YouSaid · the spoken record

Emma Pinchbeck

lines on the record
58
first
2025-07-06
most recent
2025-07-06
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “To devolve governments where they've gone further than us on their targets, for example, or done things slightly differently. And that, again, is part of what's good about the UK's climate governance is ultimately we are a expert body, the committee members are all experts in their fields, they're senior economists or technologists or academics or former politicians, and they all bring something and they're meant to support policymakers, but it is ultimately for elected parliamentarians to take a decision on what the targets look like.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Simply, no, they don't. The authority of the Climate Change Committee and the advice comes down to the expertise that underpins the number that we're suggesting to a government. But they could come up with their own number and then they would, I assume, defend it in Parliament and legislate accordingly. Equally, we've already changed the target in line with scientific changes internationally. So our first carbon budgets were set before the Paris Agreement in line with an emissions reduction target of 80% in the economy by 2050. And it was revised because the International Science and the International Target Changed. And so theoretically, a government can come in, change the targets, and we would advise them accordingly. Now, the committee would likely tell them if what they came up with was weak in terms of either their international commitment or the actual science and climate change, we would probably reflect that in our advice. But we have delivered”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And to take a view and then to set their own policy of the day accordingly. So each government is setting a carbon budget 12 years ahead for another government to deliver. And they're working within a framework where they can take various different policy options. And I think that combination of state and private sector and flexible but clear enough that people can invest is really clever governance.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “That one, there's quite a range of things that can happen in five years. So there's some flexibility within the policy, and it's not technology specific, which allows innovation to happen. And a good example of that is when we were setting the first three carbon budgets in the 2000s, the Climate Change Committee, the energy sector, no one thought that they would be delivered by offshore wind because it was a nascent new technology that no one really considered as a dominant technology in the energy system and its offshore wind that delivered a significant chunk of our emissions reduction in the carbon budget. So it allows for the private sector to surprise us. And the other thing that's smart about them is they're designed to sit outside political debate.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I'm a big fan of the UK's climate governance, and that's because what we're trying to do in the UK with the carbon budgets is take this global challenge of staying within a particular average global temperature, 1.5 degrees under the Paris Agreement or well below two, and then translate that into a domestic target or program in order to drive emissions out of national economies. There are different approaches in different nations. Most countries have gone through a system of hard targets for particular technologies, say renewables of a certain percentage, or they've gone for a decade-specific, like a 2030 target for emissions reduction. What the UK has done is take that long-term problem and then break it down into five-yearly chunks and set them ahead of time. And there are two things that are really important about that.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Quite liked Alistair's characterization of it as marking the UK government's homework, but actually with a formal advisor to government and then by extension to parliament on the level of the UK's carbon budgets and carbon budgets are a fixed amount of emissions to be released in the UK economy over a period of years and we set them about 12 years ahead of time. And if this sounds a bit technocratic, that's because it is we're a scientific expert body meant to advise government on the level of a carbon budget and for them to then take that advice or potentially not take that advice but to use it in the setting of that legislation in parliament. And it is a public sector job as well which is different from me. It's a very defined, clear mandate under the Climate Change Act though we do do other things. I can see you want to ask me more.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “It but energy sits underneath a lot of the debate on climate change and changing the energy system. So, yeah, it is true. And I suppose the other thing to know about that is. Is often this positioning at the moment of building energy infrastructure as opposed to the kind of desire to protect the natural environment. And for me, I do this work because I get out of bed in the morning thinking about those natural landscapes and nature and a very traditional conservative conservation model, I think, somewhere deep in my soul, buried beneath layers and layers of energy policy geekery and nursery. And that flame that has driven the rest of my career.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It is absolutely true, yeah. I don't know how you found that. I was doing my training contract in the financial services as a graduate and Frozen Planet, the television series, came out. And as with all of those nature documentaries, they quite often step back and think about that environment in a particular context at the end of a series. And at the end of the Frozen Planet series, it was focused on the Arctic and Antarctic, they did an episode on climate change. And I was watching it sitting on the floor of a friend's house. And I can remember feeling viscerally moved by it and deciding pretty much there and then that that's what I wanted to spend my time working on. And so I think I quit my job within weeks of that and went to work in business and environmental consultancies and into energy. And I'm sure we'll come on to.”

    2025-07-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 142. The Truth About Net Zero's Credibility (Emma Pinchbeck) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source