Transport Emissions: The UK's Official "Shrug of the Shoulders"

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]When they decarbonization plan was published in 2021, they had a range of different scenarios.

[00:00:08]Um one of which was um coming in underneath the sixth carbon budget. So at that point although, you know, it wasn't maybe a a a central scenario, there was a belief in government that transport could really come and and pull its weight. And it's the largest sector. So if transport doesn't pull its weight, then it's affecting a lot of other parts of the economy.

[00:00:33]Um what we've seen uh since then is a kind of um pushing back of of ambition. So we've reduced our commitments on traffic demand. Um we've done a little bit of tinkering with the zero emission vehicle mandate to soften that. I was I was looking at it and thinking, well, you know, how is this changing?

[00:00:53]And it's about 15% less ambitious than than the Committee on Climate Change has recently set out it thinks transport could be. Now, I'm not saying the Committee on Climate Change is right, but they're the ones that are trying to put together kind of the future whole economy budget. So if we're that far out of kilter with them, then then there's a real issue. And the only thing that's really the the only big ticket item that's there is the zero emission vehicle mandate. Only can see that that the sixth and seventh carbon budget in the kind of teal and and yellow. Yeah.

[00:01:29]And then um we've got a policy on. So that is what they've set out in the carbon budget growth delivery plan. So that's that is um the one with the 15% overshoot. I've also done, you know, what if we threw absolutely everything at it? And I don't actually think this is a credible scenario, but like what if we turned on 2021 level COVID traffic tomorrow and we kept that? What if we accelerated the zero emission vehicle mandate for a couple of years?

[00:02:02]>> became as real as they're likely to be imminently.

[00:02:06]Yeah, I I I mean you you'd have to have a a decade-long um commitment that's well above anything that that that's in policy at the moment to get close to the the curve.

[00:02:18]I think actually when you look at the the realism behind some of the assumptions, we're probably looking more at the kind of worst-case end of things because they're assuming a big uptick in in vehicle sales. Uh that means more electric vehicles coming into the fleet quicker.

[00:02:35]Uh they're assuming that cars aren't going to get any older when the trend has been for them for people to keep them longer.

[00:02:41]Um so there's an awful lot of kind of um you know, tinkering at the margins maybe make the numbers add up. Um but but the red line, the kind of outer line, that basically overshoots I mean, how to communicate the size of it? It's all of the carbon budget for transport between 2050 and 2031. That's the scale of the overshoot.

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