Farming News - EA Chief: Our thinking on Net Zero needs to change faster than the climate
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EA Chief: Our thinking on Net Zero needs to change faster than the climate
Speaking at an event for business leaders hosted by Chapter Zero in London today (Tuesday 28 February), Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, will outline the challenges and set out his top tips for reaching Net Zero.
He will offer advice to fellow leaders and reflect on setting a target to cut emissions by at least 45% by 2030 – without compromising the core mission of the agency to protect people and wildlife and its ability to reduce flood risk, prevent pollution and regulate effectively.
Four years into the commitment made in 2019 to reach Net Zero by 2030 he outlines how a detailed roadmap has supported the agency to reduce its direct operational carbon emissions - mostly from pumping water to reduce flood risk and pouring concrete to build flood defences - from 31,284 tonnes in 2019/20 to 20,485 tonnes in 2021/22, a cut of more than one-third.
New approaches for example using natural flood management techniques such as planting trees, restoring rivers to their natural meanders together with advanced technology like electric plant and vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells and the use of low carbon concretes as standard will all support the agency to continue to reduce emissions in the future.
Sir James will reflect on the difficulties of finding credible opportunities to offset emissions, saying:
“We are finding it a lot more difficult than we thought it would be to secure credible offsetting measures for the remainder of our carbon output: there are a lot of fake or doubtful “offset” schemes, and we only want to invest in the ones that are real.
“Our preferred approach to offsetting is for nature-based solutions and it will take time for those to have effect: however innovative we are, we can’t change the fact that trees take a long time to grow.”
Reflecting on the central question on whether it is possible to have certainty on whether the agency will meet its Net Zero target he will go onto to say:
“Personally, I think we will. But that depends on several questions to which we don’t yet know the answer: on whether we can make deeper reductions in our own carbon footprint than originally planned, which in turn depends on technology not yet mainstream, affordable or even invented; on whether we can quickly find more offsetting arrangements that make a real difference; and on whether we can secure the funding we need to invest in that new technology and those offsets.”
He will note that just seven years away from their goal:
“What matters is outcomes: driving down our emissions and locking up the rest as fast as possible. And to achieve that the most important thing is that we keep the goal in sight, that we get there as soon as we can, and that we continue to think differently about what we do and how we do it. Because if we are to tackle the climate emergency successfully – and I think we can and we will –– our thinking needs to change faster than the climate.”