The key challenge will be mobilising this additional investment. It is for this reason that the UK’s ICF places a strong emphasis on transformational change, through targeted investment in innovative projects and technologies with the potential to be scaled up and replicated. The UK also undertakes a number of activities which more indirectly enable developing country ambition by helping to attract finance for climate action. A selection of these activities is listed below. 6.6.1 Helping developing countries to attract investment The UK supported the inaugural Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA) initiative, a catalytic intervention designed to address the demand for turning countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) into finance plans with pipelines of investment-grade projects. The CFA 161 OECD (2017), Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth, OECD Publishing, Paris. Chapter 6 – Financial Assistance and Support for Technologies 231 fast tracks the translation of countries’ NDCs into finance plans to attract necessary investment by matching government, finance and capital market players from the selected countries of Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria and Vietnam with project and green finance experts from the City of London. This transaction-oriented platform brought together policy makers and private sector financiers to identify financing propositions for projects that align with NDC priorities. The dialogue between these two engaged constituencies included strengthening enabling environments for scaling up climate action and creating action plans for developing NDC financing plans. The CFA builds countries’ capacities to engage with the private sector whilst accelerating NDC financing propositions to an investable level. The NDC Partnership programme, to which the UK contributes, aims to help turn NDCs into specific strategies and measures. It raises ambition globally by enhancing cooperation and support for the successfully implementation of NDCs and related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) commitments, with the ultimate goal of reaching climate-resilient and low carbon growth. The NDC Partnership is a way for countries, intergovernmental organisations, civil society and the private sector to align their plans and actions to achieve the NDCs. It will provide guidance on identifying possible sources of finance, useful tools, and key data to those who need it whilst also providing a way for sharing lessons and experiences in responding to the challenging and complex need to implement the NDCs. Promoting International Green Finance the UK’s policy leadership in green finance, including by co-chairing the G20 Green Finance Study Group recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, helps contribute to the global growth in green finance and increase the flow of finance for low carbon, climate resilient investment. The first offshore green bond issued by an Indian entity and the first green bond issued by a Chinese bank were listed on the London Stock Exchange and $20bn of green bonds are currently listed in London, comprising 59 bonds in seven currencies. The UK Government works with the City of London Green Finance Initiative (a market development group bringing together market participants, academics and civil society) to develop international partnerships. Partnerships with China and Brazil, which involve bringing private sectors from those countries together with UK partners to share knowledge and expertise, make policy recommendations to government and engage in joint work. Further partnerships are planned with India and Mexico. 6.6.2 Removing policy distortions and accelerating the energy transition In addition to its financial support for carbon pricing initiatives and domestic carbon pricing policy, the UK is committed to ensuring that the global carbon pricing system is cemented in environmental integrity and helps increase alignment and participation while opening up policy options for countries to become more ambitious over time. In this respect, in 2016 the UK joined the 18 other signatories of the Ministerial Declaration on Carbon Markets, thus committing to work to ensure the development of high standards for the environmental integrity of the international market mechanisms of the post-2020 period. In September 2017 , the UK joined 25 other national and subnational governments to endorse a joint statement pledging to strengthen action on climate change through renewed cooperation on carbon markets. At COP23, the UK and Canada launched the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a global alliance uniting governments, businesses and organizations in taking action to accelerate clean growth and climate protection through the rapid phase-out of traditional coal power. The alliance aims to bring together over 50 national and sub-national governments as well as businesses that are committed to phasing out unabated coal. The UK has already committed to phase out 162 This is now the G20 Sustainable Finance Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

232 7th National Communication unabated coal-fired electricity as part of our domestic energy policies to reduce greenhouse gases. However, we recognise the need to accelerate the international transition from burning coal to using cleaner power sources, and are offering technical and practical help globally to accelerate this transition through our International Climate Finance support to the Clean Technology Fund, Clean Technology Fund and International CCUS programme amongst others. The UK also supports the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies which, along with the establishment of carbon markets, is essential for enabling cost-effective climate action. The UK has been a key proponent of initiatives to phase out these subsidies through the G20 and 6.7 Monitoring & Evaluation, Transparency and how the UK has applied lessons learnt from its ICF to ensure project quality The UK’s ICF benefits from an extensive monitoring and evaluation system, which makes use of 16 Key Performance Indicators to assess ICF performance against intended outcomes. Our approach to monitoring & evaluation was recognised by the UK’s Independent Commission on Aid Impact review of our ICF, which noted its role in helping multi-lateral climate funds become more effective. The UK is seeking to further strengthen this approach through programme specific monitoring and evaluation activities and ICF Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) programme at portfolio level. The MEL programme will support the generation and use of evidence and knowledge from across the ICF.
It will produce results and evidence of ICF achievements and effectiveness to support continual improvements in project selection and design, and inform the design of future funds and programmes. Our reported results are based directly on this framework, ensuring that the scrutiny the UK applies to determining in-house results is reflected in its external reporting. This includes ensuring that, where appropriate, all activities make a clear assessment of actual costs and evidence in determining climate specificity and additionality in estimating private finance mobilised through our public finance. The UK is committed to further developing the evidence base on how public finance and policy measures can attract private finance, including through helping to fund and participate in the OECD Research Collaborative for Tracking Private Finance. And the UK is committed to the avoidance of double counting, having played a key role in developing the Technical Working Group methodology used to enable OECD-CPI analysis of aggregate mobilisation of private finance. The UK also works closely with the OECD in reporting climate finance, including through the use of Rio-Markersand providing data on the core contributions made to multilaterals and UN organisations. The finance mobilised through these contributions will be a function of how these multilateral organisations use their contributions to finance climate activities. In addition the UK tracks climate finance in order to meet annual reporting requirements under Article 16 of the EU GHG Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (MMR). The ICF’s approach to monitoring & evaluation has enabled us to learn lessons from the successes and failures of ICF projects and enables us to improve our approach over time. Chapter 6 – Financial Assistance and Support for Technologies 233 6.8 Bilateral and regional contributions related to the implementation of the Financial Contributions to the Global Environment Global Environment Facility (GEF) 105.0 149.55 1. Figures indicate total contribution to the Global Environment Facility, and not just the climate-specific elements. 2. Exchange rate used is £1 = US$1.4243 . This is the average of the annual rates on 31/12 of 2014, 2015 and 2016 3. The 2013 contribution of £52.5m was not available at the time of submission for the UK’s 6th National

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic The UK is committing to research on both climate science and observations, and mitigation and adaptation actions. Selected highlights • Funding two major research programmes on a global temperature rise of 1.5°C to contribute to the body of evidence to be assessed by the IPCC in its Special Report • Publication of the second UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, setting out the priority risks and opportunities for the UK posed by climate change. • Continued work under the world-leading Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme, with the work plan for 2018-2021 now in place. This plan will help the UK meet the needs of the post-Paris science agenda. • Continued UK support for the IPCC, through government funding and through the contributions of the UK’s world-leading research community. • Major collaborative projects with international partners, such as the Climate Science for Service Partnership China and the Ganga Delta – Bay of Bengal Interactions • UK involvement in the Sentinel programme, which has included provision of the satellite platform for the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission. This was successfully launched in October 2017 , bridging the data gap between Envisat and Sentinel-5 providing measurements of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. • Significant investment in UK funding for science and £2.5 billion is expected to be invested in research, development and demonstration of low-carbon energy, transport, agriculture and waste between 2015 and 2021. • Pioneering programme of work on Greenhouse Gas Removal Technologies and their • Work with European partners on the development of MicroCarb, a satellite monitoring 2 sources and sinks across the whole earth. • The continued development of the UK DECC (Deriving Emissions linked to Climate Change) Network of tall towers. This provides top down verification of the UK’s

236 7th National Communication The UK continues to be a world leader in research into climate research and observations as well as the mitigation and adaptation strategies and technologies required to respond to the challenges posed by climate change. The UK has an extensive array of expertise within the country and continues to lead and engage in collaborative research efforts with partners across 7.3.1 Introduction to research There is an extensive body of evidence that the world’s climate is changing, that humans play a crucial role in this, and that the impacts of these changes will, on balance, have significant negative consequences for humans and the planet. The Fifth Assessment Report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that anthropogenic greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic drivers “are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Moreover, continued emissions will “increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.” Since the publication of AR5, research has continued to refine and further strengthen the conclusions of AR5. For example, the scientific community has made important advancements in the ability to attribute specific weather events to climate change, continued to make progress in the understanding of short-term climate variability and is shedding further light on the feedback mechanisms in the earth system that may interact with anthropogenic forcing. As will be demonstrated in the rest of this chapter, the UK is at the forefront of efforts to enhance our understanding of the science of climate change. We recognise the crucial importance of the IPCC in summarising and disseminating this information in support of robust climate policy. The UK will play a prominent role in supporting the 6 th Assessment Cycle, through widespread participation by UK scientists and their research and via Government support for the IPCC process through financial and technical assistance. th Assessment Report, the UK is looking forward to the forthcoming IPCC Special Reports.
In particular, there is a crucial need for improved understanding of the implications of the Paris Agreement goal to pursue efforts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Through dedicated 1.5°C research programmes, the UK is making a concerted effort to enhance the evidence base for consideration by the IPCC. The following sections will describe UK climate science priorities, the structure of research funding in the UK, outline the use of research in support of policy and then focus on examples of research under the required UNFCCC subject areas. 7.3.2 UK approach to the delivery of climate research 7.3.2.1 UK delivery of climate priorities and vision The delivery of climate science in the UK ultimately follows a clear strategic vision. The fundamental principle is that UK and international climate action must be underpinned by a robust evidence base on the science of climate change. 163

