The UK's net-zero strategy is as unrealistic as "magic beans fertilised by unicorn's blood" and will fail to deliver the emissions reductions promised by 2030, according to Cambridge University engineering professor Julian Allwood.
The government's roadmap is based on a "fantastically religious belief", Allwood said, that fledgling, future technologies can deliver the 68 per cent cut in emissions that needs to be made in the next nine years to keep the country's COP26 pledge.
But the key pathways outlined in the government's strategy, including carbon capture and storage, emissions-free hydrogen and fuels made from biomass, are all described as ambitions for 2050 rather than firm pledges that can be achieved by 2030, he said. "What matters in this document is the word commitment," Allwood explained in a keynote at RIBA's Built Environment Summit.
"And the commitment is so small compared to the ambition that it is an absolute certainty the government has no intention of delivering on the 2030 pledge that it has made to the COP26."
New technologies not scalable at necessary speed
The 68 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 to 2030 that was promised by the UK ahead of this year's climate conference, is needed to help keep global warming below the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celcius.
But according to research conducted by Allwood and the UK Fires consortium, which unites academics from six leading universities including Cambridg...