Disband the Climate Change Committee

Unaccountable, riddled with conflicts of interest, incompetent, opaque, defensive and hypocritical; it is time for the Climate Change Committee to be disbanded.

Introduction

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) was established under the Climate Change Act of 2008. Its purpose is to advise the UK and devolved governments on emissions targets to ensure the overall direction of travel on climate change remains focused on achieving the long-term Net Zero target by 2050, independent of political fluctuations.

In effect, the CCC has become the arbiter of emissions targets and has been put beyond the control of Parliament. Because the £multi-trillion sums involved in attempting to achieve Net Zero will impact society and the economy profoundly, it is important that the CCC is and is seen to be beyond reproach. However, as Lord Acton once said, absolute power corrupts absolutely and the CCC has not been immune to scandal and impropriety.

Inadequate Supervision

Looking through the events section of the Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee and the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee reveals that the CCC has only been invited to Parliament to account for itself on one occasion in the three years to March 2024. This was a one-off meeting of the Lords committee with outgoing Chair, Lord Deben. In that meeting Lord Deben revealed:

“The structure is remarkably good. It has been remarkably resilient through all the years since its inception because its independence is guaranteed. It gives its advice to Parliament. When Parliament passes the budgets, which we have to produce, they become law and cannot be changed without reference to the Climate Change Committee, which would have to give permission were it to be changed.”

 In effect, the CCC has become the arbiter of emissions targets and put beyond the control of Parliament.

Conflicts Of Interest

Possibly because of years of inadequate supervision, the CCC has, since its inception, had problems with conflicts of interest. They do maintain a Conflicts of Interest Policy where they define a conflict of interest as:

“A set of circumstances by which a reasonable person would consider that an individual’s ability to apply judgement or act, in the context of delivering the CCC’s statutory duties is, or could be, impaired or influenced by another interest they hold.”

The common situations they identify that may result in a conflict arising are:

• Commissioning research projects

• Public speaking and attendance at external meetings

• Committee champion role

• Provision of evidence and data

• Acceptance of new appointments.

Perhaps the most obvious conflict – of making a committee member making policy recommendations that may financially benefit themselves or organisations where they have interests – is not listed. Let us look at conflict of interest cases involving past and present members of the CCC.

Lord Deben

The first relates to former chairman Lord Deben, perhaps better known as John Selwyn Gummer. In 2013, it was revealed that CCC chairman Lord Deben had a conflict of interest, retaining his position as chairman of a company involved in windfarm installations after his appointment. He had told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that he would divest himself of all such interests if appointed.

In 2019, it was revealed that Lord Deben’s family company, Sancroft International was still taking large sums of money from businesses working in the environmental sphere. In 2023, it was revealed that those payments were not properly disclosed in the Register of Interests.

It has also been reported that Sancroft provided advice to the government of Qatar, which supplied nearly half of Britain’s natural gas imports in 2020. Lord Deben was highly critical of the Truss Government’s plan to lift the ban on fracking and he also supported a “tighter limit on [domestic] production” and “a presumption against exploration” in the North Sea, implying the UK should rely on imports instead.

Dr. Rebecca Heaton

The second conflict scandal involved Dr, Rebecca Heaton who was a CCC member from 2017 to 2021, but was forced to step down from her role on the CCC after it emerged she was also the head of climate change at bioenergy company Drax. This was embarrassing because the CCC produced a report in 2018 that was very supportive of bioenergy. Drax has received over £5bn in subsidies for burning trees.

Chris Stark

Outgoing chief executive, Chris Stark was caught by Guido Fawkes website promoting a particular brand of heat pump. It is one thing for him to be generally in favour of heat pump technology, but quite inappropriate to be promoting a particular brand. Kensa, the company in question, is not mentioned in Stark’s register of interests.

Current Members

Helpfully, the Climate Change Committee publishes its own register of interests. Bearing in mind their definition of a conflict of interest above and the case of Dr. Heaton, it is time to turn to current committee members.

