Drill baby drill? Climate Policy and Renewable Transition

We have been promised a clean energy future for over two decades. Time to check the receipts. Experts drew up over 80 plans for how the UK would clean up its energy. They bet big on storing emissions underground. They barely noticed wind and solar. And they assumed we would keep using loads of energy. None of that played out. The tech that was supposed to save us never arrived. The stuff they dismissed took off. And the people whose lives would change the most were left out entirely. This talk looks at what went wrong, what went right, and what it means for the choices we are making now.

We can’t plug everything in. Planes need fuels, and the chemicals around us all come from fossil carbon. Yet to limit warming to 1.5 °C, we must reach net zero by 2050—and then go further, removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. What if that CO₂ became a resource? Electrochemical CO₂ reduction uses renewable electricity to turn waste carbon into fuels and chemicals, closing the loop. This talk explores how we can power society and make the materials we rely on—without adding to the problem.

Around the UK most local governments, as well as all kinds of other organisations, have adopted climate targets that promise big decarbonisation wins should they happen. But how actually is that process happening, and in what ways can the organisations who govern our lives make deep, radical changes? Chris has worked alongside and researched local government authorities and community groups across England and Wales and will offer some insight into how well decarbonisation is progressing, what's stopping it, and what we might be able to do to help it go quicker.