114: What Do the UK Elections Tell Us About Net Zero?
Public attitudes play a crucial role in shaping climate policy—but what can the May 2026 election results tell us about how people really feel about net zero?
In this episode, Matt and Jen reflect on the outcomes of the UK’s devolved administration and local council elections in May 2026 and explore what they might reveal about public views on sustainability and climate change. Are current approaches to net zero resonating with voters, or is there a need to rethink how climate action is framed and delivered?
To unpack these questions, they’re joined by Professor Tavis Potts, Professor of Sustainable Development and Environmental Governance at the University of Aberdeen, and Daisy Powell-Chandler, Partner and Head of Energy and Environment Practice at Public First.
Links:
Stick or twist? Why the UK's net-zero strategy is faltering and may need to change
Transcript
Daisy Powell-Chandler: When you look at the top ten issues that people say are most important for their country right now, cost of living is right up there at the top. The threat of climate change is still in the top ten. I think we've possibly seen overhype of the idea that net zero is a concept is is dying and losing popularity.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: It remains more popular than Beyonce and.
Matt Hannon: Hello and welcome to local zero, the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities podcast. And I'm Matt Hannon.
Jen Roberts: I'm Jen Roberts. And we're delighted to be returning with our first full episode since autumn 2025.
Matt Hannon: So today we will be digesting the results of the UK's May elections and discussing what they might tell us about the general public's position on tackling sustainability and climate change.
Jen Roberts: It’s early days. But we will also be considering whether the elections might teach us something about whether the UK's current approach to net zero is working, and, if not, what changes we might need to make going forward.
Matt Hannon: To answer some of these pressing questions, we will be joined by our special guests Professor Tavis Potts, who is professor of sustainable development and environmental governance at the University of Aberdeen, and also Daisy Powell Chandler, who is partner and head of energy and environment practice at Public First, a public policy research agency.
Jen Roberts: But before we get into the discussion, as always, a reminder to follow local zero on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the podcast and to let us know your feedback and suggestions. Just search for Local Zero podcast.
Matt Hannon: And wherever you listen, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode where also now on YouTube. So please search for and follow us over there.
Matt Hannon: So Jen welcome back. It's been a while since we hit the record button, but it's a real joy to be back in the saddle.
Jen Roberts: I know, isn't it great? I had to dig out my microphone and other books that I prop it up against and dust them off just to be able to talk to you. But it's been a very long time since we had the last episode out.
Matt Hannon: We've been both been very busy, but thrilled that we're back with a roster of some really exciting episodes. You and I have been kicking these around and desperate. Desperate to record them so we won't steal our own thunder and give any spoilers away just yet. But listeners, you're in for a treat. But the world has been spinning on its axis.
Matt Hannon: Other stuff has been happening. And last week as we're recording, we had the male actions and there were some pretty blockbuster results, depending on which party you were hoping kind of came away with gains, and also which parties you were hoping maybe avoided losses. So, Jen, I don't know how closely you are following proceedings. I can give a little summary to you and listeners.
Matt Hannon: Before we proceed.
Jen Roberts: Unbelievably, the listeners know. That I normally live under a rock, but this time I have been actually much more engaged in following things because it's elections. It's really, really matters. so yeah, absolutely. But I think it would be super helpful if you just give a potted summary of some of those headlines.
Matt Hannon: So a brief summary to listeners who maybe weren't following as closely as you and I, Jen. They were effectively three elections that took place. Two were for devolved administrations and their parliaments. So the Welsh Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, and we also had the English local elections. So starting at home, you and I obviously keeping a very keen eye on the Scottish elections, we saw the Scottish National Party scoop up the most seats.
Matt Hannon: They didn't get an outright majority, they got about 58 seats and they needed 65 for a majority. But whilst they lost a few seats, they are the biggest party. What I think is particularly interesting is that reform UK picked up its first seats in Scottish Parliament, and not just a handful. They picked up 17 in total, sitting alongside Labour, who lost a number of seats.
Matt Hannon: But they're also on 17. Scottish Greens picked up a number of seats for 15 and then Conservatives and Lib Dems picking up a small number after. So we have, I think, speaking to my colleagues who are real experts in this field, the Scottish electoral system is designed to do this is very different to the UK parliamentary elections in that it's really designed not to provide an outright majority.
Matt Hannon: But we do see this real blend, this rainbow of different parliamentary parties who are now going to be taking their seats in Holyrood. If we look down the way or south west, depending on where you are in Scotland to Wales, well, even bigger kind of seismic activity, parliamentary terms, political terms. We saw Labour lose the parliament. They're basically in terms of majority control.
Matt Hannon: So Welsh Labour suffered a historic defeat, dropping from 30 to 9 seats. And this was the first time. And they'd lost a national election in Wales in over 100 years. So we see played company now with the largest number of seats sitting at 43. But reform UK made even bigger gains, I think, versus Scotland or at least similar with 34 seats.
Matt Hannon: So the two big parties there, Bakery and Reform UK Labour down to nine seats. So again a similar situation emerging in. We go further south or east in terms of border England. Well a similar picture emerges. The big winners again reform UK. They want almost I think it's about 1400 council seats. And the Green Party also gained hundreds of councillors across England.
Matt Hannon: And the Liberal Democrats also did well. Big losses. Labour and the conservatives. Labour lost control of more than 30 councils and that includes losing Birmingham City Council, which had been Labour run for 14 years. So whilst we're looking across sort of three corners of mainland Britain, similar picture emerging, the political spectrum is being stretched from both right and from the left, the centre, if you will, whether that's right of centre or left of centre being hollowed out.
Matt Hannon: And those parties pulling on each end of that political spectrum are making significant gains. So I hope that gives a flavour of what happened in the elections. But what were they voting for? Now? I've tried to kind of provide a bit of a summary here by comparing reform UK's Scottish Parliamentary manifesto and also the Greens Scottish Parliamentary manifesto.