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 237 While this evidence base is both strong and wide ranging, there is a continued need to develop the evidence base in order to understand and manage the risks of climate change, including developing mitigation and adaptation strategies, and to exploit any opportunities and minimise trade-offs of mitigation and adaptation actions. The UK Government’s vision for action on climate change is summarised in the Clean Growth Strategy164 (CGS). Within the CGS there is a dedicated discussion of climate science and the fundamental support it provides for our ambitious decarbonisation agenda. This discussion also outlines our key policy focused climate science priorities. These were developed and approved by the Government Chief Scientific Advisors (CSAs) and 1. Present weather and climate risks globally and within the UK; 2. Future climate over this century under different emissions scenarios globally and within the UK, including extreme weather events; 3. Climate risks and impacts from future climate variability and change; 4. Emission pathways compatible with different levels of warming including timing and a consideration of technologies to achieve net zero emissions; 5. Impacts and opportunities of mitigation and adaptation; and 6. The case for early implications of delaying mitigation actions. Through Government funding, through the Research Councils, and in collaboration with our international partners, we work to support research into these questions and other priorities identified by the scientific community. This research of course necessitates a response, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, and we are active in pursuing research in both of these The Clean Growth Strategy details the funding the UK provides in support of the mitigation efforts required to address the challenges posed by climate change. The UK Government has significantly increased its investment in low carbon innovation. Between 2015 and 2021 we expect to invest (subject to value-for-money projects being put forward) over £2.5 billion in research, development and demonstration of low-carbon energy, transport, agriculture, and • Up to £505 million from the Energy Innovation Programme, which aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean-energy technologies and processes; • Up to £1.2 billion from the combination of UK Research Councils investments and Innovate UK – now being brought into one organisation with the creation of UK Research and Innovation. These investments include funding for the Energy Systems Catapult and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult. • Up to £246 million for the Faraday Challenge, which will ensure the UK builds on its strengths and leads the world in the design, development and manufacture of electric 164

238 7th National Communication • Up to £620 million from a range of Departments, including Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Department for Transport (DfT), Department for International Development (DfID), and Department for Environment, Food and Rural • Ofgem is making available to GB gas and electricity network companies up to £720 million of regulated expenditure for them to support smarter, more flexible, efficient, and resilient gas and electricity networks. The UK Government publishes a UK-wide Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) every five years to assess the risks for the UK from the current and predicted impacts of climate change. The first CCRA was published in 2012 by Defra, which is the department co-ordinating the UK Government’s programme of work on adaptation. Defra asked the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (ASC) to prepare an independent Evidence Report to inform the second CCRA (CCRA2), which was presented to Parliament in January 2017 CCRA2 will feed into the development of the next UK National Adaption Programme (NAP), expected in 2018. The objectives of the NAP improving the evidence base; developing adaptive capacity in key sectors; providing the conditions for adaptation by removing barriers and supporting others; and taking action to adapt. Following the systematic review of the available evidence in the CCRA2, the UK government endorsed the six key areas of climate change risk that need to be managed as a priority identified by ASC in their Evidence Report. These priorities are related to risks of flooding and coastal change, the impact of high temperatures on health and wellbeing, risks to natural capital, risks of future water shortages, impacts on the global food system, and risks arising from new and emerging pests and diseases. The CCRA Evidence Report highlights additional research priorities where further evidence is needed to gain an understanding of the threats and opportunities of climate change to the UK and inform the options to approach climate change risks effectively in the future. The following areas have been identified as priority evidence development of UK spatial modelling capability; development of a consistent set of socio-economic scenarios for the UK; robust decisions support frameworks; continued and enhanced investment in monitoring observed changes; better understanding of behaviour change; improved understanding of adaptation options available and their effectiveness in reducing risk. Defra and the ASC are working with Research Councils to address these priorities to inform future CCRAs. Future UK work on adaptation will be assisted by the successor to the UK Climate Projections 09 project, UKCP18, for which work is currently underway.
This will deliver a major upgrade to the range of UK climate projection tools designed to help decision-makers assess their risk UKCP18 will provide improvements to the existing projections which currently consist of guidance material, graphical displays of potential future climate change and datasets that users can utilise for their own purposes. Importantly, it will continue to enable a range of possible future conditions rather than just a best estimate, allowing users to make decisions according to their preferred level of resilience to future changes and make informed choices about adaptation. There have been many updates to increase the usefulness of the dataset since the original launch and UKCP09 remains a vital source for informing UK adaptation. However, recent 165

