Universities must deploy their full armoury to target net zero

I’ve decided to go back to school.

Earlier this year, I tentatively applied to become a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Centre of Government at Harvard University. A year out of government, and having spent most of that in lockdown with three children under six, even the idea of venturing out of the UK seemed a foreign one. But I’ve always believed that education should be a lifelong endeavour, and I wasn’t easily going to pass up the chance of studying under some of the world’s leading economists on a campus I’ve dreamed of attending since I was in my teens.

I decided to study an area of policy for which I can be held directly responsible. Having signed into law the UK’s commitment to become the first major country to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, I’ve been surprised at the domino effect this has had across the globe, with over 70 per cent of countries now having also committed to net zero in some form. And with COP26, the UN Climate Conference, taking place in Glasgow in less than 100 days’ time, the world’s attention will be on what commitments can be agreed internationally if we are to stand a chance of achieving the target.  

Above all, I want to take a much broader approach to what needs to be done than current policymaking in Whitehall envisages. We can’t reduce our emissions by placing our faith in science and innovation alone; emissions reductions require a deep understanding not only of behaviour change, but of balancing the risks and trade-offs that will have to be made in economic policy. We also need new foreign policy strategies to work with Asian economies, including emerging powers such as China and India, which will continue to increase their carbon emissions well into the 2030s.

In other words, we need the full force of the academy turning its attention to how to achieve net zero if we are to achieve – and, above all, sustain – change. Historians can teach us the lessons from large systemic transformations in the past, as well as demonstrating that we will have to deal with failure and unintended consequences as yet unknowable.  

This is also where I believe our universities have a critical role to play, not just as effective discoverers and communicators of the rising dangers of global warming but also as agents of change. It isn’t enough now just to say “I told you so”, or to keep on pointing to the latest rapid ice melting or the fact that Siberia is on fire, or to shout we need to act now. As well as developing new innovations that aid emissions reductions, universities must develop the much-needed human strategies for tackling behaviour change and work out the best systems-based means for making net zero happen through their research strategies.

Some excellent university-led organisations are already emerging, such as Universities for COP26, or CambridgeZero. But universities are well placed to help lead the debate by becoming truly net zero institutions themselves, not merely by offsetting their emissions – which I fear may do more harm than good – but by switching to “fossil free” supply chains.

While at Harvard, I also want to ask whether the net zero target is the right one to have set, or whether it allows for difficult decisions to be pushed into the distant future. I don’t doubt that we need to take action, but who will be accountable for decisions taken? After all, the 29 years until 2050 is an entire epoch in political history. Six US presidential elections will have come and gone in that time, and with them the accountability of the current generation of politicians responsible for setting the targets.

We essentially get one shot at getting this right – and even if we succeed, we may be too late in reducing global emissions given the levels of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. And what then? Without wanting to take away from the essential importance of ending the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, should we not at least be preparing ourselves to use geoengineering techniques to cool the planet if needed, even as a last resort? And what about our strategies for other greenhouse gases, such as methane? It seems, at the very least, that we need a multi-faceted approach to climate change.  

Hopefully, these are areas that my research will take me. As we all know, study involves too many questions and not enough answers. But I can’t wait to begin, even if I too will be working under the blended learning circumstances that the pandemic has forced upon us.

I’ve always been a failed academic, guilt ridden at the fact I walked away to pursue a career in politics. I even took the opportunity in one of my ministerial speeches to apologise to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for failing to finish my doctorate. Perhaps now is a chance to make amends, or at the very least to demonstrate the value of lifelong learning for mid-career professionals. Perhaps it may also highlight the essential need for research of every kind to be employed in the fight against climate change. 

Chris Skidmore was universities minister between 2018-2020 and energy minister in 2019, when he signed the UK’s net zero legislation into law. He is now a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Ramani Center for Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.