Baroness Brown, who is the chair of the CCC’s adaptation sub-committee, has interests that include being employed as a non-executive director of Orsted, the Danish green energy group, has interests in twelve offshore windfarms and one onshore windfarms. It is also involved in developing three more offshore and three onshore windfarms. All will receive hundreds of millions in subsidies from UK consumers. Baroness Brown is also the chair of the board of the Carbon Trust who “partner with leading businesses, governments and financial institutions to accelerate their route to net zero” and is a non-executive director of Ceres Power which positions itself as a leader in the production of green hydrogen.  A reasonable person would probably conclude that if one directorship of a green energy company was enough to force a resignation as in the case of Dr Heaton, then the three directorships held by Baroness Brown should disqualify her from holding office at the CCC too.

Dr Ben Caldecott is the Lombard Odier Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance at Oxford University and also sits on the CCC. His interests also include being the director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group which is part of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE). The funding partners of SSEE include a roll call of the most well-funded climate activist foundations including:

• The Ashden Trust (led by the Rockefeller family)

• The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), set up by billionaire Chris Hohn

• The European Climate Foundation (ECF)

• The Growald Family Fund

• The Rothschild Foundation.

Dr Caldecott also has other appointments including being a member of the International Advisory Council for carbon credit trading exchange Climate Impact X. A reasonable person might conclude that Dr. Caldecott’s positions might be at risk if he did not dance to the tune of the funding partners and so his judgement may well be impaired.

Dr Swenja Surminski is another member of the CCC, and her interests include being the Managing Director of Climate and Sustainability at insurance giant Marsh McLennan and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute – a climate research facility at the University of London, funded by a wealthy environmentalist. Again, a reasonable person might be concerned that her significant earnings from her interests related to the climate agenda might impair her judgement.

Other members of the CCC such as Professor Piers Forster, Professor Corinne Le Quéré and Professor Nathalie Seddon hold senior academic positions in climate-related areas.

In summary, many members of the CCC seem to have a significant conflict of interest problem and reasonable people might conclude that the advice they give is at significant risk of being tainted by their own financial and social interests.

Misleading Models

Of course, there is a risk that having so many members deeply connected to the climate change gravy train may lead to group think. Sadly, there is compelling evidence that this is not just a hypothetical concern, and that groupthink has indeed taken hold, because the models that the CCC produces have been found to bear little resemblance to reality.

Their cost assumptions for offshore wind bear do not stand up to scrutiny. Their Sixth Carbon Budget assumed offshore wind prices falling from £45/MWh in 2020 to as low as £40/MWh in 2050 (in 2019 prices). They even suggested that prices as low as £23/MWh might be possible. In the event, no offshore wind contracts were awarded in the 2023 auction round, because the prices were set too low. The Government was therefore forced to increase its offer for this year’s auction to over £100/MWh in today’s money. Similarly, the CCC’s assumed cost of £78/MWh for hydrogen production has been left looking foolish by the Government’s recent offer to the industry of £241/MWh. This intrusion of reality into the CCC’s carefully crafted models cannot be simply waved away. The impact of these catastrophic errors will certainly run into the tens or perhaps even hundreds of billions of pounds. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Parliament signed off the carbon budget under false pretences.

In 2021, it was revealed that the CCC had used spurious figures in their assumptions about the cost of electric vehicles (EVs). They had assumed the cost of small electric cars would plummet to £13,000 by 2021, when in fact most cost at least £20,000 at that time. In effect, Parliament was misled because ministers based their estimates of the overall costs of Net Zero on the CCC’s assumptions. Correcting their spurious assumptions probably adds around £1.8 trillion to the cost of Net Zero.

It has also been shown that the CCC’s modelling to justify the feasibility of Net Zero included a projection that there would be a dramatic reduction in the number of calm weather days. They assumed that by 2050, there would be just seven days when wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their capacity. In 2021, there were at least 65 such days. In effect, they were relying upon climate change happening to prevent climate change. The implication of this is that much more back up power or more storage would be required to cover the shortfall on windless days, which is of course much more costly.