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 239 advances in climate science and the ability of supercomputers to run more and better climate simulations, combined with an evolving user requirement, mean it is now appropriate to develop 7.3.2.2 UK delivery of climate capability and excellence The UK is extremely well placed to address the research priorities associated with climate change, because of the strength of our climate science research community. There are numerous centres of climate science excellence in NERC centres, UK universities and an increasing focus on applied and policy-relevant research within the private sector. A leading flagship programme is the BEIS and Defra co-funded Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (MOHCP). This delivers world-leading scientific evidence on climate variability and change, and provides the core science evidence on which UK government can make decisions to help the UK become resilient to climate variability and change, benefit from opportunities for growth and engage in international climate negotiations. The MOHCP makes a vital contribution to the UK national climate capability by providing a central role in development of infrastructure and translating, delivering and applying climate science. It focuses on both direct policy-relevant research and improving the underlying The current iteration of the MOHCP , 2015-2018 is addressing four priority theme • Climate sensitivity, thresholds and the water cycle • Dynamics of climate variability and change • Regional climate and extremes In addition to these research themes, enhancements to infrastructure have been across a number of areas, including observational datasets and modelling architecture. Supercomputer facilities were upgraded during the current MOHCP . The 2018-2021 work plan of the MOHCP has recently been agreed and has a central focus of serving the needs of UK Government by providing policy-relevant scientific evidence and advice to support the needs of the Paris Agreement. The programme is designed around the key questions identified above. It will also continue the development of fundamental science and core UK climate science infrastructure. Climate science is a priority area for Government funding of science. More broadly, investment in the UK’s science, research and innovation base is viewed as fundamental by the Government. UK science is the most productive in the G7 and from 3.2% of global research and development (R&D) spend, the UK accounts for 16% of the most highly-cited research articles. Recent examples of the Government’s commitment to science funding • Increasing research and development investment by £4.7 billion over the period 2017- 18 to 2020-21. This equates to an extra £2 billion per year by 2020-21 and is an increase of around 20% to total government R&D spending, more than any increase in • This R&D investment funding is additional to the protection of science resource funding that was announced at the spending review in autumn 2015, where science resource funding was protected in real terms, at £4.7 billion per year, until 2020/21. 240 7th National Communication • £300 million over the next four years to increase the number of PhDs and fellowship programmes, to develop research talent and attract the brightest minds to the UK. • Investing £1.5 billion over the period 2016/17 to 2020/21 in the Global Challenges Research Fund for UK science to support research on global issues affecting developing countries. The Newton Fund will also be doubled to £150 million a year by • £100 million investment to attract highly skilled researchers to the UK through its new Ernest Rutherford Fund. The Rutherford Fund will provide fellowships for early- career and senior researchers, from the developed world and from emerging research powerhouses such as India, China, Brazil and Mexico, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a world-leader in science and research. 7.3.2.4 Government departments and their agencies The following section provides background information on those departments and agencies who are engaged with the climate research agenda. BEIS is the lead government department covering mitigation policy and, as highlighted above, plays a central role in funding research into low-carbon technologies. BEIS also leads the UK Government input into the IPCC and provides funding for research that contributes to the climate science evidence base feeding into the IPCC. Defra is responsible for several policy areas that are associated with GHG emissions agriculture, forestry, land management, waste, and fluorinated gases. Defra works with BEIS to ensure specific government policies on low-carbon energy and decarbonisation measures are sustainable and aligned with Defra’s objectives on the environment, food production and rural economy including ensuring opportunities for maximising co-benefits such as cleaner air. Defra is also responsible for the adaptation agenda described above. DFID has an active interest in the funding of climate science as part of its work leading UK efforts to end extreme poverty and tackle the great global challenges of the 21 details on DFID funding of research, which spans both mitigation and adaptation, can be found in the international cooperation section below. DfT (and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles) is also heavily involved in low-carbon policy in the UK, given the significant contribution that transport emissions make to total UK emissions and the challenges in decarbonising this sector. The UK’s ambition is for a modern, low-carbon, low- pollution transport system with zero emissions in 2050.
In support of this, a range of research projects are being undertaken, including funding for innovative technologies such as lighter vehicles, longer-lasting car batteries, charging and grid support, zero-emissions Heavy Goods A number of agencies and public bodies exist to advise and implement the UK environmental strategy, including climate • The Environment Agency (EA) protects and improves the environment and promotes sustainable development in England. It plays a lead role in managing flood risk and minimising the impact of flooding. • Natural England (NE) is the government’s advisor on the natural environment. NE aims to increase the capacity of the natural environment to cope with climate change, and support opportunities to mitigate against the causes of climate change. NE has developed the evidence base on carbon sequestration and storage by semi-natural habitats, including peatlands. Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 241 • The Forestry Commission is responsible for protecting and expanding England and Scotland’s woods and forests. Through its research agency, Forest Research, it supports research on the role of woodlands in climate change mitigation and adaptation, both in rural and urban areas. • The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture (Cefas) commissions and carries out a range of research activities connected to the aquatic environment, including the impacts of climate change and the UK’s ability to adapt to it. • Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. It drives productivity and growth by supporting businesses to realise the potential of new technologies, develop ideas and make them a commercial success. It is heavily involved in the funding of research into The UK Space Agency consolidates funding for space programmes from across government, the Research Councils and other public bodies. The UK Space Agency is responsible for civil space policy; working with the scientific community, policy makers and business; and strengthening the UK’s relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA), the EU and other international agencies including CEOS. Climate change science and adaption is a core priority in terms of fundamental science, space missions, data management, processing and analytics and the generation of climate services. Public Health England (PHE) is an agency of the Department of Health. Its mission is to protect and improve the nation’s health and to address inequalities. PHE has been working steadily on the scientific basis for action on sustainability. PHE scientists were actively engaged in the development of the second UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, partner with a number of institutions researching the impacts climate change may have on health (for example through the Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and Health) and are evaluating evidence of a number of interventions designed to mitigate the ill-effects of a changing climate, so that future policies are informed by the best available evidence 7.3.2.5 Devolved Administrations The Scottish Government is a significant funder of research relating to the environment, fisheries, and agriculture. A major driver for this policy-related research is adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change on Scotland’s agriculture, rural communities and environment. In addition, a Centre of Expertise on Climate Change established by Scottish Government funding continues to provide an interface between policy and researchers, enhance the levels of knowledge exchange, and provide advice on both mitigation and adaption on policy areas ranging across energy, transport, housing and health, agriculture and the environment. The Welsh Government is engaged as an active partner in a number of the climate science programmes identified in this chapter. These programmes feed in to the Welsh Government’s climate change policy and provide a robust evidence base to support action in this area. In addition to the UK research programmes, the Welsh Government supports a range of additional climate change research and funds Natural Resources Wales to act as its principal adviser on 7.3.2.6 Coordination mechanisms In addition to the underpinning climate science vision discussed above, there are specific coordination mechanisms and functions that help to guide UK climate science. BEIS hosts the Government Office for Science which ensures that all levels of government receive the best scientific advice possible and create policies that are supported by strong evidence. The Government Office for Science runs the Foresight Programme which helps

242 7th National Communication the UK government to think systematically about the future, based on the latest science and evidence. One current foresight project concerned with climate change is the Future of the Sea, which is considering the role that science and technology can play in understanding and providing solutions to the long-term issues affecting the sea, including climate change. The Research & Innovation for our Dynamic Environment (RIDE) Forum has evolved from the Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership, which provides coordination and alignment of research activities in environmental change. It is a forum of 19 public sector member organisations who hold a stake in environmental change research, innovation, training and capabilities, whether that be as funders, providers and/or users. The RIDE Forum’s unique contribution lies in its breadth. It brings together the complementary resources of the many different disciplines and publically-funded sector stakeholders needed to increase our understanding of the natural, social, economic and technological systems interacting with environmental change and the translation of that knowledge into innovating policy and practice. It focuses on the UK perspective and challenges, whilst necessarily placing that in the Marine science provides vital knowledge and information to enable key decisions on the management of the seas and oceans. The Marine Science Co-ordination Committee (MSCC) provides the forum to deliver the UK Marine Science Strategy (2010 to 2025) and to improve UK marine science co-ordination. The committee involves the major marine science funding Departments, the Devolved Administrations, the key marine science providers and independent members. One of the priority areas is responding to climate change and its interaction with the For UK Government-funded research into low-carbon technology, the Energy Innovation Board has been formed to replace and build on the work of the Low-Carbon Innovation Coordination Group to provide an even greater opportunity to collaborate at a strategic level.
This new Board was Chaired by Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s former Chief Scientific Advisor, and is currently Chaired by Professor Chris Whitty and attended by senior civil servants across BEIS, Innovate UK, Research Councils, DCLG, Defra, DFID, DfT, Ofgem and with HMT as observers. The UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS), whose members comprise UK government departments and research funders, work together to add value to research interests focused on development in low- and middle-income countries. UKCDS acts as a coordinator and facilitator connecting experts in academia and NGOs on climate change 7.3.2.7 Research Councils and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) The primary role of the Research Councils is to fund research, training and knowledge exchange. Each year a total of around £3 billion is invested in research conducted at UK universities, Research Council institutes, and in securing access to international facilities for UK researchers. Together, the Research Councils cover the full spectrum of academic disciplines from the medical and biological sciences to astronomy, physics, chemistry and engineering, social sciences, economics, and the arts and humanities. The Research Councils work in partnership with each other and with policy and business partners to tackle global challenges, such as environmental change, energy and food security. The research councils • Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 243 • Medical Research Council (MRC) • Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) • Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Each research council has a particular strategic perspective on funding of climate science. NERC is the UK’s leading public funder of environmental science. NERC invests around £290 million each year in cutting-edge research, postgraduate training and innovation in universities and research centres, alongside £34 million capital in world-class laboratories, plus additional capital in large research infrastructure. Climate change is a fundamental issue for NERC- supported research which aims to address the great challenges facing benefiting from natural resources, resilience to environmental hazards and managing environmental change. In addition, NERC-funded discovery science drives fundamental advances in knowledge across the breadth of the NERC science remit. Long-term science funding sustains UK national capability that delivers scientific understanding of environmental processes over large time and spatial scales, supports world-leading environmental science and innovation, and meets national needs. NERC plays a leading role in the development of risk-based predictions of the future state of the climate – on regional and local scales, spanning days to decades. NERC also develops improved predictive capability working with national and international partners, notably NERC research centres all have programmes delivering climate change science, some of which are highlighted in this chapter. The centres are Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, British Geological Survey, British Antarctic Survey, National Oceanographic Centre, National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the National Centre for Earth Observation. EPSRC funds a broad range of research and training aimed at tackling climate change. EPSRC leads the Research Councils Energy Programme, whose key drivers are to ensure secure and affordable energy supplies, whilst reducing carbon dioxide emissions. EPSRC’s specific focus is on engineering and scientific research into new low-carbon energy technologies, both for energy generation and for managing and reducing demand for energy in buildings, industries and transport. A key element is the provision of training to ensure sufficient researcher capacity to underpin future energy options. Research areas specific to the engineering and physical sciences include aspects of sustainable power generation and supply, conventional generation including carbon abatement technologies, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. EPSRC supports research in engineering and physical science that advances the utility of models (i.e. developing better mathematical sciences for modelling and reducing uncertainties) and improvements to the input into models (i.e. better sensors and data acquisition). Research on mitigation and adaptation strategies for energy and infrastructure is also funded. For example, research to increase the contribution of bioenergy to the UK and how to build resilience into national infrastructure and transform cities to minimise the impacts of climate ESRC views understanding the social science of climate change as an important area for its funding. ESRC recognises the need to both lead specific areas of social science relevant to climate change, for example related to economics, and also to contribute to interdisciplinary research to understand issues such as decision-making, human behaviour and governance in the context of the wider research agenda. MRC has over-arching strategic priorities related to climate science, including exploring the relationship between our environment and human health and wellbeing, and the impacts on

