ETI comment on the COP21 agreement

The agreement coming out of Paris this weekend provides hope and ambition for a low carbon future. To make that hope and ambition a reality will require long term commitment and collaboration from industry and governments to accelerate the development, commercialisation and integration of known but currently underdeveloped technologies.

It is vital that the UK takes a systems wide approach to its energy policy, continuing to innovate and not looking just at technologies in isolation. Modelling work including our own shows that a 35 year transition to a low carbon UK economy can be delivered affordably but decisions taken now and their impacts across the system will influence how expensive that transition will be. Frequent policy changes or deferring key decisions will simply increase long-term costs. ETI modelling highlights that delaying deployment of key technologies can be expected to double costs in the coming decades. Focus and commitment should help to turn hope and ambition into reality but it is a long journey that needs prolonged commitment and a long term view to the end goal identified over the weekend.