Zero Carbon Harrogate

For the first time since 2010 Harrogate and Knaresborough will be represented by a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament, but will we see a change in local environmental policy and action? 

On the 19th June, Zero Carbon Harrogate hosted a Climate Hustings to find out exactly that – members of the public (as well as members of Techbuyer’s Sustainability Committee) posed the candidates questions on a number of topics. 

The candidates in question were Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrats) Paul Haslam (Independent) Andrew Jones (Conservatives) Shan Oakes (Green Party) and Conrad Whitcroft (Labour Party). 

The format was simple: each candidate would take their turn to answer a question on an environmental theme. Some questions demanded a yes or no answer while others required more exposition in which case they were given a minute each to answer. Here is what we learned: 

Everyone agrees on the importance of retrofit but differ slightly on how it can be achieved 

The UK has the least energy efficient housing stock in Europe. This means that not only are we generating a huge carbon footprint to heat our homes, but resultant high energy bills mean that many will have to choose between feeding their family and heating their homes this winter. 

When asked which policies they would champion to upscale retrofitting homes with improved energy efficiency measures (such as heat pumps, improved insulation and solar panels) our candidates fell broadly into two separate camps: 

Appropriate Green Skills training will need sizeable investment to facilitate the level of retrofit needed.  

“We can talk about building as many … green homes as we want, if we haven’t got the people to build them – it ain’t gonna happen” Conrad Whitcroft 

According to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) 350,000 people will need retraining in energy efficient construction by 2028 for the UK to meet our Net Zero target. On a local level this means looking at ways we integrate Green Skills into our educational institutions, including Harrogate College’s new £20m renewable energy training hub. 

Standards of planning need reform to ensure new builds do not require retrofit. 

“We need to make sure that the planning process and the standards of planning … are right because every new build now – we will have to retrofit it” Paul Haslam 

The aim of the retrofit scheme is to have every home meet the requirements of a C rated Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), but at the moment a lot of new builds do not meet this standard, and so are adding to the 29 million UK homes that will need to be retrofit to hit our Net Zero target. Without new builds conforming to EPC standards, the cost of retrofit will fall to the homeowner who may have to pay up to £49,000 to install heat pumps their properties. 

When it comes to Carbon Sequestration, we have options on a micro and macro level 

It is an unfortunate truth that simply reducing our emissions will not be enough to limit global warming to the necessary 1.5 degrees of post industrial increase. We will need to look at measures to remove existing Carbon from the atmosphere. Whilst there was consensus that a mix of natural and anthropogenic intervention was necessary to achieve the results needed to achieve Net Zero, the candidates chose to emphasise specific methods to address this challenge: 

 

North Yorkshire has a natural Carbon sink right on our doorstep 

“If we were to repair them (the peat bogs)… they would have the sequestration equivalent to all the trees in France and Germany” Paul Haslam 

Peat bogs are an often-overlooked form of Natural Carbon absorption but sizeable in their scope: North Yorkshire’s peatlands (27% of our national total) are estimated to store around 27 million tonnes of carbon. However damaged peatlands release sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere causing more harm than good. Previous human interventions to make peatlands more ‘productive’ have disrupted the ecosystem effectively ‘breaking’ the bogs. New proposals recommend restoring these lands using natural solutions including revegetation and ‘bunding’ the action of using logs to break up the flow of surface water. 

 

Direct Air Capture and the role of Research and Development 

“There’s work to be done on … Carbon Capture which is a mixture of national and local” Andrew Jones 

Carbon Capture Technologies have not yet been implemented in the North East of England, however we are not new to them as a nation: at the time of writing the UK has 4 Carbon Capture ‘clusters’ scattered across England and Scotland. At the time of writing, the nearest cluster in development is HyNet North West, a group of Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) facilities located across Liverpool, Manchester and Cheshire. Emerging Carbon Capture technologies such as these claim to be able to capture as much as 95% of the carbon emissions produced by industrial processes. 

 

The threats to our climate and biodiversity are undoubtedly linked to one another – and need to be addressed. 

“the two (climate and nature) are completely connected … reducing emissions leads to cleaner air – Nature in this country is utterly depleted” Shan Oakes 

Biodiversity loss is not limited to the rainforest: since 1970, species in the UK have declined by 19% on average - to the extent that now nearly 1 in 6 species nationally are threatened with extinction. At the same time all of the UK’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2002. Despite this, politicians in the UK and across Europe are reluctant to enforce policies to meet climate targets for fear of “Greenlash” instead choosing to focus on other topics.  Contrary to this, there was consensus amongst the candidates to meet this challenge head on. 

For the full video of the hustings interview please see here