Matt Hannon: And I'm just going to give you a few dividing lines here, Jen, and get your take on these. I think the key point that reform UK and also, I might add, the Conservative Party have been pushing for is reneging and growing back strongly on any climate and net zero targets. So this is a sense and a big change, I think in the last year or two that we don't need these climate targets.
Matt Hannon: Net zero can be scrapped for want of a better word. And actually we need to focus on the here and now, not what is going to happen in the next few years. So reform UK very standing very strongly on that. But the Green Party, as you can imagine, pushing the other way. We need to go harder, faster, quicker on this.
Matt Hannon: But if we break that down into specific dividing lines across the economy and across the city, if we stick with energy for the moment. If you look at reform UK, they wanted to scrap targets to cut fossil fuel emissions. They want to make the North Sea oil and gas industry Scotland's primary energy system and government opposition to new nuclear, and simplified the planning system to fast track permissions for things like opencast coal mining and hydro.
Matt Hannon: On the other hand, for Greens, they want to do effectively the kind of opposite they want to support an immediate end to new oil and gas extraction and to oppose new fossil fuel developments across Scotland, including oil and gas exploration and power plants. So that's energy supply. That's a supply end. But on the demand end greens, as you can imagine, we're pushing much harder on cutting energy bills and making homes as energy efficient as they possibly can be.
Matt Hannon: Big part about net zero standards now in terms of jobs and the economy, you can imagine that actually that follows where there are energy supply priorities are so and gas if we wanted to turn the, you know, the dial up on that. If you're looking at the reform UK manifesto, that's where the jobs are going to come from.
Matt Hannon: That's where the tax receipts are going to come from. But the Greens looking very much towards renewable energy as, as the opportunity for jobs there and transportation gen, which I know you'll do a lot of work around transportation reform UK kind of policies here, fix potholes, abolish low emission zones. But there are also some priorities here around public transportation.
Matt Hannon: But these clued the Clyde Metro but also Glasgow airport links. So that's actually again kind of backdoor connecting into, you know, fossil fuel economy. If you're looking at the airport the other side for greens that's more about public transportation, reducing rail fares, investment in new stations and routes and also free or heavily discounted bus fares. Now the last couple I'm just going to flag here, which I think is about nature, right.
Matt Hannon: And very little that I could surmise from reform UK's manifesto on this. But the Green Party were pushing hard on things like reforestation. So 9000 hectares of new native woodland planted each year in Scotland and Nature Restoration Fund, and also protect and recover fish stocks across Scotland's waters. So I won't go any further. I hope that gives a flavour for the dividing lines and manifestos.
Matt Hannon: And actually we saw people voting for both of these right in there, you know, in big numbers. So I'll pause there. I wanted to give people, their listeners and yourself a flavour of what the manifestos meant, the outcome of the elections before we bring our guests in. But any immediate responses, general reflections about what the election results might mean, what people are actually voting for, and where it leaves us in terms of tackling climate change, embedding sustainability and and all that comes with it.
Jen Roberts: So many things to respond to their. Matt, no thanks for the summary thing. That's super helpful, particularly in sort of laying the groundwork for the discussion will have shortly with our guests. I think the a couple of things that I wanted to flag or follow up on, one being that a lot of the the dust is still settling.
Jen Roberts: So we're only days out from the election. We know what some of these results are, but we may not know the full what the full Parliament is going to be. So it's quite interesting when you click onto the government page. At the moment it has a little disclaimer saying, you know, right. Everything's. These are subject to change. So the dust is still settling.
Jen Roberts: And that's something that I wanted to just highlight to our listeners, which is why it's a really interesting time to talk about this. It's interesting that the some of the narrative you were just describing that is about, you know, you want to focus on the here and now with the environment, not further down the line. So that's the reason to kick some of these net zero targets down the road.
Jen Roberts: But the reality is that the climate is the here and now is it is here and now right now we're living with this. And though some of these energy narratives didn't fit with energy security and some of the huge changes we've seen in the last six months, and some of that wasn't really apparent at all in, in the manifestos.
Jen Roberts: And the other thing that immediately sort of springs to mind have forgotten the rest. There was so much at the beginning. There's quite a few questions there. But in terms of sustainable cities and communities, one of the things that I thought was very interesting was the reform flier that came through my door was the flier that was talking about a lot of the things that I know that matter on the day to day, everyday lives.
Jen Roberts: And that is, as you say, the potholes. It was also about having greater powers and greater independence and decision making by local governance and local authorities. And and that is something that we know is important for directing towards sustainability and resilient communities. Yeah. So I thought that was interesting seeing those where the powerful statements were coming from. And then also, as you say, some of the one of the things I was keeping an eye on is, you know, these sort of thematic, I was thinking a informal thematic analysis as every flier came through my door and seeing which parties are really going hard about energy and only thinking about energy generation, with only a
Jen Roberts: few pointers, if anything, towards decarbonizing our homes, reducing demand. And there was some discussion of compensation and so on, rather than actually solving or tackling the issue at the heart. And I thought that was quite spineless, actually. It was. I was really looking for that bold leadership. So some of my immediate thoughts. But I thought I'd just finished with something that I realized the day after, you know, the classic, waking up to see what's going on and then realizing, oh, we still haven't started counting in Scotland, the headline was something like counting about to start.
Jen Roberts: Yeah. Anyway, as the results came in, I realized that this was the first time since 2008 that my vote was reflected in the results.
Matt Hannon: Wow.
Jen Roberts: So the first time in 18 years I felt that my vote counted towards something. I understand my vote counted, particularly when we have, the regional representation in Scottish Scottish Parliament.
Matt Hannon: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's probably just just worth a note to listen because it's a, it's a strange system and I'm not going to do it justice. But in effect you get two ballot papers. One is for a constituency MSP and one is for a regional list, and your constituency MSP. You might get, if you're lucky, five options.
Matt Hannon: Right? And they're often the biggest parties, but the regional list is a much longer menu. It can be like 1520 people left. And those those all go into a big pot. And it gets quite complicated as it isn't proportional representation and purist sense. And I think there's a waiting and there's a certain Dutch name that will come to me after I start recording, but it's a very specific formula.