244 7th National Communication human disease. The MRC encourages partnership working in the international community to accelerate progress in global health research, including addressing the challenges which arise BBSRC supports research relevant to environmental change, including the responses of biological systems to climate and other environmental factors and their possible adaptations to them. Bioscience is identifying options for reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions, and developing renewable biological sources of energy, materials and chemicals that will reduce dependency on petrochemicals and help the UK become a low-carbon economy. STFC works with partners, such as NERC, the Met Office, Defra, BEIS and industry, to enable climate change research. STFC’s main research areas are astronomy, particle physics and nuclear physics, but it hosts and provides access to world-leading facilities, technologies and expertise serving the whole of the UK research base. Examples of this include operating the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis 166, managing the IPCC Data Distribution Centre167, providing data services for the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the European Space Agency, leading the development of data standards and data service standards in the context of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), and hosting the JASMIN data storage and analysis platform.
Following the Nurse review of Research Councils in 2015, the UK Government is implementing the headline recommendation of the establishment of a single research and innovation funding body – UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). It will incorporate the seven existing Research Councils, Innovate UK and the research funding roles of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. UKRI will catalyse a more strategic, agile and interdisciplinary approach to addressing global challenges and play a key role in helping the UK strengthen its competitiveness as part of its Industrial Strategy. 7.3.3 International cooperation This section describes the extensive work that the UK undertakes in climate-related research with partners across the globe. It presents a broad look at international collaboration before discussing examples of UK support for adaptation and mitigation projects. Finally there is a discussion of potential barriers to exchange of relevant data. 7.3.3.1 International Programmes and Collaboration The UK is an enthusiastic participant in a wide range of international programmes related to climate science and recognises the value of collaborations that enable scientists from differing countries and regions to work in partnership and to leverage UK expertise in support of significant global challenges. Funding for a number of international programmes comes from two major sources, the Global Challenges Research Fund 168 (GCRF) and the Newton Fund169. From 2016 to 2021, the GCRF will invest £1.5 billion in funding that harnesses the expertise of the UK’s world- leading researchers, focusing on challenge-led disciplinary and interdisciplinary research on development issues. It mobilises the UK’s world-leading research base to address key challenges facing developing countries, including threats to the sustainability of natural resources; flooding and famine resulting from climate change and environmental degradation. 168 169

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 245 The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with 18 partner countries to support their economic development and social welfare, and to develop their research and innovation capacity for long-term sustainable growth. The total budgeted UK investment for the Newton Fund is £735 million from 2014 to 2021. Examples of this research are provided in the The UK continues to be an active supporter and contributor to the work of the IPCC. During this current assessment cycle, members of the UK research community will participate as coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors. Several research programmes also seek to contribute to the body of evidence to be assessed in the IPCC special reports and assessment report this cycle. Additionally, BEIS funds the IPCC Working Group III Technical Support Unit, which is co-chaired by Prof Skea of the UK and Prof Shukla of India, with a grant The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is a joint programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC) established to determine the predictability of climate and the impact of human activities on climate. Research programmes co-ordinated by the WCRP have made huge contributions to our understanding of climate models, the climate system and the prediction and impacts of climate change. The UK are heavily involved in WCRP and UK scientists lead the majority of the Grand Challenges including Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity, Carbon Feedbacks in the Climate System, Weather and Climate Extremes, Regional Sea-level Change and Coastal Impacts and Near-Term Climate Prediction. The UK also has representation on WCRP Working Groups, for example the Working Group on Coupled Modelling, Working Group on Numerical Experimentation, Working Group on Subseasonal to Interdecadal Prediction, Working Group on Regional Climate as well as the WCRP Advisory Councils on modelling and data. UK researchers have worked together with European partners on a large number of Horizon 2020-funded programmes. Examples of these • PRIMAVERA - developing a new generation of advanced and well-evaluated high- resolution global climate models, capable of simulating and predicting regional climate with unprecedented fidelity, for the benefit of governments, business and society in • CRESCENDO - a coordinated European contribution to the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). CRESCENDO in particular better informs a number of key Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) where biogeochemical and aerosol components are of critical importance to delivering realistic future projections. • EUSTACE (EU Surface Temperature for All Corners of Earth) - providing publicly available daily estimates of surface air temperature since 1850 across the globe for the first time by combining surface and satellite data using novel statistical techniques. • EUCP (European Climate Prediction system) - developing an innovative ensemble climate prediction system based on high-resolution climate models for Europe for the near-term (approximately 1 to 40years). This will be used to produce consistent, authoritative and actionable climate information, to support climate-related risk assessments and climate change adaptation programmes and underlain by authoritative methodological guidance. 246 7th National Communication • TRANSRisk (Transition Pathways and Risk Analysis for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies) – assessing low-emission transition pathways that are technically and economically feasible and acceptable from a social and environmental • INNOPATHS (Innovation Pathways, Strategies and Policies for the Low-Carbon Transition in Europe) – working with work with key economic and societal actors to generate new, state-of-the-art low-carbon pathways for the European Union. The UK is a member of the Joint Programming Initiative “Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe” (JPI Climate), a platform to address European societal and research objectives on climate change. It aligns research priorities according to a jointly-agreed Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, with the aim of complementing and supporting other initiatives at the European level. JPI Climate facilitates the coordination and collaboration in order to help underpin European efforts to confront climate change. UK researchers have participated in JPI Climate project calls, all of which feature extensive collaboration with European and non- European partners.
Examples • INTEGRATE - an integrated data-model study of interactions between tropical monsoons and extra-tropical climate variability and extremes • EUPHEME - demonstrating the capability of an integrated attribution system to meet the needs of European stakeholders for advice on how the risks of extreme weather and climate events are being affected by human-induced climate change. • WINDSURFER – developing new methods and tools to better quantify current extreme wind and wave risk and understand how it might change in the future.
The UK is taking forward research and development on mitigation and adaptation technologies under the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (JPI-FACCE) European Research Area Network on Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture and Silviculture. We are also developing our understanding of mitigation and adaptation through engagement with the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural GHGs.
The Belmont Forum is a group of the world’s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research. It was co-founded by NERC and the National Science Foundation (USA) in 2009. Currently there are 24 BF members and 6 partner organisations, and NERC sits on the steering committee. The purpose of the Belmont Forum is to enable its members and their research communities to address some of the key challenges and opportunities presented by global environmental change through developing multilateral, transdisciplinary Collaborative Research Actions (CRAs) that build on existing, national investments and where working nationally is not adequate to address the scope of the challenge. NERC has partnered with key international funders under the Belmont Forum and JPI Climate on a collaborative research call on ‘Climate services, climate predictability and inter-regional linkages’. The aim of the call is to contribute to the overall challenge of developing climate services with a focus on interregional linkages role in climate variability and predictability. Within this NERC funding is specifically supporting research whose aim is to improve some aspect of our understanding of linkages (tele-connections) between the climate in the polar regions and the tropics. This is particularly in relation to the monsoon systems, with the aim of improving the prediction of monsoon rainfall on sub-seasonal to decadal timescales and/or future changes in

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 247 In 2015, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office brought together scientists and officials from the governments of the UK, US, China and India to better understand the global societal risks posed by climate change in the 21st century. The resultant ‘Climate A Risk Assessment’ report (2015) assessed future emissions and the subsequent response and what the implications of this were for systemic global risks. 7.3.3.2 Climate understanding and adaptation The UK recognises that the damaging impacts of climate change are already being felt in countries around the world and that weather and climate play a significant role in the daily lives of many people. This is particularly the case in the developing world where exposure and vulnerability are high. As such, the UK places great importance on cooperation with international partners to deliver research that will help those most impacted by the world’s changing climate. Whilst it is possible to identify interventions that will increase the resilience of poor peoples’ livelihoods to an uncertain climate future, the range and cost of adaptation options and improved resilience measures could be significantly improved by enabling the production of more accurate and tailored climate and weather forecasts and enhanced operating procedures for responding to forecasts and early warning systems. The UK, and DFID in particular, is supporting research programmes that increase capacity in this area and advance our knowledge of the practical application of climate science in the To better understand and improve confidence in predictions of climate variability and change across sub-Saharan Africa on timescales to support adaptation, DFID and NERC are investing in a £20 million Future Climate for Africa research programme. This programme has a major focus on climate science and modelling, underpinned by the principle of informing real decisions, with an emphasis on enhancing the usefulness of climate science and projections, and by adopting a multidisciplinary approach. On shorter timescales, the Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa programme (WISER) is on track to deliver transformational change in the quality, accessibility and use of weather and climate information at all levels of decision making for sustainable development in Africa. The Met Office is leading the East African component of this programme, enhancing national and regional weather observing and forecasting capabilities in the region. Pan-African work is led by the UNECA African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC). Identifying pathways for adaptation and improved resilience are key features of the development landscape. DFID research is helping countries find different ways of adapting to climate change. The Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme is helping people become more resilient to climate extremes in South, Southeast Asia, in the African Sahel and neighbouring countries. This is through improved integration of disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation methods into development approaches, influencing local, national and international policies and practices. DFID recognises that adaptation support needs to be underpinned with rigorous research and evidence, to inform decision-making. The Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) aims to build the resilience of vulnerable populations and their livelihoods in three ‘hot spots’ - areas where a strong climate change signal is combined with a large concentration of vulnerable, poor, or marginalized people - by supporting collaborative research to inform adaptation policy and practice. The Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) research programme, co-funded with NERC, leads DFID’s efforts to improve understanding of how climate/weather observations and forecasting can lead to more effective

