By Johnny Sharp

On 25 June this year, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published its annual progress report on the UK’s measures to drive down CO2 emissions, with the transport sector’s key role once again highlighted.

CIHT’s Climate Change Associate Andrew Crudgington has offered his thoughts on the report as well as the earlier CCC report on adaptation, both of which were discussed on 1 August in the CIHT webinar ‘Climate Change Committee Annual Progress Reports – What do they mean for Transport?’. 

The report highlights that overall, UK emissions fell by 2.5% in 2024 (including aviation and shipping), the 10th consecutive year of reductions (excluding the years of the global pandemic).

With further action to accelerate progress, aligned with the correct funding, the UK still hopes to meet its legally binding target to reach net zero by 2050.

“In terms of the next five, 10 or even 20 years, the experts on the webinar panel seemed quite confident that we're on track in the transport space,” says Crudgington. “The rollout of electric vehicles is on the kind of growth curve that we need to stick to, and while there are some issues around HGVs and the charging infrastructure, broadly the picture was quite positive.”

However, other areas brought up greater cause for concern, with emissions from aviation increasing by 9% in 2024 as demand for air travel continues to recover momentum after the Covid-affected slump.

Data and evidence

In terms of surface transport, the webinar panel also felt more needed to be done in terms of adaptation.
“The panel felt that over the course of this year, they need to improve their evidence base and their data,” Crudgington explains. “We don't really have a clear idea of what a resilient transport network looks like, what standard we should be setting, and measuring progress against.”
One issue that is not always fully appreciated is the impact on the highways network of having more electric vehicles in operation, not least because of the extra weight their batteries contribute.

“Emily See, Highways Market Director at Amey and president of LGTAG (Local Government Technical Advisors Group), presented quite an effective analogy to show that you could essentially put a polar bear on top of every traditional family car [to replicate their electric equivalent] because they’re so much heavier,” Crudgington states.

“She's in the highways maintenance business, and they have found that bus lanes used by electric vehicles are deteriorating more rapidly, and at the current rate of transition that will have an effect which, combined with climate change, will obviously knock onto resilience.” 

“Then there’s a third issue to consider,” Crudgington adds. “If we do start to make much more progress on decarbonising vehicles, the carbon built into the network from construction and maintenance will become a much bigger proportion of the carbon burden of the transport system.

“So that places extra urgency on getting low-carbon materials out there and finding ways of building with them.”

And while the industry is getting to grips with all this, the next challenge may be to get the public on board – potentially footing some of the bill for adaptation and improved resilience. 

“That’s another question posed by the Climate Change Commission: to what extent is the public prepared to pay for adaptation or prepared to accept in terms of the changes in the services they get?” questions Crudgington.

“With climate change and a greater chance of major weather events, we may have a situation where we have to shut down parts of the transport system for half a day or more due to adverse weather. That already happens in some countries. Will people in the UK accept that, or are they willing to pay X amount more for a guarantee that the network will always be available come what may?”

Access all of the CCC’s reports, or read more from CIHT - CIHT supports new report on the case for investing in transport resilience.

Image: Andrew Crudgington, Climate Change Associate, CIHT.