Matt Hannon: But the regional list, you end up seeing a much broader colourful spectrum, shall we say, and it's often those second choices that get lost in the first past the post system that end up coming to the fourth of that regional list, which I think for me, and hopefully from by the sounds of it, you, it creates that option where you do see your vote hopefully represented, or at least this time, maybe not the last 18 years of voting, Jen.
Jen Roberts: But no, no, you're right. I mean, the longer list I go is laughing because it is like an almighty scroll. But you have to unravel. It goes off the edge of the the table, your little booth that you've got to tick things on. And it's also really like it's a similar colour.
Matt Hannon: It was it was really interesting for me to to go through all the manifestos and to see that there were certain policies that just kept on coming up. Regardless of your political persuasion, in the context of what we've talked about here, Fix the Potholes was in most of them, right. And I actually think we've often said this, whether you're a driver, a pedestrian, a cyclist, it doesn't really matter.
Matt Hannon: Nobody likes potholes because for a for a driver it's going to wreck car. For a cyclist it could be life ending, right. It's just just awful. So but on the other hand, this is nothing to do. Climate energy. But you'd see most of these parties, most of the manifestos are saying ban mobile phones in the classroom now. Totally different issues, totally different policies.
Matt Hannon: I think what that does speak to me is there is some common ground, right? It might be might be tiny, it might be 1% of the kind of political landscape. But I do often think I mean, I guess I'm much more of a kind of pragmatist. And you no consensus oriented in these things. I think that's where things get done.
Matt Hannon: But I do think we need to hang on to some of these points here and work out. Now the votes have fallen and we can see that that sort of, you know, rainbow coalition sitting across across government now governments because it's not just obviously Scottish Parliament. We're seeing a local elections in England. We need to find those areas of consensus, even if there's only 1 or 2 and work from there actually is my view.
Matt Hannon: Otherwise we end up in this sort of slanging match and not much gets done.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. And I think I have been reflecting on that quite a bit the recent weeks and months, because there is an element, I mean, I don't want to go trawling too much into this, but there is an element there around the way that we put forward information out into the media. And even, you know, I do remember when I was kind of, you know, waking up to politics and I was a bit younger and understanding the, my, my vote and what to do.
Jen Roberts: I do actually remember politicians having much more of a discussion, not just pitching against each other. Whereas now any of these, you know, even the kind of the Scot cast discussions, but there's a polarization even amongst just the sort of throwing things at each other and trying to create these differences of perspectives rather than find that common ground.
Jen Roberts: And the response, whether it's the response to the Welsh election results, the response to Scottish election results have been quite different, for example, in terms of how the acknowledgment of reform voters and the fact that many, many thousands of people did vote reform and the response to even engaging with with those with those voters and engaging with those narratives that made sense to those voters.
Jen Roberts: My concern is that a position of disrespect and loggerheads is not one of progress.
Matt Hannon: Well, no. And then again, maybe one of those other areas of, you know, there weren't many. But another way of contests which you pointed out was about devolution, I think what the different parties were talking to this maybe there were many slightly different things, but this was evident from the manifesto sitting very right of centre versus a sitting left of centre.
Matt Hannon: And again, I was quite surprised to see that across the piece in so many of them. What does that mean? Why are they bringing this to the table? I think in the context of what we're all about, local zero and the Strathclyde Institute for communities creating fora for informed, constructive, respectful debate that you're referring to there and putting agency back into people's hands at a, you know, at a local or even hyper local level.
Matt Hannon: There's this huge amounts of opportunity there. I'd be really interested to hear more about why it ended up in the manifestos, what's driving that, and what their different visions of that might look like going forward. And I think just as a kind of appendix to that, that one of the green policies and there were variations on this, I might add, I think in a Lib Dems may have had something similar, but the community wealth fund.
Matt Hannon: So the Greens are calling this explicitly this. And this is about a share of some of the funds from green enterprise renewables going into some kind of national, you know, fund for redistribution. We've talked a lot about community benefit funds on this programme before. I won't bore listeners with this again, but search community benefit funds, you'll learn all about them.
Matt Hannon: But these this is about me. This is about everyone taking a slice of the benefits of these big renewable energy wind farms or transmission networks or battery storage facilities. Interesting to see that, Jen come through into manifestos now, rather than just a position piece from a trade association or representation. Elsewhere.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, true. I was I was clocking on to that as well. But I think clocking on, cutting on whatever the phrase is. But I also think there might that that could reflect a slight disconnect between where money is versus where money people, people want money spent. And so if I try and articulate that better, if people really care about potholes, what they really care about is just that their environment around them is decent, that it is maintained, that it is being improved in some way, whether that's potholes in the street, whether it's drop curbs or so that we have drains that work.
Jen Roberts: It's some of the really fundamentals. Just people want to see improvements in the very fundamentals of our day to day lives. And that is quite different to these slightly nebulous wealth funds. It's great having these. But if what we know from interactions with people on the ground is that this is what people really want, that's why it was in the manifestos.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, I felt like there we need to see a link between those sorts of ideas. Yeah. And then what this materially means on a day to day basis and people's lives. And that's so much of what people are voting for.
Matt Hannon: And maybe before we bring in the guest, just just to note, one other thing is that one of reform UK is, again, I'm using this as a kind of more sort of to illustrate more of the right wing stance, manifesto wise, about where these parties are. Not only do they want to scramble net zero subsidies, but to quote here, they want to reallocate 1 billion pounds currently spent on net zero projects and 6.5 billion pounds spent on 132 quangos or public bodies operating at arm's length from the government to fund tax cuts.
Matt Hannon: Interesting. And in terms of where that money ends up, how it ends up being spent, a bit like your point about the community wealth fund, they're actually, in a really odd way, different ways of putting money back in people's pockets, like very different ways.
Jen Roberts: Yeah.
Matt Hannon: But they are ways of doing it.
Jen Roberts: Yeah.