248 7th National Communication decision-making to reduce exposure of the most vulnerable to the increased risks posed natural hazards, including those presented by a changing climate, through measures such as provision of risk information, early warning systems and forecast-based financing. DFID and NERC are also currently jointly investing in a £4 million, 18-month research programme on understanding the impacts of El Niño events. This programme aims to address the need to have a better understanding of the impacts of the El Niño event in low and middle income countries. The aim of the work is to ultimately contribute increased resilience to El Niño DFID, NERC and ESRC are jointly funding work to investigate interlinked environmental systems, how they relate to poverty alleviation and how they may be impacted by future environmental change (including climate change). ESPA (Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation), was a £41 million programme, providing new knowledge to demonstrate how ecosystem services can reduce poverty and enhance well-being for the world’s poor.
UPGro (Unlocking the Potential for Groundwater in Africa) is a £12 million programme (2012 – 2019) to study groundwater processes and use in sub-Saharan Africa, which aims to improve water security for the poor in Through the Newton-Bhabha Fund, NERC is working with India on a number of programmes relevant to climate change. For example, the Sustaining Water Resources for Food, Energy and Ecosystem Services programme (£3m UK contribution, with matched Indian research effort) is aiming to develop a whole systems approach to basin modelling to enable informed decision making about the management of India’s water resources. These models will have a forecasting capability that can be used to study future trends including the impact of climate change. In addition, NERC and India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences are currently developing a Ganga Delta – Bay of Bengal Interactions programme, which, over the coming years will invest £4.8 million (matched through equivalent Indian research effort) to understand how the Ganga Delta and Bay of Bengal are being impacted by climate change and human activity and how the risks to the ecosystem services they provide can be mitigated. Other work with Indian partners includes a £5.7 million project assessing Drivers of variability in the South Asian monsoon. This programme focuses on processes driving variability, seasonality and predictability in the South Asian monsoon, with the goal of improving predictions on all timescales. A coordinated field campaign happened in 2016 utilising NERC aircraft. Finally, a UK- India Joint Virtual Centre on Clean Energy is being developed to solve the integration problem with smart grids and energy storage, and develop affordable, renewable energy solutions for communities that do not have access to reliable electricity supplies. The Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership Programme (WCSSP) comprises projects to develop partnerships harnessing UK scientific expertise to build the basis for strengthening the resilience of vulnerable communities to weather and climate variability, supported by the UK government’s Newton Fund. The Met Office is a Newton Fund delivery partner on behalf of UK government and administers the fund through the WCSSP programme which currently includes the following the Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China), the Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership South Africa (WCSSP South Africa) and Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil (CSSP Brazil). As part of CSSP China, for example, the MOHC has identified skill in predicting summer rainfall in the Yangtze river basin months ahead using its seasonal forecasting model. This skill has led to the development of a prototype seasonal forecasting product for the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) who use it, along with their own forecast, to advise different water

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 249 management organisations in the Yangtze basin including the Three Gorges Dam. New CSSP China climate service prototypes are currently in development around wind energy, food security Sharing and effectively communicating this growing body of research evidence to policy makers is vital for focusing efforts to combat climate change. Decision makers are therefore being supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) through the design and delivery of climate compatible development. CDKN priorities have ranged over time, from climate risk analyses to strengthen resilience, to supporting climate negotiators from least 7.3.3.3 Mitigation technologies Promoting the development of low-carbon technologies and encouraging their uptake will help developing countries achieve a cleaner future that supports economic growth. To that end, in recent years there has been a significant expansion in UK aid support to clean energy access research and innovation, aligned with the UN Global Goal 7 and a recognition in that framework of the centrality of technology innovation and diffusion, particularly regarding clean technologies. UK aid-funded research and innovation support to clean energy includes substantial contributions targeting Sustainable Energy, Access and Gender (SEAG), New Energy Applications and Delivery Models (NEADM) with Shell Foundation, Green Mini Grids Africa, the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI) supporting sustainable energy provision in humanitarian situations, and the Crowd Power programme which is testing crowdfunding platforms as a way of securing DFID support has also included substantial multilateral contributions, generating knowledge and data public goods via the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP) in areas aligned with the 3 Global Goal targets, a stream of funding alongside Research Councils into primary ‘cleantech’ research and innovation in universities, in addition to a programme seeking to scale up access to clean cooking solutions and improve the sustainability of bioenergy use. DFID continues to improve efficiency of delivery of vital services to strengthen resilience to shocks and assist in enabling clean development and has recently sought to do this in partnership with the private sector. For example the Mobile for Development Utilities (M4D) fund has supported 21 clean energy technologies with grant funding and business development assistance. The fund, implemented by the mobile phone operator trade body GSMA (Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association), helps early-stage businesses take their mobile-based innovations towards scale by partnering with mobile network operators in country. DFID is also partnering with Unilever on the TRANSFORM research programme, to pilot and help scale-up innovative modern energy business solutions for low income household needs. To date, the programme has supported eight small, clean energy businesses across sub-Saharan 7.3.3.4 Barriers to dissemination of research Despite the extensive body of collaborative research undertaken by UK scientists, it is recognised that barriers continue to exist to the dissemination of data and research. The UK Government believes that Open Access to research is a public benefit which enhances transparency, scientific integrity and rigour, stimulates innovation, promotes public engagement, and improves efficiency in research. The UK is widely recognised as being the leading nation in the Open Access and Open Data movements. 250 7th National Communication Since the Finch Report170 was published in 2012, the UK has made substantial progress towards the objective of ensuring that publicly-funded research is made available through an Open Access route.
From 2017 it is anticipated that almost all journal articles published by UK university academics will be available under Open Access routes. Of these, approaching 20% will be available on the date of publication and without any further restriction. These figures are higher than anywhere else in the world. Such progress has been stimulated • Clear mandates and, in some cases, financial support from RCUK, the Funding Councils, and major charitable funders • The development of a dense network of institutional repositories at universities, complemented by subject repositories • The development of new routes to Open Access by publishers and Learned Societies • The development of an underpinning infrastructure Nevertheless further effort is required. To this end, in 2015 the Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, requested an independent report from Professor Adam Tickell, Chair of the UK Open Access Co-ordination Group, on open access to research policy. As part of this advice, a recommendation was made that a roadmap for national open research data infrastructure be produced, with a set of recommendations. A Taskforce was established to 171 observed that there remain significant barriers to sharing data, including the lack of infrastructure for data access and preservation, concerns about personal or commercially confidential information, or lack of incentives for researchers. The report also notes that NERC’s commitment to data sharing means that the situation for environmental data is somewhat better than that in most other subject areas. NERC operates a number of data centres ( which are responsible for maintaining environmental data and making them available to all users. Data is made available under the NERC data policy, which specifies that NERC-funded scientists must make their data openly available within two years of collection and deposit it in a NERC data centre for long term preservation. NERC makes its environmental data available free of charge apart from special cases that involve third party data (there may be a charge for information products). NERC has developed a data catalogue service based on a metadata standard designed to meet the requirements of the GEMINI2 profile which represents the implementation in the UK of the EU INSPIRE directive for environmental information. All NERC discovery metadata is required NERC is developing the roles of its data centres into a more integrated user-focused set of services, aiming to maximise the economic and social impact of environmental research. As part of this strategy, it is developing a Data Commons which provides both storage and computing power, along with work spaces and data labs that enable researchers to bring data and computation to the archive of datasets preserved in the centres. But it is also developing tools – web interfaces, apps, machine-to-machine interfaces and the like – and other services that can transform data into information products for a variety of users in environmental communities, business, and the public sector, as well as in academia. And through partnerships 170 171

