Limiting and adapting to climate change: position statement

The issues

Climate change is the biggest threat our environment faces. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) tells us that our climate is changing and it is very likely that human activity is causing it. Over the past century, average global temperatures have risen by 0.78ºC and eleven of the warmest years on record have occurred over the last 12 years. We are already experiencing the unwelcome effects of increasing temperatures and more frequent drought and flooding on our economy and people's quality of life.

Based on the IPCC's findings, we believe that we should be aiming to limit increases in average global temperature to below 2°C. If temperatures rise above this level, we can expect severe consequences for food and water supplies, human health and ecosystems. If we do nothing, people across the globe are unlikely to be able to cope with the results of climate change and the most vulnerable countries will suffer the worst impacts.

The Stern Review provides us with a challenging, but positive message. Global emissions of greenhouse gases need to peak in the next 10-15 years and then fall rapidly to limit future climate change to manageable levels. This is possible using technologies that are already available and would cost an estimated one per cent of global GDP by 2050. This would be a small fraction of the estimated £3.82 trillion in damages from future excessive floods, droughts, storms and heat.

Whatever we do now to limit climate change in the future, we need to start adapting to those changes that are already unavoidable due to past emissions. By becoming more resilient to future weather conditions, we will reduce the impacts of climate change on our economy and our quality of life. By factoring climate change into our planning and investment decisions now, we can minimise the costs of adapting to that change. For example, the floods of summer 2007 are estimated to have cost £2.7 billion in damages. We are working to make sure that our current spending of £600 million a year on flood risk management takes climate change into account.

Our role

We are taking a leading role in limiting and preparing for the impacts of climate change.

• Our focus is to make sure that England and Wales are able to adapt to the changing climate, and particularly the increasing risks of river and coastal flooding, the growing pressures on water supplies for people and the environment and changing climate space for biodiversity.
  
• We are a prominent advisor to the UK Government.
  
• As an organisation we are in the front line of climate change and are therefore adapting our own policies, strategies and plans to make sure that we factor climate change into our own work, as well as providing reliable advice to others. We also have an extensive monitoring network that is providing evidence of climate change in our environment.
  
• We are helping drive down emissions of greenhouse gases. We regulate industrial sites responsible for approximately 40 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions. We also act as the Competent Authority for the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in England and Wales. We are working with the Government to get the Carbon Reduction Commitment - a mandatory trading scheme for large commercial and public sector sites - up and running in 2010. We have a significant role in regulating some existing and future low carbon technologies, such as biomass and carbon capture and storage (CCS).  

What we would like to see

The Climate Change Act

• We are pleased to see that the Government has passed the Climate Change Act into law.  This has established a legal framework for managing UK emissions of greenhouse gases and preparing for the impacts of climate change.
  
• We support the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and introducing statutory five-year carbon budgets. The independent Committee for Climate Change is a major step forward. But, we are concerned that, without a greater focus on compliance, the carbon budgets may still lack credibility with long-term investors and the Government departments that will have to change their policies to meet the targets.
  
• We are reassured that the Act means that the Government has to publish a Climate Change Adaptation Programme every five years. This will give the Government, its agencies and other delivery partners such as utilities, transport networks, local authorities and regional bodies more incentive to assess the risks that climate change will bring and to make sure that they are acting in an appropriate and timely way. Introducing regular reporting will be essential for monitoring progress.

Adapting to change 

• Investing in flood defence. We would like to see the Government increase its investment in flood management to £1.1billion a year by the middle of the next decade to keep pace with climate change. Defra's Foresight report, Future Flooding, supports this level of investment. Implementing the Making Space for Water strategy will be the most cost effective way of investing this money.
  
• A revitalised coastal strategy. We need a more strategic approach to managing our coastline. Organisations involved along the coast need to work together to take sensible, long-term decisions about the way we use our coasts. They will need to consider protecting them from future coastal flooding and the risk of storm surge, as well as realignment, and possibly relocating people and homes or abandoning agricultural land.
  
• Using water more efficiently. We want to see greater emphasis on managing demand for water, as well as using water more efficiently to help manage pressures on water resources. Climate change is expected to reduce the amount of water available, particularly in the South East, whilst, at the same time, we continue to use even more water.
  
• Protecting conservation and habitat. We need to manage biodiversity in different ways in the face of climate change. Whilst making sure our existing protected sites are resilient to climate change, we need to move to landscape scale approaches to managing habitats to help encourage the movement of species as the climate changes.

Limiting emissions

• The revised Climate Change Programme (2006) and the Energy Review (2007) will help to meet the Government's target of an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.
  
• We welcome the Government's commitment to establishing a strong carbon price, which will provide a financial incentive to invest in energy efficiency and low carbon technologies. In line with this, we want to see the EU Emissions Trading Scheme strengthened by setting an EU centralised cap and 100 percent auctioning.
  
• We recognise that coal will continue to be a significant source of energy for the next few decades. There needs to be greater emphasis on making coal technology more efficient, encouraging combined heat and power developments and designing and locating new plants so that CCS can be retrofitted when it become cost-effective.
  
• We support using larger amounts of renewable energy from a wider variety of sources and we will continue to remove any unnecessary regulation to make low carbon technologies available. But, we need to be convinced that the effect on the environment can be managed. For example, we have concerns that growing biomass crops could, in certain cases, have a damaging effect on the land and water quality. Working with Defra, we have produced a Biomass Environmental Assessment Tool (BEAT) to understand the impacts and benefits of biomass energy developments.
  
• We continue to have doubts about nuclear power until radioactive waste can be effectively managed in the long-term. There do not appear to be enough incentives for nuclear sites to invest in a new generation of plants.
  
• The Government has ambitious targets on renewable energy generation and harnessing the tidal power of the Severn Estuary could help to achieve them. However, these areas also include important ecological sites and protected species, and are some of the most important fishing rivers in Britain. Government must identify schemes that are environmentally-sensitive, but also help us meet renewable energy targets. The Environment Agency will assess the environmental impacts of any proposed options and provide expert advice.

Background

• By the 2080s average annual temperatures across the UK may rise between 2 and 3.5ºC, with some areas warming up by as much as 5ºC. We expect the heavy winter rain that currently happens every two years to become even more extreme, increasing by between five and 20 per cent by 2080.
  
• Current guidance from Defra suggests that sea levels could rise by up to 1m by 2100. The IPCC is currently projecting an average sea level rise of 20-60cm during this century, but this does not include current rates of ice sheet melt. We expect this will increase as scientists understand more about the Greenland ice melts.
  
• 30,000 people across Europe died in the summer heat wave of 2003. The temperatures experienced during this extreme event are predicted to be the equivalent of a cool summer by 2060.
  
• Rises in sea level, increased rainfall and storm frequency mean that London and the Thames Estuary will be at greater risk from flooding in the future once the current barrier expires. We are developing a tidal flood risk management plan for London and the Thames estuary for the next 100 years - Thames Estuary 2100.
  
• We carried out a climate change impacts study of the Wear catchment in Northumbria to assess the future impacts on buildings, infrastructure and vulnerable members of society, and identified possible measures to tackle these impacts. We will be carrying out similar studies in the future.
  
• In five years we aim to reduce carbon emissions from our own activities by 30 per cent and offset the remainder through credible schemes. Our 2000 sites and facilities are supplied by 100 per cent renewable electricity. In some cases, we have built renewable energy supplies into our new developments.
  
  
• Limiting and adapting to climate change (PDF, 193KB)