Matt Hannon: Anyway, maybe we'll just pause there, but it wants to do with that particular hand grenade right now, and we'll just leave that one lying around for our guests to tackle shortly,
Jen Roberts: Just poke it at somepoint in the podcast.
Matt Hannon: The pin has been pulled, little do they know. Okay. Right. How about we bring them in, see what they have to say?
Jen Roberts: Yeah, I'm really excited to hear what I guess have to say about all this.
Tavis Potts: My name is Tavis Potts. I'm a professor in environmental geography at the University of Aberdeen. I am one of the co-directors of the Just Transitions Lab and the director of the Just Systems Research Programme.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Hi, my name is Daisy Chandler I'm head of the energy, climate and Environment Practice at Public First, a global strategy consultancy. My team helps to reduce the impact of the climate crisis by changing government policy and corporate strategy.
Matt Hannon: So a very warm welcome back to tavern and Daisy, who've been guests before. It's fantastic to have you here to talk through what the May election results might mean in terms of net zero and sustainability action going forward. What did we learn? What does it all mean? So if I begin, I think with the first question, there are many I might add.
Matt Hannon: But the first is really what are your immediate reflections on the election results? Were there any particular surprises there, or was it how you expected things to shake out? Daisy, if I may, I'll begin with you if that's okay.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: I think, though, the results are clearly.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Relatively dramatic.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: In terms of the change we get at local elections, there weren't any big surprises here. The polling beforehand had shown that we could expect something of the order of these results. And I also think it's really important to reflect on the fact that though there is a lot of change in here, it doesn't really reflect a fundamental realignment in where the voters are.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: It's more of a fragmentation, but still within the traditional left right blocks that we would expect from this electorate.
Matt Hannon: Fantastic. Thank you. And, Tavis, have you got to get a similar take or totally different?
Tavis Potts: You know, it's a similar take. I honestly, I we talk more to what's happened in in Scotland. It wasn't a huge surprise the way things rolled out. We knew that it was going to be essentially a competition between the incumbent of the SNP and the the increase in reform. There were a couple of surprises in Scotland I think were quite interesting.
Tavis Potts: I think one of them is that the Greens punch through quite effectively in Scotland and for the first time from, from my recollection, is that now you've got two constituency seats that went to the Greens, one in Edinburgh and one in south Glasgow, where the Greens have traditionally performed in the, in the in the regional seats and the list seats.
Tavis Potts: But the constituencies of punch through the other, the other not particularly surprising but but important issue is that in particular in the North East where I'm based, the SNP essentially won one all of the seats apart from West Aberdeenshire, which went to the conservatives, which was a traditional conservative stronghold in Scotland. But for the seats that went, I think the case around Aberdeen, Aberdeen Central, Aberdeen South, Stephen Flynn is a particularly interesting story.
Tavis Potts: The S&P one, those seats in one seats but only, only just. He won by about a thousand votes in Aberdeen Central and has announced today being Thursday 14th of May, that he will be resigning from his Westminster seat. So I think overall the S&P didn't get a majority, but they were certainly the largest party with 58 seats. As you mentioned before, we have a rearranging of of some of the of the other seats and the other factions in the parliament.
Tavis Potts: Labour and the conservatives have essentially collapsed, I would argue, in Scotland, Labour have continued every Scottish election to lose more and more seats to come equal second with reform in the Parliament and the Greens have done very well. So still the SNP, a dominant force, which after 20 years is, is quite impressive. But you're getting a very mixed dynamic now from the traditional mix of parties in the Scottish Parliament, which is going to play out as we'll discuss.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, I think it's really interesting the timing of this discussion today because as we're speaking as reflected with Matt before, that, we don't quite know what the current or the new incoming parliament is going to be. So there's quite a lot still. So maybe no surprises, but there's still quite a bit to be played for in quite a bit of uncertainty and to still kind of plan or pan out or play out.
Jen Roberts: And so that was super helpful. Thank you. I want to ask more specifically about issues of climate. So from your following of the narrative pre and post of action, how important do you think the issues of climate action net zero and sustainability more broadly, how important were those issues during the elections and maybe how did this compare to previous years or previous election periods?
Tavis Potts: So just a few immediate thoughts on this. So I felt in Scotland, and this is probably wider that I think there's definitely a shift in positioning that the climate climate wasn't front and centre across across the board. It now, as we talk about in our Stick and Twist single twist report, which covered a lot of these issues, that it's not really the headline act, it's sharing the stage with a lot of other immediate and tangible issues for people like cost of living and energy bills and, and, and the decline of the high street.
Tavis Potts: That was a very different of course, where I'm from in, in the north east of Scotland, where where net zero and the future of the oil and gas industry really was a headline issue. It was the main issue discussed in the region. And very much I think the what we learned from this was, was the the SNP adopted a very ambiguous line on net zero.
Tavis Potts: I think traditionally it's been quite, quite aggressive and this and progressive in this place. But now I would say they've actually retreated to having it both ways. Position. They are still very strong on on achieving net zero, but they're also very strong on arguing, particularly in the North East context, about supporting the oil and gas industry and very aggressive on, say, removing, trying to remove, the, the tax, the energy profits, profits levy tax and to very much against the the licensing of future North Sea exploration.