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 251 with other organisations – notably the Environmental Science to Services Partnership with the Met Office, the Environment Agency and the Ordnance Survey – it is establishing hubs, thematic clusters and portals, some of them linked to the EU INSPIRE programme. 7.3.4 Climate information services The need for information and tools to enable both the UK and wider world to cope with the impacts of climate change is real and urgent. To ensure that society is sufficiently resilient and prepared requires the development and delivery of operational climate services – climate information prepared, interpreted and delivered to meet society’s needs. Success in climate services is a combination of having the right information and being able to interpret it effectively to generate valuable guidance. The UK has world leading scientific, technical and policy expertise on climate change adaptation and mitigation. In the UK, the Met Office leads on climate services and provides them for and on behalf of UK Government for a variety of end-users. For example, the MOHC Climate Programme provides tailored climate services around food security and UK farming impacts to UK government. One aspect of this service quantifies the risk of certain pests and pathogens surviving in the UK with warmer seasons. Another measures current weather and climate risk to UK wheat yields and how it may change in the future. The MOHC Climate Programme also provides a climate service around carbon budgets and air quality. This focuses on the impact of climate change on air quality, highlighting the benefits of climate change mitigation on air quality across all continents. Other services might be mandated by government but delivered to, for instance, industry. For example, the Met Office has been providing the energy industry with tailored seasonal forecasts during winter, to support their decision-making. Others could be in support of government Official Development Assistance (ODA) actions and feed into international users such as the CSSP China Three Gorges Dam climate service prototype. Other climate services could inform a wider community wishing to adapt or provide a tool for other climate service providers who focus on adaptation to incorporate into their work (e.g. UKCP18). The Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre (NCIC), which provides an accessible catalogue of UK weather and climate information going back hundreds of years, also provides a climate service to the public. Beyond the Met Office, The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) can help businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators create ‘bridging’ tools, such as software. These bridge the gap between datasets, which BADC hold, and front line decision-making products. The BADC helps researchers locate, access, and interpret atmospheric data. BADC is also the UK node for the Earth System Grid Federation, the repository for the world’s leading research and modelling on UK universities have a strong track record providing environmental services and this is expanding overseas.
For example, a range of universities are a part of the Adaptation and Resilience in the Context of Change Network which supports capacity building, awareness raising and informs new approaches to identify, assess and address climate risk from evolving Recent work by the Environment Agency demonstrates the practical application of climate services and the strength of UK expertise in this area. The Environment Agency produced Thames Estuary 2100, a management plan for the River Thames, by developing a ‘Flexible Adaptation Pathways’ methodology. This work is a critical part of the Thames Estuary’s long

252 7th National Communication term flood investment strategy. The pathways approach has since been used in the USA, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, and ensures flood risk management plans are adapted to cope with extreme climate impacts. The Environment Agency, along with Defra, have since 2009, used the Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP) to work with over 100 UK infrastructure businesses and public bodies to help them identify their vulnerabilities to extreme weather and develop action plans to increase their The following section describes examples of UK funded research programmes, addressing the priority areas identified in UNFCCC guidance. 7.3.5.1 Climate process and climate system studies, including paleoclimate studies Predictions of regional climate are reliant on global climate models, and observations. Global climate models have developed rapidly over the last few decades but require further improvements particularly in the representation of key earth system processes. The UK is funding several major research initiatives to improve the understanding of key processes and refine their representation in climate models. Changes in Antarctic ice sheets can induce large changes in sea level and in the freshwater flux to the oceans, which in turn can affect the ocean circulation and climate. However there remain large uncertainties deriving from the cryosphere in predictions of future sea level rise over the 50-200 year time horizon. NERC has provided £7 .4 million to the Ice Sheet Stability research programme (primarily focused on the Pine Island Glacier), with the goal of improving our fundamental understanding of the interaction of ice with the oceans and the resulting ice sheet response, and to incorporate this new understanding into predictive models. NERC, in partnership with the National Science Foundation in the US, is also investing in research on the Thwaites Glacier. The 2015 SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) horizon scan singled out this location as a ‘region of particular concern’ with grants funded under this programme aiming to substantially improve decadal and longer-term (century to multi- century) projections of ice loss and sea level rise originating from the Thwaites Glacier. The Southern Ocean is one of the most important components of the global carbon cycle, having captured half of all human-related carbon that has entered the ocean to date. This vast anthropogenic perturbation to the Southern Ocean carbon system is activating a range of complex climate feedbacks, many of which are poorly understood and quantified. NERC is investing in two complementary research programmes to address the uncertainties in the future behaviour of the Southern Ocean carbon sink and therefore substantially reduce st century global climate change projections. The Ocean Regulation of Climate by Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transports, is an £8.4 million programme that will focus on a subset of the physics of heat and carbon uptake. The Role of the Southern Ocean in the Earth System is a £7 million programme that addresses the biogeochemistry of this region. Improved prediction of the European climate is critical for the UK, with the impacts of unusual weather episodes such as the 2003 heat wave, 2010 cold winter and 2012 wet summer felt across society and the economy. Recent developments in observation, modelling and data

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 253 reanalyses provide an exceptional scientific opportunity to increase understanding of the causes and predictability of these unusual seasons. NERC is investing £2.5 million to establish the underlying processes and mechanisms that underpin regional climate variability, assess the representation of those processes in climate models, and develop improvements to the models and hence regional climate predictions from months to years ahead. NERC is investing in a £3 million project to better understand the causes of periods where the rate of global mean surface temperature is increased or decreased at decadal time scales compared with long term trends at centennial time scales. This work aims to generate new knowledge of the drivers, processes and mechanism causing observed anomalous periods, in order that long-term climate predictions can be generated with greater confidence. The atmospheric level of methane has increased by 50% since the pre-industrial times and accounts for roughly 20% of the total increase in radiative forcing. Our understanding of the drivers of this trend remains limited and there are methodological disagreements, with emission estimates derived from process studies of sources differing from those from direct observations of the air. NERC is investing £4 million in work aiming to close the global methane budget. North Atlantic climate Major changes are occurring across the North Atlantic climate system in ocean and atmosphere temperature and circulation, in sea ice thickness and extent and in key atmospheric constituents such as ozone, methane and aerosols. Changes in the North Atlantic directly affect the UK’s climate, weather and air quality, with major economic impacts on agriculture, fisheries, water, energy, transport and health. The North Atlantic also has global importance since changes here drive changes in climate, hazardous weather and air quality further afield, such as in North America, Africa and Asia. NERC is investing £9 million in a five-year research programme to enhance the UK’s capability to detect, attribute, and predict changes in the North Atlantic Understanding dangerous climate UK scientists are investigating the possibility of crossing future dangerous thresholds in the climate system, such as irreversible decline of the Greenland Ice Sheet, dieback of the Amazon rainforest and collapse of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
For example, new work shows there is now greater confidence that partial irreversible loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already begun and that East Antarctica and northeast Greenland are potentially more sensitive to climate change than first thought, which has implications for future sea level rise and associated impacts. Changes in the hydrological cycle as a consequence of climate and land use drivers are expected to play a central role in governing a vast range of environmental impacts. At the same time, predictions of water-related variables show very high uncertainty. The £10.1 million Changing Water Cycle programme is working to understand how local to regional scale hydrological and biogeochemical processes are responding and will respond to changing climate and land use, together with their consequent impacts on the sustainable use of soil and water. It will investigate the consequences of the changing water cycle for water-related natural hazards, including floods and droughts, improving prediction and mitigation of these hazards. 254 7th National Communication Weather extremes and climate Recent world-leading climate attribution research from the UK shows that the effects of climate change on some extreme weather and climate events can be detected with high confidence. The Met Office Hadley Centre has been contributing to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) special report on event attribution since its inception five years ago. 7.3.5.2 Modelling and prediction, including general circulation models Climate modelling in the UK is led through the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme, funded by BEIS and Defra. This relationship ensures that the world leading modelling capability of the UK, feeds directly into UK Government and informs policy. Significant developments have been made in this area through the installation of a new supercomputer at the Met Office. This opens up the potential for more detailed and higher resolution climate models, which will provide more accurate information on climate variability and change to decision-makers and society. The latest collection of Met Office climate models (HadGEM3) shows many significant improvements relative to previous versions. This improved model is underpinning the latest generation of UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) as well as the UK Earth System model (UKESM), which will represent the UK contribution to the next coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP6) and the next IPCC Assessment Report (AR6). The UKESM project is a £9 million collaboration between the Met Office and NERC to develop, apply and analyse the next generation of UK Earth System models. The first version of UKESM (UKESM1) includes a full representation of the global carbon cycle, enabling investigation of allowable carbon emissions compatible with long-term global temperature goals of 1.5 and 2°C. It also includes an advanced treatment of atmospheric chemistry and aerosols, facilitating investigation of the co-benefits of mitigation policies on both climate change and air quality. UKESM1 will also contain interactive treatment of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the future, allowing more realistic projections of future global and regional sea level rise. This model forms a toolkit to ensure that climate policy is built on the best available climate science In addition to UKESM, NERC is investing £5 million (with resources matched by the Met Office) in its ‘understanding and representing atmospheric convection across scales’ programme. This will build on developments in understanding of convection in recent years to significantly improve the parameterisation of convection within models, which remains a limitation. This will lead to substantial improvements in both the weather and climate models that are critical to society’s ability to reduce the impacts of hazardous weather and inform decisions regarding mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. The UK views the prediction of climate variability and change for the coming seasons to a decade ahead as a key area of climate science. In recent years the Met Office seasonal and decadal prediction systems have been substantially upgraded to a much higher resolution in both the atmosphere and the ocean, resulting in significantly improved skill. Key improvements include a new capability to predict the large-scale circulation in the North Atlantic region (the North Atlantic Oscillation), and hence European winter conditions, a season ahead using the Met Office seasonal forecasting system. This work has been extended to show that skilful prediction is now possible up to a year ahead, using the Met Office decadal

