9 December 2022
Using internationally recognised data and calculations, North Lincs Green Party research reveals that North Lincs Council is heading for failure in it's proposal to "seek and lead on establishing sub-regional and regional support for the decarbonisation agenda" in its Green Futures document.
Instead of leading, North Lincolnshire misses every target pathway to 'Net Zero 2050'.
Most worryingly, even the governments own pathway that does not even limit global heating to any specific temperature is missed.
Every country in the world has been allocated a remaining carbon budget - the maximum amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) it can release if it is to achieve net zero by 2050 and keep within any temperature limit. It is therefore keeping within the carbon budget that really counts, not just acheiving net zero by 2050. Researchers at the Tyndall Centre at Manchester University have broken the UK’s carbon budget down into local authority areas.
If we take the now unlikely target of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees, then for North Lincolnshire as a whole, we could release 23 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 from 2020 to 2050. At current annual emissions of 7.4 million tonnes, this means we will have spent our carbon budget for 1.5deg sometime next year (2023). We will then be a net contributor to climate catastrophe, for the remaining 27 years.
If we look at limiting global heating to the now more realistic 1.7 degrees, then we have a carbon budget of
41 Mt and at current annual emissions, we will use that budget up sometime in 2025 - in just 3 years time. Even the governments own target pathway 'Net Zero 2050', which it describes as being the 'highest possible ambition' is being missed - and this pathway is not even consistent with either 1.5 or 1.7 degree limits. The emissions pathways for North Lincolnshire are shown in the Figure below:
Fig.1 North Lincolnshire Emissions pathways to net zero 2050. 'Fair' budgets are those that are allocated between nations and local autorities in an equitable manner, allowing undeveloped nations a little more remaining emissions than developed nations.
Each of the carbon budgets comes with a percentage chance of limiting heating. With the carbon budgets allocated for limiting heating to 1.5 degrees it gives us a 33% chance of success. For 1.7degrees a 67% chance of success.
Whichever limit you use, it is clear North Lincs Council is set to fail fairly quickly in playing its part to prevent this global emergency developing to inevitability, and instead make the looming catastrophe more likely.
To reach net zero in 2050 and keep within its fair carbon budget for 1.7deg, North Lincs needs to reduce its carbon emissions by more than -14% every year. Recent figures suggest that for 2021, instead of reducing carbon emissions they increased by +13%, due in part to the national trend caused by “Covid bounce back”. Whatever the reason, it is clear the planned actions by the Council are nowhere near adequate.
A fuller version, including details of the calculations is attached as a PDF here.
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