Tavis Potts: And so very very for for North Sea feature Norse exploration and against the Labour position of the moratorium on exploration. So that played out very strongly locally in all the local debates and all the local candidates. But Scottish wide, I don't think climate was front and centre in, in a lot of the debates.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Yeah, I would completely agree with that. And I think one of the reasons that that has happened is a reflection of what's going on in the electorate right now. When you look at the top ten issues that people say are most important for their country right now, cost of living is right up there at the top. The threat of climate change is still in the top ten.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: I think we've seen overhype of the idea that net zero as a concept is is dying and losing popularity. It remains more popular than Beyonce. And I've got to say, no one's recently told me that Beyoncé is gone off the boil. But that context that Tavis has just laid out gave us a background to an election where you've seen the Greens, though they remain champions of climate, and broader environmental issues, really push more onto their populist left, backing around social issues and talk more about those.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And especially given that context around the northeast, we're seeing a really sort of moderate, pragmatic, managed transition line coming out of the more centrist parties, but particularly out of the SNP, Lib Dems and Labour. And that's partly because in general, the Scottish electorate is bang there with them. You've got about two thirds of Scots saying that it's really important for Scotland to transition to net zero, but you also see a majority saying that the oil and gas decision should be made on a case by case basis, that you should be prioritizing jobs in apprenticeships over the energy transition, where you need to make that decision.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And also talking about you've got about 62% saying that oil and gas production should only be reduced once demand has fallen. So there's an implicit understanding of ideas around energy security and some of the trade offs between energy security and a fast ramp down on emissions and a prioritization of jobs, cost of living, energy security, but also security of employment and tenure.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And so what we need to see mapped out now, and what I think the future holds in this Parliament, is how do we talk more about the transition through that lens? How do we talk about the transition as being something about securing economic livelihoods, about securing jobs, about lowering the cost of living, about increasing security, and the amazing feat that the SNP has to pull off now, which I think actually, having looked through all the numbers is totally feasible, is to map out what the pragmatic managed transition looks like.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: They've talked a good game, but how do you now we've together those alliances. You've got the greens on the left who will be pushing ambition and pace on climate action. And you've got the centrist managed transition bloc of the Liberal Democrats and Labour, where there could potentially be votes in Hollywood to help shore up that centrist position. And on the right you've got the Conservatives and Reform pushing on.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: How do we bring down the cost and potentially slow down the pace? The SNP can find a route through that, but they do, crucially have to do something on climate because the Greens are not only going to be important to giving them votes on other issues around their social agenda, but also green voters of all the other parties are the most likely to be pro-independence.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: So if the SNP want to have another independence, they need to keep green voters on board. And that's why, even though climate is now less prominent in the narratives, is going to remain important in this Parliament.
Matt Hannon: Hm. I mean, so much to say about that. I mean, just just maybe just a very brief reflection on what you've said. I think the first is that if it cast our minds back to Cop26 and the kind of heady days of it being in Glasgow, and I keep drawing a kind of contrast between now and then and how how a lot of the dialog there was, climate was the end goal, sorry, climate action, climate mitigation was the end goal.
Matt Hannon: And now I think it's much more about that's the means to the end in terms of the political positioning of this. You know, if we reduce energy demand, we can cut bills and the kind of the implicit pieces that actually climate action can get you to a desirable end and you sell the end. And then the policies kind of climate action by stealth, that feels like where we're at.
Matt Hannon: And I think kind of connecting that to what you were saying there, Daisy, about taking, for instance, in the Scottish parliamentary elections and the new parliament that Will has now been formed, SNP are going to have to look to the left, but they also have to look to the right in terms of the reform UK and how they drive through a policy agenda.
Matt Hannon: Let's just, for the sake of argument, say that they they have a strong climate agenda here and they wanted to drive these policies through, how do they do it in a way that they bring certain parties along with them because they're going to need the votes. So it might be that there are certain policies that they can bring the Greens along with them, but others that they're going to look to reform, to back them up on.
Matt Hannon: It's that I'm going to come back to Daisy initially. Is that kind of the challenge for them now? And and how you craft a kind of climate agenda out of that.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: So I have three main reflections on that. The first is that I think there is a big question around how much the SNP do
Daisy Powell-Chandler: have to bring in reform on this. As I said, there hasn't been a fundamental realignment in voter groups and there is enough votes for them on the left side of Scottish politics that the SNP can build their alliances across there without needing to bring in reform on most of these now, do they need to keep the possibility of reaching out to those voters?
Daisy Powell-Chandler: That is a political question for them that they'll be thinking about, about particular seats. And I think in the northeast, as Tavis pointed out, it's a very live question for them. But in general, on policy over the next Parliament, they're not really going to need to reflect reforms, views. Secondly, on the means to the end point, actually, when we talk to voters, the reason they think we should do action on climate is because they believe that climate change is real and that we have the ability to effect change on it.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Most people are actually on board with that, and the noises from Westminster and the media are actually a much more minority gain than you might think. However, support for climate action is contingent. They are not prepared to be impoverished by at times feel hard right now, and they also want politicians to show not only that they understand that, but they're actually doing something to change that situation.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And what's happened over the last decade is that voters increasingly feel that they have voted for governments, that they want to change things for them, and they have seemed either incompetent or uninterested in changing the essentials of what it feels like to live in Scotland and in the broader UK right now. So it's not that we need to wrap up climate action in a fake coat and sell it as a jobs programme, but I don't think it's unreasonable of voters to expect that governments can deliver climate action.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And also think about the cost of living.
Matt Hannon: Got my vote, Daisy. Tavis?
Tavis Potts: Yes. So I mean, there's a SNP have ruled out doing any business with reform in Scottish Parliament. They said that quite immediately after the election results. And but on the on he said good analogy looking left and right here. There is obviously some history of what happened with the boot house agreement and, and the previous version of the parliament where, where, where the SNP was in a coalition with the Greens.
Tavis Potts: It at many times that was working effectively a reasonably good arrangement. But it all it all came to the end. Humza Yousaf chair as the leader of the SNP and it, it all felt a bit. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of tension there about what that relationship looks like. But I think Daisy's right and pointed out that he was going to have to be made, whether it's a formal partnership or if it's more of a confidence and supply, they're going to need those pro-independence votes to get across key policy areas and whether they build bridges with the Greens again and revisit that, or whether they try and pull in.
Tavis Potts: I think they've struggled to pull in support from for Labour, all in Dems. But some of those is going to be easy to see where where this goes. The other fact I want to point out is you want to point out is that for a long time, I think the SNP have tried to ride two horses in this debate, and it's an evidence of that, is that they've really been ambiguous about what their strategy is around, particularly around energy.
Tavis Potts: This has been demonstrated by the fact that the draft energy strategy, which was proposed over three years ago, remained in a draft form for most of the life of the last Parliament. And this, this, this also reflects some of the frustration of the Just Transition Commission, in that the lack of real planning and planning with teeth for a just transition in Scotland, it's just not materialized.
