THE recent spell of warm weather has been enjoyed by many but has also prompted concerns about how climate change is affecting the Island.
A recent report on the government’s attempts to tackle the climate emergency has found that several initiatives have been “relatively inefficient” in lowering carbon emissions.
The Climate Emergency Fund, established by the government to fund projects that tackle the climate crisis, allocated £23million across multiple sectors between 2022 and 2025.
Now, the latest Climate Council Report has said that while heat decarbonisation has provided “good returns” in lowering emissions, other programmes – in most cases deemed a “success” by the government – have been “relatively inefficient in leveraging reductions”.
What has the return on investment been?
A graph contained within the Climate Council Report shows an estimated breakdown assessment of the return on investment – a widely used metric of the profit generated by the investment relative to its cost – of each activity.
The graph shows a number of programmes had less of an impact on emissions, but a higher wider system and sustainability return rating, such as active travel and bus trials.
The wider system and sustainability return rating – rather than relating to how much the different policies lowered carbon emissions – is based on their broader impacts on the public and government, such as education, awareness and lessons learnt for policymaking.
Meanwhile, the low-carbon heating initiative was the most efficient in directly lowering emissions, shortly followed by EV incentives and enabling and using second generation road diesel for the government fleet.
How effective were the policies that cost the taxpayer the most?
The report goes on to state that the majority of the budget is spent on three main policies – electrical vehicle incentives, low carbon heating initiatives and subsidising renewable diesel for government fleets – with 60% of the funding spent on these areas.
They have together directly lowered the Island’s annual emissions by 0.7% relative to a 1990 baseline for targets, or 1.4% relative to 2023 emissions targets.
And the overall carbon abatement cost – the measure of the cost of an intervention that will reduce emissions by one tonne – of these three policies was £292 per tonne CO2e.
How does Jersey compare to the UK?
The main heating scheme costs around £165 per person to cut one tonne of emissions, which is around three times more expensive than in the UK and EU, according to the report.
The Climate Council calculated that if all emissions in Jersey hypothetically cost the government this ‘carbon cost’, then it would cost around £550 per year per Islander to fully decarbonise.
But in reality, it added that, over the four-year period, the policy only spent £14 per person, per year – a figure that it stated is around three times higher than it is per person for a similar UK scheme.
Similarly, while spending on transport was lower, the report found that the cost of the policies and incentives are far higher than elsewhere, at around £400-£450 per tonne CO2e – roughly 10 times the market price.
For example, the report stated that the cost of policies to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles was around £47 per Jersey resident over the four-year period, of which £42 was purchase incentives for EVs.
By comparison, the equivalent incentive in the UK – the Electric Car Grant – in place for a similar time period, cost £9.40 per person – around a fifth of what it is in Jersey.
But, the council added that as Jersey spends four times more per person on EVs and low carbon than the UK, and the subsidies are similar, the Island is cutting emissions three to five times faster than the UK per capita.
‘It’s far from a glowing review’
Responding to the report, Nigel Jones of not-for-profit organisation Jersey in Transition said: “It’s far from a glowing review. We should have made much more progress.
“The reason no big carbon emission drops are showing up is because no big efforts have been put into them. It’s been a little bit here and there. They should be talking about bigger changes.
“I don’t see it being discussed in the current election. I think that’s a great shame. The interest in the climate emergency seems to have dropped off since around the year 2019.”
How can Jersey make its climate investment more effective?
The report said: “Throughout this review, industrial stakeholders consistently highlighted the need for policy certainty and a clear, full costed approach that remains stable over time.”
There are several ways that the council believe Jersey can “move faster and more fairly” by pairing “long term signals”, such as “phaseouts, carbon budgets, and fuel duties”, it added.
For Mr Jones, he said his biggest takeaway from the report was that there needs to be a bigger push to get a far greater number of people to drive cars less and take alternative modes of transport.
It was highlighted in the report, which stated that “behaviour change is one of Jersey’s largest untapped opportunities”, and “the Island’s compact geography and short journey distances” mean small changes in travel can “yield disproportionate emission savings”.
“Overwhelmingly dependent on changes in demand”
The report also highlighted that Jersey is unable to do much to change the fuel market itself – whereas the EU and UK both use supply chains and other measures to encourage the uptake of cleaner but more expensive fuels.
It added that Jersey is “overwhelmingly dependent on changes in demand” such as people buying electric vehicles and has “no supply side-levers” to make cleaner fuels cheaper, except for issuing a lower rate of fuel duty for hydrotreated vegetable oil.
For example, the report said that the government’s heating policy only focuses on “end-use technology choice, rather than greening fuels and letting markets respond”.
Concerns raised about a just transition
Issues around fairness were also raised with policies encouraging people to buy EVs or transitioning to low carbon heating systems in their homes questioned.
“The scale of spend raises questions about a just transition, as the subsidies largely returned to higher income households, who were better placed to purchase an EV, or homeowners and have access to capital or finance to invest in low carbon-heating systems,” it said.
“Meanwhile, the lowest-income households transitioned earliest (via Andium’s impressive electrification of heat 15 years ago), while middle-income renters and tenants are largely effectively excluded from the LHCI.”
