Institution's response to announcement of £1 billion of aid funding to tackle climate change

In response to the announcement that £1 billion of aid funding is being made available to unleash the talent of British scientists and global innovators to tackle climate change, Dr Jenifer Baxter, Head of Engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers said:

“While we welcome this initiative from the UK Government, it is important to draw attention to how much more effort and investment is needed to reduce emissions here in the UK before we can claim to be world leaders.

A large percentage of our emissions reduction comes from a reduction in coal fired power generation, but also from reducing our domestic industry and moving it offshore, often to countries with a far lower carbon footprint than our own. Statements of our success in reducing emissions are somewhat misleading and although the success of renewables here in the UK is certainly something, we should be proud of, it addresses around 30% of electricity production, which in turn is only 20% of our energy production and use. The majority of electricity is still produced by gas, a fossil fuel using no carbon capture technologies.

The Committee on Climate Change has made it clear in many statements that we have all the technologies required to make changes to reduce emissions across society. Innovation and invention are critical to keep expanding our pathways to do more, but what we need now is urgent deployment of existing low emission technologies, here and overseas. The scale of the climate mitigation problem is hugely underrepresented, as is the step change required in both engineering and societal behaviour to get us anywhere close to meeting the Paris Agreement.

There is no question that UK engineering skills, expertise and innovation are world respected and this fund should aim to look closely at where the biggest changes in emissions reduction and adaptation can be made. Some areas where we believe the greatest gains in emissions reduction can be made are through improving energy and process efficiency, managing waste heat and cooling utilisation as well as fugitive GHG emissions, mainly through methane monitoring. This will help alleviate the impact of our offshoring emissions activities.

Beyond air conditioning there are many more industries where sustainable cooling can help reduce emissions including farming, food production and refrigerated transportation to name a few; removing emissions from fossil fuel dependent infrastructure, refrigerant leakage and food losses. The HGV sector also offers bigger gains than is often recognised. The use of alternative fuels particularly created with more systems thinking where biogas, off grid electricity and hydrogen can be used to rapidly reduce the impact of truck movements.

All of these technologies should be implemented by building overseas capacity through the support, development and empowerment of our engineering and science colleagues worldwide.”

Notes to Editors

• If you would like more information or would like to speak to Jenifer Baxter, please contact the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Press Office on 020 7304 6877 or at media@imeche.org
• The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was established in 1847 and has some of the world’s greatest engineers in its history books. It is one of the fastest growing professional engineering institutions. Headquartered in London, we have operations around the world and over 120,000 members in more than 140 countries working at the heart of the most important and dynamic industries such as the automotive, rail, aerospace, medical, power and construction industries.