Tavis Potts: And yet, at the same time, the SNP has demonstrated a real ambition around net zero. The climate change strategy was was launched literally just before, but at the end of the parliament there's the the the, the heat homes strategy, which is due to be come out in the new parliament and that'll be for some of the first business there.
Tavis Potts: So we get this kind of ambiguity about what are they trying to do. And that's why I saying they're trying to ride two horses at the same time and trying to please multiple, multiple audiences about their strategy. So I think that needs to change. It needs to be a lot more certainty in the direction that they're traveling, but it involves answering and addressing really difficult questions about the pace and the shape and the nature of the transition, particularly in places like the North East, and how we can ensure that those workforces are protected.
Tavis Potts: As we see the shift away from and gas, it's not the only issue, it's not the only transition issue, but it's a particularly salient issue for political discussion in the North East and nationally.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, I was often in the in the manifestos and the kind of the run up to really looking for commitments that are about deep and meaningful change. And I don't like using those two words because they're also quite ambiguous as to what that really means. But it means solutions that were not just a sticking plaster or seeming to appease in some way, without really digging into a bit more of the detail of what what that statement really meant.
Jen Roberts: And as reflecting before with Matt that also looking for commitments to material reduction in demand. You know, what does that actually and what that really means. And so I think I think we've heard a little bit of your response to this question. So I might aim it at Daisy to start with, and we'll see if there's anything you wanted to add.
Jen Roberts: But my question then is, you know, do we need to change tack is the approach that we've taken in the last years, let's say, has it been working? And this your response might be at a kind of UK level of Scotland, where at level you might reflect on the situation in Wales. It's up to you. So is it working or do we need to change tack and what can we learn from this, this election or for the preceding years before it and this sense now in the aftermath?
Jen Roberts: So what do you think, Daisy?
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Oh that’s a big question, isn’t it?
Jen Roberts: Chunky one, isn't it?
Daisy Powell-Chandler: It's a really chunky question. Oh.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Hey, we love a chunky question. I can I can leap into that. I think first of all, I mean, the approach is, in some senses, working. If we're talking about net zero, we're more than halfway there. That is actually an extraordinary achievement. But we do have to be realistic that most of that was achieved. Whilst we had political consensus around the need to reach net zero, and around a lot of the ways in which we were going to achieve that.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Now, in a lot of ways, politically it looks a bit more bleak. Now the political consensus is gone, but there's a lot of other things that look more positive. We are probably going to reach price parity on EVs this year. Some people say we've already reached it, and the crisis in Iran is once again proving volubly without any of us having to do any campaigning or rules change or levies, that fossil fuels are a risky bet and they are not great for business continuity.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Now, yes, a lot of Scotland's economy and a lot of Scottish jobs in key seats are tied up in the oil and gas industry. But there's also a lot of small business owners whose input prices just went up markedly because of changes in the global pricing for and gas. So there is a really positive story to tell about climate change.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: We conduct quite a lot of surveys amongst business owners, and what we find is time and again, a vast majority of business owners say that they expect they will electrify their businesses over the next five years, and in fact, they are more ambitious about it than most governments and more ambitious even than some of the time outs, for example, on decarbonization.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: So in general, I fall back on. If you can make decarbonization cheap, cool and easy. If you can hit any two of those, I think. I think hitting three is usually impossible, but on any particular tech, if you can make it cheaper, cooler or easier than the alternative, then it will go ahead and we are gradually reaching the tipping point where it will be cheaper for most technologies.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Now we still have the problem that a lot of these things are CapEx intensive, but we're also reaching a stage across quite a lot of our old fossil fuel equipment where we're going to have to replace it, and that means that we will no longer be in a situation where at the moment, for example, in the power system, gas looks like a really it looks cheaper than it actually is because we haven't replaced many gas turbines lately.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: We're about to come out of that period where we're going to have to start replacing gas turbines if we want to decouple, if we if we want more gas on the system, we will have to replace those gas power stations. And suddenly a whole load of the arguments for not decarbonizing start to fall apart, because a lot of those arguments around, well, we're bringing in renewable, renewable equipment from China.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Well, wait till you see where we get a lot of our gas turbine parts from a lot of our arguments around having to buy renewable energy CapEx upfront and how it looks more expensive up front also will start to be less powerful once we see how much gas turbines cost these days. There's a big backlog globally for them.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: So in terms of how are we doing on net zero and will we have to change tack? We we're always going to get to a point where we needed to concentrate on the economics of this, and making it clear to people that electrification makes their lives easier, healthier, cheaper. We were lucky in a sense, that we could do the first half of this based on political consensus.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Now we need to take people with us. We were always going to get to that stage, and I don't think this election fundamentally changes that arithmetic.
Matt Hannon: There's an interesting point. Just before I come to Tavis on that, there's an interesting point about which elements we don't really need to bring people along with us on the ride, because they're going to take that journey anyway. I'm sorry, so many analogies with transportation. Right. But if if EVs are cost parity, if, you know, if if gas and oil prices are continues to be so volatile and currently unaffordable, then even if you're you're not really bought into decarbonization, maybe you just flat out climate denier Ben EV is cheaper or will soon be.
Matt Hannon: Electricity is cheaper per kilometre travelled than petrol. And I think there's a really interesting question about which aspects do we need to convince people about and win hearts and minds and drive, you know, that kind of agenda and support people and others. They'll just take care of themselves.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Yeah. Heating is the is the answer. I normally get on that one. I don't worry about the EV transition anymore because EVs get made car of the year by most of the big broadsheets, by most of the motoring shows. And I was I was watching a DIY YouTuber the other day who was talking about how his electric chainsaw is now way better than his fossil fuel powered ones.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Batteries are taking over the world. We don't need to worry about that so much. Electrification of heating in the UK, I think, is going to be the big thing that we all have to worry about for the for the next 5 to 10 year block. And I spend a lot of time thinking about that, but also making sure that we bring more industrial demand onto the electricity grid so that we can bring down those unit prices and make sure that electricity is cheaper.
