For thirty years CAT has been at the forefront of understanding environmental issues. Decades before there was an appreciation of the environmental challenges we now face, CAT was educating and informing about their inevitability, carrying our pioneering work into sustainability issues, and formulating practical solutions which are now finding enthusiastic adopters throughout government and business around the world.
Zero Carbon Britain found its inspiration in the 1977 CAT Alternative Energy Strategy – it is a testament to the prescience and integrity of CAT that it was undertaking work in a similar vein to Zero Carbon Britain thirty years ago, and has continued to do so since.
Zero Carbon Britain clearly demonstrates how Britain can escape its current reliance on fossil fuels by adopting key policy frameworks and utilising a carefully balanced spread of renewable technologies. PIRC Development Manager Tim Helweg-Larsen and CAT Development Director Paul Allen coordinated the Zero Carbon Britain research project, leading a team of researchers from CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment, and working closely with key thinkers like Aubrey Meyer and the late David Fleming to include their groundbreaking work in the report.
With enormous input from many different people, and funding from a variety of sources, PIRC’s policy-oriented expertise complemented CAT’s strong research skills. We worked on bridging the divide between climate science, policy and technology, and on integrating, producing and publishing the final
report.
Zero Carbon Britain clearly demonstrates that in an emergency scenario, the reduction of Britain’s current fossil fuel consumption to zero within two decades is an achievable goal. Guided by Contraction and Convergence, the global framework for managing climate change, and using a electronic carbon allowance system, TEQs, to evenly distribute Britain’s carbon budget, the report describes powering down fossil fuel energy and waste, and powering up renewable energy generation. Sector by sector it explores the practical implications of this move towards a climate-safe future: outlining the transport systems we’ll be using, the homes we’ll live in and how industry, food and other sectors will operate.
Zero Carbon Britain has been published at a time when there is a need for clearly mapped out solutions.
Zero Carbon Britain has been published at a time when there is a need for clearly mapped out solutions. By presenting these in a realistic and achievable scenario, CAT and PIRC are at the cutting-edge of focused climate change policy generation, creating groundbreaking research and developing it into effective tools for change.