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 255 prediction system. This opens up the possibility of potential boosts in climate services on monthly to sub-yearly timescales for a range of sectors including transport, energy and the Furthermore, skilful predictions of summer rainfall in other regions, that are sensitive to weather and climate variability, are now possible. This has been demonstrated in the Sahel, from months to years ahead. Predicting whether droughts will happen is a key goal of decadal climate predictions, and would enable early action to help prevent future humanitarian disasters. 7.3.5.3 Research on the impacts of climate change Impacts of a 1.5°C rise in global NERC, in conjunction with BEIS, is investing £1.2 million in projects which will provide evidence to the UK Committee on Climate Change and input to the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. The projects will advance understanding through addressing linkages between the cumulative level of future net emissions and temperature increases in the 1.5°C to 2°C temperature range, feasibility of pathway options that limit warming to 1.5°C and their additional consequences, and the environmental impacts of a 1.5°C temperature rise compared The MOHC is involved in HELIX (High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes), a major international programme assessing the impacts of climate change at specific levels of global warming – 1.5°C, 2°C, 4°C and 6°C above pre-industrial levels. HELIX is revealing findings of considerable policy significance, for example that river flooding risks are projected to increase, with countries representing more than 70% of the world’s population and gross domestic product potentially seeing flood risks increase by over 500%.
AVOID2 was a £1.45 million research programme to address the impacts, and impacts avoided, at different temperature targets (along with research on mitigation pathways and their feasibility). The clear conclusion was that that the impacts from 2°C global warming are considerably less than in a world where emissions of greenhouse gases continue at current rates. UK scientists continue to make advances in this area, for example with recent MOHC work demonstrating that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be detected much earlier than The Arctic is the fastest changing environment on the planet, supporting diverse yet still poorly understood ecosystems. Changes in the ocean and sea ice environment of the Arctic will generate major but unknown changes in Arctic ecosystems, affecting biological processes at every level of organisation- from genetics and physiology to food webs, biogeochemical cycles, species distribution and whole ecosystems. NERC is investing £16 million in a five-year research programme, the Changing Arctic Ocean, to understand how change in the physical environment (ice and ocean) will affect the large-scale ecosystem structure and biogeochemical functioning of the Arctic Ocean, the potential major impacts and provide projections for future ecosystem Flooding from intense Intense rainfall events commonly last for a short period of time but present flood forecasters and flood risk managers with major problems. Our knowledge of processes associated with rainfall extremes is relatively poor and we cannot predict associated flood risks with any significant

256 7th National Communication degree of confidence. This knowledge gap is of particular concern as there is a widespread recognition that the occurrence of high-intensity rainfall is likely to increase as a result of climate change. There is an urgent need to develop new science with respect to intense rainfall events, in order to appropriately inform risk mitigation and management options and improved planning and operational maintenance. The NERC-led Flooding from Intense Rainfall programme is investing £5.2 million to improve the length and accuracy of forecasts of the occurrence and intensity of rainfall associated with convective storms; identify the susceptibility of different catchment types to high intensity rainfall; and enhance flood risk management. Droughts and water scarcity jointly pose a substantial threat to the environment, agriculture, infrastructure, society and culture in the UK, yet our ability to characterise and predict their occurrence, duration and intensity, as well as minimise their impacts, is often inadequate. Five UK research councils (NERC, in collaboration with ESRC, EPSRC, BBSRC and AHRC) are investing £12 million in a five-year interdisciplinary research programme to support improved decision making in relation to droughts and water scarcity by providing research that identifies, predicts and responds to the interrelationships between their multiple drivers and impacts. 7.3.5.4 Socio-economic analysis, including analysis of both the impacts of climate Much of the UK’s work in this area is internationally facing. The ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy was created in 2008 and has been influential in shaping debate within the international climate change community including the World Bank and OECD. Additionally, CCCEP have undertaken activities nationally such as influencing policy changes to the UK’s Flood RE insurance scheme and have delivered in excess of 600 publications to the research The Nexus Network has taken a holistic approach looking at the interactions between Food- Energy-Water within the Environment including climate change. This has led to an influential Nexus 2020 report which engaged with 250 stakeholders to create the 40 most important research questions for business sustainability. ESRC has also been active in Europe through the JPI Climate programme, including the European Perceptions of Climate Change project. Research also addresses UK specific needs, for example ESRC created urgency funding to respond to the UK flooding that took place in 2013 and investigate the social aspects of those ESRC is also now building a platform for future work in the social space, having just agreed a new priority research area in climate change. This will build on existing investments in this space to build the evidence base on governance and behaviour, to understand what is needed to make effective policies, as well as understanding climate risk, trust and communication and the impact this has on decision making at a national, regional and community level. ESRC also intends to continue research relevant to the Food-Energy-Environment-Water Nexus, and how managing climate change can affect these interrelationships. 7.3.5.5 Research and development on mitigation and adaptation technologies. Note that examples of this theme of research are also found above in the discussion of research and international cooperation. Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 257 As described earlier, the UK government is investing significantly in lowcarbon innovation. At Autumn Statement 2015, the government committed to double the UK’s energy innovation spend, such that by 2021 it will have doubled to over £400 million per year, with £2.5 billion expected to be invested by 2021 across low carbon energy, transport, agriculture and waste. Energy innovation has seven • Innovative renewables - investing in renewable energy innovation to bring the cost of technologies down. This includes around £177 million in investments from BEIS, Innovate UK, and the Research Councils. • Innovative smart energy system technologies - enabling a smarter, more efficient energy system is a priority for the UK Government. In the “Upgrading our energy smart systems and flexibility plan” published in July 2017 , the Government committed up to £70 million to smart energy system innovation, with additional contributions from Innovate UK and Research Councils, resulting in a total investment of around £265 million in smart systems research, development, and demonstration. • Nuclear innovation – an investment of around £460 million across Government, Research Councils and Innovate UK. • Innovative low carbon industry – Government is expected to invest around £162 million in industrial research and innovation, including Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS).
As part of this commitment, BEIS expects to invest around £100 million in low carbon industrial innovation to reduce the risks and costs of accelerating the roll out of low carbon technologies which will enable UK industry to remain competitive. • Green finance - Government is supporting private investment into sustainable projects and infrastructure. The City of London’s Green Finance Initiative was established in 2016 at the request of Government to promote the UK as a global centre for green finance. Government has supported the LENDERS project through Innovate UK which aims to improve estimations of energy costs for homeowners when calculating mortgage affordability. To build on the UK’s global leadership in the sector, BEIS and HMT will be co-hosting a Green Finance Taskforce that will bring together senior leaders from the financial sector. This Taskforce will work with industry to accelerate the growth of green finance, and help us deliver the investment required to meet the UK’s carbon reduction targets. • Energy entrepreneurs fund - a competitive funding scheme to support the development and demonstration of state-of-the-art technologies, products and processes in the areas of energy efficiency, power generation and heat and electricity storage. The Energy Entrepreneurs Fund seeks the best ideas, irrespective of source, across these energy technology areas from the public and private sector. The scheme particularly aims to assist small- and medium-sized enterprises, including start-ups, and those companies that are selected will receive additional funding for incubation support. Since 2012 there have been five phases of the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund. Over that time BEIS has invested around £50 million of grant money in over 100 companies. Those companies have secured over £35 million in private funding and are still attracting further investment. Phase six was launched in the Clean Growth Strategy In line with the doubling of our domestic energy innovation programme, the UK will continue to play a leading role in international research efforts to reduce the costs of low carbon energy,