Matt Hannon: I now can't stop thinking about a cleaner, greener, more cost efficient way of cutting down trees and an electric chainsaw. Anyway, we'll come a whole nother episode on that, Tavis. Any thoughts?
Tavis Potts: That one through me at the end there. I think what Daisy said is bang on in terms of changing tack. Just reflections. So I think, you know, just this is the first pod for, for, for several months. And I think the impact of the current conflict in the Middle East is, has been very it's been very interesting to observe and difficult to live through what we saw as a result and are seeing as a result of of the conflict is a recognition in the public mindset that the current structure of the energy system is is unaffordable for people, and it's made it very real.
Tavis Potts: Again, the lesson has been learned and we saw the counter-attack around, well, we need to increase our own fossil fuel production to to address that. But I think there's been a very strong recognition in the public mindset, not just in the traditional back and forth between pro and anti net zero forces or pro climate forces, but a general recognition in the public mindset that actually this is really hitting as hard in the hip pocket.
Tavis Potts: Again, we need to make changes in the energy system and they're just drilling for more. All is not going to give us cheaper prices. It's not going to change bills. It's not going to give us energy security and it's not going to to address our climate concerns. So I think there's a growing realization of the costs of the current energy system and some of the work we've done that we've seen from the environment, climate, environment, climate Intelligence Unit, showing that it cost Scottish consumers and businesses 18 billion pounds.
Tavis Potts: That's before the current crisis that was worked for about 2021 to 2025. So this system is inherently unsustainable and it will need to change. And I think just mums and dads and families just realizing that, and that's been very present in the discourse around it. The other thing is that we always talk about a lot, certainly in academia, about short term nature of decision making and short term nature of policy.
Tavis Potts: And I think it's difficult. We have to stick to the plan. I think what we've got, some of the things we've got in place now are fairly new and they're starting to work. So one example of that is, is the North Sea, the North Sea strategy, the North Sea future strategy that was released in November last year. We're not even seven months down the road, and we really need to give some of these strategies a bit of time to actually develop where we're say, for example, investing hugely in apprenticeships around the net zero economy.
Tavis Potts: There are a lot of disparities between the geographies of green and brown jobs. You know, where Brown jobs are declining faster due to various pressures, long term decline in those jobs, decadal decline in the oil and gas sector. It's not a recent things been happening since 2014. Then we need to give some of these programmes. Nothing happens quickly.
Tavis Potts: You know, we need to actually give these these programmes time to spin up. And yet the pressures to abandon these programmes to change them are immense, particularly now.
Matt Hannon: Or to abandon the leaders who are driving these plans forward.
Tavis Potts: Yes.
Matt Hannon: As we record this with, you know, amongst another sort of, you know, live feed on BBC news about will the Prime Minister stay, or won't he? And that that is problematic because, you know, if you don't, if you don't have patience and there's this sort of need for instantaneous gratification and immediate results, you're never going to get to net zero, right?
Matt Hannon: You've got the whole world of trial and error there. Anyway, this is where.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: I think there is a there's a really important tension here, which is that I think in some phases of this transition, we have needed really direct central control by government to either to change regulations to, to to raise the bar on air quality regulations or reduce the acceptable amount of carbon emissions from from different facilities. But I would argue the best way to make the transition sustainable now is to move as much as we can towards a transition that is backed by market forces.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: If you can make these options the cheapest thing for families, if you can demonstrate that a heat pump will always be the most affordable way of heating a home, if you can show that an EV is also the savvy purchase as well as being the fun and innovative purchase, then you are much more likely to see the weight of consumer opinion move behind the technologies that we need.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And the numbers show that if you as a as a family, as a consumer, switch your car to an electrified option and your heating to an electrified option, that's most of what you need to do. So if we can get consumers on those two trains, and we can show to industrial consumers that it is worth spending the money on the capital expenditure to electrify their plant, then we will have gone a huge way to making this transition happen, and a lot of that will be much more safe if we see, for example, a major change at the next general election, or we see the government fall earlier than we would expect, than if it is
Daisy Powell-Chandler: all reliant on government programmes and central mandating, because at that point it will have a weight of its own, and any government coming in would have to legislate to stop something that the consumers have got behind. And politicians don't like stopping things that consumers have bought into.
Jen Roberts: Given that we have this situation, that those choices that a household might make isn't necessarily right now the easy or the smoothest or the most financially sense, you know, whatever. There are structures that need to change. And I was I was looking at the manifestos and looking at those statements to be like, where is heating, you know, going to go back to something.
Jen Roberts: Where is this here? Where is it not? It's a huge issue and it's not here. And I'd love to talk in more depth, perhaps in the future episode around skills, because often we talk about skills of these new and emerging sectors, not the the maintenance or loss of skills from kind of incumbent systems. And there's an expectation that we have everything there.
Jen Roberts: And you just the discussion so far is touched on from both of you around that, that we don't we have to curate and maintain. So switching tack is, is not something we can do overnight. But I promised I'd stay on on message. And so my question then is from what what we've just heard from you both, what would you say then are the kind of the key challenges there now facing governments at various levels?
Jen Roberts: We've been mostly talking at the at the. So we've been talking a little bit at regional level, but mostly national level. I invite you to think at the much more local level if you wish. It's up to you. But what are the key challenges facing governments over the next 4 or 5 years around climate net zero, sustainability and and perhaps an easy way of easier way of me asking that is kind of what would be your advice on how to to go, how are those governments should go forward?
Jen Roberts: And so who wants to take that first? Let's see here what's your kind of your key challenges and your advice.
Tavis Potts: Sure. I'll do a kind of an inverse pyramid. I'll go large scale to local. So yeah, I think one of the key challenges is aligning the jobs in the green economy, which is arguably booming. There are anything between 650,000 to 1 million, 950,000 green inverted commas. Great radio here. Green jobs. So how do we align the emergence green jobs, which tend to be concentrated in either the central belt of Scotland or in London with the declining jobs, what we call brown brown jobs, industrial jobs, which are not in those places, that's a real problem.
