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Evaluating clean electricity transition progress across UK political pledges and G7 countries
File(s)
Author(s)
Johnson, Nathan
McGirr, Alistair
Hatton, Luke
Bamisile, Olusola
Rooney, Alanna Rose
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The transition towards clean electricity is central to global decarbonisation. Countless metrics are used to assess national electricity transition efforts, which hinders understanding and comparison between nations or political party pledges. This study instead proposes three simple metrics: clean generation share, gross, and net carbon emissions intensity. It uses them to provide the first evaluation of the 2024 Clean Energy Mission (CEM) proposed by the UK's newly-elected Labour Government, which has strengthened ambition for wind and solar power capacity. We compare the CEM to previous political pledges, finding it could reduce national electricity generation emissions by 17 MtCO2 in 2030, equivalent to a two percentage point increase in the UK's 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). We also use these metrics to compare past efforts and future pledges across the G7 countries, finding that the CEM progresses the UK from having the lowest share of clean electricity in 2010 to the highest by 2030. The UK must increase its pace of clean electricity uptake and decarbonisation by a factor of 1.5–2 to meet its 2030 targets; compared to a factor 4–6 acceleration required by Germany and the US. The paper provides an innovative, simple and replicable framework for assessing the impact of political pledges or national targets for the power sector, and for comparing efforts to decarbonise electricity between countries and over time.
Date Issued
2024-09
Date Acceptance
2024-08-26
Citation
Energy Strategy Reviews, 2024, 55
URI
URL
DOI
ISSN
2211-467X
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Energy Strategy Reviews
Volume
55
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X24002190
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
101510
Date Publish Online
2024-08-31