring OR Researchers out of the shadows and into mainstream public + private problem-solving. Following the release of his Net Zero Review last week, I gave this old lecture another listen as it covered so many topics; the recording is below:
The Net Zero Review is a very long text-heavy tome of evidence-based ambition, and as I’m a rubbish reader (and left-handed) I generally start at the end (where the good stuff is) and read backwards. So here’s what I picked up from a quick skim of this 340-page / 1112-point masterpiece:
- Almost 800 (!) references to evidence-based literature and good work (32 pages worth)
- 129 actions in total, of which:
- 15 were related to energy efficiency (great!)
- 9 each for decarbonising oil and gas, and ‘local + regional’ cooperation
- six for decarbonising transport
- five for waste resources + circular economy;
- four each for data, nuclear, hydrogen and CCS.
- Only three actions for solar – but a massive 70 GW capacity ambition by 2035 which to me is a no-brainer.
- One CCS action was to develop a strategy for non-pipeline transport of captured carbon, which I though was a good idea.
- Not a single mention of e-scooters 🙁
Look forward to reading the finer details when I have more time, but first glance shows that these actions for the government will be significant.