Tavis Potts: It's not the lack of jobs that just the problem in the green economy. It's where those jobs are in. The schools are required. So how do we bring those two things together? And I've been looking into it, some really scary stuff about youth unemployment at the moment and where we have levels of 1,516% of unemployment amongst 16 to 24 year olds and and a million young people in not in employment, education or training.
Tavis Potts: So I think, again, this is maybe letting some of the processes move forward and address some of this. I think jobs is key. I think the other one is is is is winning. The argument on North Sea licensing is critically important. It's not the only factor in that zero. I definitely get that. But we need to keep pushing on the fact that further future exploration of oil is not going to deliver on jobs, tax, security or climate and keeping and winning those arguments around that and showing the benefits of a net zero economy to jobs, tax, security and climate.
Tavis Potts: I think the third point is really the material benefits at the local scale. It's we have to really focus on easing the cost of living, make it easier for communities to deploy and own their own infrastructure. There are many barriers to this and some very exciting developments in Scotland, such as. The Community Wealth Act was another late parliamentary push through in the Scottish Parliament.
Tavis Potts: How that works and how that plays out, what hope that grips and makes medical differences on the ground. And the last point is, is capacity building at the local level? There is there is a lack of funding. There is a huge amount of bureaucracy. And these are these are consistently ranked as some of the biggest issues, holding back more public participation.
Tavis Potts: And we really need to address those capacity funding and bureaucratic issues at the local level to really now to take control of their net zero futures and to scale up through whatever means, whether it's through heating, whether it's through local renewable capacity, whether it's through local infrastructure, but really unlocking the power of communities to achieve those goals.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: I boringly agree with most of that. I would frame them slightly differently though. So the the national level, I've already said it, but we need to bring down electricity costs. That involves quite a lot of techie little fixes. And I would say one of the problems with the the, the first stage of this Labour government has been they've been looking for the one silver bullet to bring down electricity costs, rather than engaging with the nitty gritty that gets each one brings it down by 20 pounds, but overall it adds up.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: If we can bring down electricity costs, we can make it easier to do business and to employ people and make it a much obviously better deal to own an EV or install a heat pump. I do think heat is a massive both opportunity and challenge. I think actually Scotland has run some of the the best pilots but at pilot scale so far, and I think also potentially installing more electrified heating in Scotland has the potential to deal with some of the constraint costs that we deal with given all of the lovely wind energy up in Scotland.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: If you can pour that into people's electric heating and give them basically free energy, why wouldn't they love that? On that jobs point? I think there are it's clearly very fraught. The the politics around the North Sea, which is a sort of nexus of both the positive and negative stories around net zero jobs, just shows how vital it is.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: We get that right. And so far in some places we're actually doing an all right job. You know, compared to if you think of one of the last energy transitions we went through when we moved away from coal, and it is still talked about as this incredibly toxic political moment when we shut down coal mines and we shut down whole communities.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And we are doing better than that this time. It's a pretty low bar, but we have learned some lessons from that, but I'm not sure we think about them as the same thing, and we would benefit from thinking about those as similar problems. And that's part of what nation states exist to do, is to shift resources around and say it is better for our state that business moves in a different way, and that actually we don't subsidize particular industries or we don't support certain industries, and we move that support elsewhere, but also that we must support the people who are affected by those decisions.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And and the state should step in to do that. Well. And I think at a local level, making some of these ideas real. Yes, a lot of them will be driven by the market and by financial incentives, but it is also about making them feel good. And I think, Tavis, this point about community energy and community ownership is really important here.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: And I think we've got GBG headquartered up in Scotland, and one of the elements of their work is supposed to be rolling out the local power plan. I don't think we've seen enough of that. I think we need to see more of that. We need to see people understanding that the solar in their local area, or the local wind is bringing down the cost of running their local school or their local town hall, it's coming off their council tax bills, and that will encourage more people to get personally invested in the transition.
Matt Hannon: Thank you. Well thank you Daisy. Thank you. Plenty for us to digest, plenty for listeners to make sense of, and hopefully some of the parliamentarians who will be listening to this. And we'll be changing as as we speak, working out what the next few steps look like. So thank you both. I was really fascinating and we look forward to having you along again soon enough.
Jen Roberts: You have lots of stuff for us to talk about in the future, so thank you also for seeding future episodes.
Tavis Potts: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Daisy Powell-Chandler: Thank you very much.
Jen Roberts: Okay. Wow, that was fantastic. There is so much we got into. There was so much we didn't get into. So I really hope we get a chance to to dig into a bit more of those topics in future discussions with those two or future episodes. What do you think? Matt.
Matt Hannon: Definitely lots of food for thought and many, many, many spin off episodes, not least. Green, quiet, lean and mean chainsaws. And which I'm clearly going to start googling now and put on Christmas list. But I think just one thing to say. Tavis mentioned a report that authored, which he actually authored with you and I, Jen, titled Stick or Twist Why the UK's Net Zero Strategy Is Faltering and may Need to Change.
Matt Hannon: We will pop that right into the show notes with a URL. So folks, if they want to dig in a little bit more, the details are there.
Jen Roberts: Yeah, yeah, take a look. I think all that remains to to say then, is just, well, thanks hugely for listening to this episode of Local Zero. It's great to be back. It's great to have you back. I hope you've enjoyed being back. And if you enjoyed the podcast, why not tell a friend or a colleague? Just hit the share button?
Jen Roberts: Now to send on a link to this episode.
Matt Hannon: If you're listening via YouTube, Spotify or another platform, you can comment directly on this episode. We'd love to know your thoughts. And as ever, please leave us a review so it helps other people to find local zero.
Jen Roberts: Absolutely. And if there's anything you think we should be exploring on a future episode, we'd love to know about it. Send us an email at local or drop us a message on LinkedIn. Just search for Local Zero podcast. Otherwise, see you next time.
Matt Hannon: See you then.