More recently, it was revealed that its electricity system modelling is inadequate. The CCC has only looked at a single year of weather data when it was calculating the extent to which the UK could rely upon wind and solar power to meet Net Zero. This admission of a mistake was made privately to Professor Chris Llewellyn Smith whose own report for the Royal Society considered 37 years of weather data. It was only by looking at such a long data series that they discovered we can get back-to-back cold years with low wind, which decrease generation from wind and increase demand. This means that the CCC’s models have under-estimated the amount of storage that will be required and so the cost of Net Zero.

Weasel Words to Parliament

Sadly, the groupthink and misleading models are then spread to Parliament when weasel words are used to describe the cost of renewables. Earlier this month, when giving evidence to the Energy and Net Zero Committee, another member of the CCC, Professor Keith Bell claimed:

“The heavy lifting will be done by variable renewables dependent on the weather, so solar and wind, both onshore wind and offshore wind in particular. The reason is that on a simple levelised cost of energy basis, these are the cheapest new forms of energy.”

This statement is both wrong and misleading. The upcoming AR6 renewables auction is offering offshore wind, onshore wind and solar at £102, £89 and £85/MWh (in 2024 prices), respectively, which are far higher than the current gas-fired price of ~£65/MWh, including carbon taxes. He does not explain why we would wish to displace reliable gas with this more expensive “cheap” new energy. Moreover, the “levelised cost” is not a full system cost and omits the extra costs of balancing the grid when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

Lack of Transparency

Since at least 2018, the CCC has said it is “fully committed to openness and transparency”. They went on to state:

“Our reports, and any supporting data and research, are published in full on this website. If you are unable to find the information you need, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act gives you the right to ask us for recorded information we hold on any subject that falls under our remit.”

However, many of the Climate Change Committee members spend much of their time in an echo chamber and become defensive when challenged and the commitment to openness melts away. For instance, in 2021 it was revealed that the CCC had spent two years and probably tens of thousands of pounds resisting attempts to have their modelling spreadsheets released under FOI legislation.

This month, outgoing Chief Executive, Chris Stark asked officials to “kill” the story about the CCC’s inadequate weather modelling with “technical language”. This is not the behaviour of a Chief Executive who is truly committed to openness and transparency and accountable for the mistakes of his organisation.

Hypocrisy

Of course, defensive behaviour can then lead to hypocrisy. In its sixth carbon budget, the CCC said that over 40% of emissions reductions by 2035 will come from change by consumers, for example by driving EVs or installing a heat pump. A reasonable person might expect the Chief Executive of the CCC to be leading the way on such behaviour change. After all, there are many commentators insisting that heat pumps are cheap and effective and the Government still plans to ban gas boilers by 2035.

It was therefore surprising to find last year that Chris Stark still has a gas boiler in his own home. He warned that the costs of heat pumps remained too high, and it was very difficult to install heat pumps in flats like his. It is the height of hypocrisy to force a technology upon everyone else when you are not prepared to even try it yourself.

Conclusions

The Climate Change Committee is in effect beyond the control of Parliament and to date, MPs have simply waved through recommendations in the various carbon budgets with extraordinarily little scrutiny. This lack of accountability has allowed the CCC to fill itself with people who have deep financial and social interests in the whole climate change agenda, in effect its own echo chamber.

This leads to groupthink that produces spurious models that are not properly challenged and used to mislead Parliament about the true costs of Net Zero. The financial discrepancy between their models and reality could run to trillions of pounds. Of course, this means the CCC becomes very defensive when outsiders start to challenge the narrative and despite claims of transparency, they seek to obfuscate and cover up their errors.

The CCC has not behaved appropriately and there are insufficient checks and balances to keep it on the straight and narrow. With last week’s departure of Chris Stark, the CCC is now without a permanent chair and permanent chief executive. Political parties should take this opportunity to promise in their manifestos to disband the Climate Change Committee and return control of energy and climate policy to MPs, who are accountable to their constituents.

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A version of this article has now been published by Net Zero Watch.

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