258 7th National Communication working with other countries to strengthen collaboration and transparency in clean energy research, development, and demonstration. To demonstrate this commitment, at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris, the UK joined Mission Innovation. Mission Innovation is an international initiative which aims to accelerate clean energy investment and innovation in order to provide reliable and affordable energy for all. Lower carbon energy system and The use of low-carbon sources of energy could pose challenges to the security and reliability of energy supply. A £2 million SUPERGEN Energy Networks Hub (HubNet) set out to drive innovation in electricity, gas and heat networks and planning, smart grid operation and control, new network and infrastructure technologies and firstly understanding and then utilising the demand-side of the energy equation. A good example of the HubNet work with economic and policy impact is the development of a Dynamic Transmission Investment Model (DTIM) which determines optimal network plans given data on the generation mix and demand and data on the cost of transmission assets, storage, demand-side action and cost of interruptions. It demonstrated potentially significant interaction between offshore grid and interconnection among North Sea countries and assessed the benefits of offshore grid taking the role of The large scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is assumed in nearly all global scenarios that succeed in holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The feasibility, mechanisms and implications of greenhouse gas removal (GGR) are, however, insufficiently understood. NERC, along with EPSRC, ESRC and BEIS, are investing £8.6 million in projects aiming to better define the ‘real world’ feasibility of GGR techniques that might significantly assist in achieving climate policy goals from a range of technical, economic, societal and environmental perspectives. The GGR research programme will also synthesise and assess existing and newly-acquired information on potential GGR techniques, making those informed assessments easily available and useful to the national and international policy-making community for maximum impact. Air pollution and urban environmental Currently, approximately half of the energy use, carbon dioxide emissions and exposure to air pollution in cities is due to either buildings or transportation and this level is increasing. EPSRC is investing £4.1 million in a five year research programme, called Managing Air for Green Inner Cities (MAGIC) at the University of Cambridge, to develop a facility consisting of an integrated suite of models and associated management and decision support tools that allow the city design to become its own heating, ventilation and cooing (HVAC) system. Reduction in industrial energy Reducing industrial energy demand could make a substantial contribution towards decarbonisation. EPSRC is investing in a £3 million Centre for Industrial Energy, Materials, Energy and Products (CIE-MAP) as part of the End Use Energy Demand (EUED) research centres. In close collaboration with industry and government partners, CIE-MAP aims to enable delivery of significant reductions in the use of both energy and energy-intensive materials in the industries that supply the UK’s physical needs. The research area includes; (i) efficiency gains that can be made in industry including use of heat and improvements in processes; (ii) changing the use of materials needed to produce products including material substitution, light

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 259 weighting and circular economy; (iii) changing the way the final consumer (industry, households or government) use products to reduce energy demand including product longevity and shifts Carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS): BEIS has announced that it will be investing up to £100 million to support CCUS and industrial energy innovation, this includes a £20 million Carbon Capture and Utilisation Demonstration Programme. EPSRC has invested a further £6 million to support the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) up to 2022 to lead and coordinate a programme of underpinning research on all aspects of CCS in support of basic science and UK government efforts on energy and climate change.
UKCCSRC brings together over 250 of the UK’s world- class CCS academics to provide a national focal point for CCS research and development. A key priority is supporting the UK economy by driving an integrated research programme and building research capacity that is focused on maximising the contribution of CCS to a low- carbon energy system for the UK. BBSRC and EPSRC jointly fund the £5 million Supergen Bioenergy Hub which brings together industry, academia and other stakeholders to focus on the research and knowledge challenges associated with increasing the contribution of UK bioenergy to meet strategic environmental targets in a coherent, sustainable and cost-effective manner. It will do this by taking a “whole systems” approach to bioenergy, so that we focus on the benefits that new technologies can bring within the context of the whole production and utilisation chain. In order to ensure focused research with rapid dissemination and deployment this will be done in close collaboration with industrial partners and other stakeholders, including government agencies. The hub will also take an expressly interdisciplinary approach to bioenergy, ensurin. important issues are addressed, such as the impacts of land-use change not just as scientific quantification exercises, but taking due account of the social and economic impacts. The science requirements of the bioenergy hub will be underpinned by the BBSRC Networks in Industrial Marine renewable energy mix towards 2050: The IEA International Vision for Ocean Energy sets a goal of installing 337 gigawatts of wave and tidal capacity, creating 1.2 million jobs and reducing CO tonnes by 2050. With the SUPERGEN Marine programme and the UK Centre for Marine Energy Research (UKCMER), EPSRC is investing in the world-leading research, innovation, development, demonstration and deployment of wave and tidal energy. For example, the three year EcoWatt2050 project is using computer models to simulate ways in which the deployment of multiple large scale wave and tidal energy arrays can be planned and arranged so as to minimise environmental impacts and offset effects of climate change. Systematic observations in the UK and its overseas territories are made by a number of national agencies and organisations. The UK Met Office is the lead agency for making and collecting meteorological and atmospheric observations, and participates in the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Observations are also made by others including the NERC Centres and Surveys. Collection of oceanographic (and marine) observations is widely distributed throughout the UK with many government departments and laboratories, universities and commercial companies involved. Terrestrial observations are made or coordinated by NERC, the Environment Agency (EA), the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), the Forestry

260 7th National Communication Commission and others. The UK also contributes to space-based observations through the European agencies; the European Space Agency and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. The UK participates in many systematic observations programmes and considerably more detail can be found in Annex 3. A brief overview of the UK observations outlined in Annex 3 is given in Considerable effort is devoted to quality control, especially in those areas where the UK has particular expertise. As the observations lead, the Met Office takes particular interested in this area. The Met Office undertakes comprehensive quality control of its GCOS stations by running a number of checks on the data held in its climate database. These include range, internal consistency and spatial checks on the observations. Faults identified are flagged for further investigation to resolve the problem promptly. Any changes to observing networks go through a robust set of checks before implementation to ensure that GCOS monitoring principles are The Met Office climate network includes three stations which have been recognised as centennial observing stations as part of the WMO long-term observing stations initiative. Other subsets of the UK climate network, such as the Central England Temperature sites also recognise the importance of sites with long and unbroken records. The Met Office works closely with the observing sites to ensure the continuation of the record wherever possible and have automated a number of climate stations in the past. The Met Office employs dedicated teams to inspect land and marine observing sites to ensure consistency of exposure according to WMO No. 8 guidelines. Details of local conditions, instruments and exposure (Metadata) are recorded using in-house developed software and archived. This includes assessing exposure using the WMO CIMO siting classification for land In addition to the day-to-day treatment of data, larger projects related to data quality are periodically undertaken. For example, the Met Office recently moved to using a new model of radiosonde across the observing network and as part of the project an extensive programme of intercomparison flights were conducted at stations across the network (including the BAS radiosonde station at Halley). The purpose of these intercomparison flights was to ensure the relative performance of the old and new radiosondes is well understood and documented for The Met Office is committed to the principles of free and unrestricted exchange of essential data, as defined by the World Meteorological Organisation Resolution 40, which sees meteorological observations from the Met Office observations networks made available to the meteorological community via the WMO Information System (WIS). A key development to ensure the continued availability of meteorological and environmental data internationally is the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS). WIGOS is currently in the implementation phase and the Met Office is actively supporting WIGOS and leading its implementation within 7.4.2 Atmospheric observations The UK‘s contribution to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Surface Network (GSN) comes from the national network (for the UK itself) of 29 stations within the UK‘s Regional Basic Climate Network (RBCN) and the 34 stations within the UK‘s Reference Climate Network. The UK land surface observing network currently comprises 242 ordinary climate stations and

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 261 157 synoptic stations. There are an additional 2645 rainfall-only stations.
These stations are all compliant with GCOS standards, but are more subject to site changes or closures than the The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) runs four overseas GCOS Surface Network Halley, Rothera and Fossil Bluff and Grytviken, South Georgia. All four of the UK BAS GSN stations operate to GCOS standards and historic data have been supplied to the International Data Centre (IDC), for their operational periods where the data have been digitised. The Met Office contributes to the EUMETNET Surface Marine programme (E-SURFMAR) (managed by Meteo-France), which deploys around 120 drifting buoys per year in the North Atlantic, Nordic Seas and Mediterranean. The Met Office also procures and deploys around ten drifting buoys each year in the South Atlantic/Southern Ocean in support of the global drifter The Met Office currently manages around 250 Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) making manual observations of which around 220 meet climate (VOSClim) standards. It also operates the real- time monitoring centre for VOSClim data. The Met Office has further developed the Autonomous Marine Observing System (AMOS), which has now been installed on 59 ships, three land stations in the Falklands and one Met Office-Plymouth Marine Laboratory collaborative buoy in Over the last two years, the Met Office has been developing a second-generation AMOS, which from 2018 is planned to be rolled out on all automated marine platforms. All VOS data are exchanged on the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) and available to the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS). This includes the contribution from two The Met Office presently operates ten moored buoys, mainly to the west of the UK and in Biscay, which contribute to the wider WWW/GOS surface network. The UK contributes to the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) with two stations, at The Met Office Radiosonde Network is part of the full WWW/GOS Upper Air Network and GCOS Upper Air Network (GUAN) and provides measurements of air temperature, water vapour and wind speed and direction. There are two sites in the UK, at Lerwick and Camborne. There are also two GUAN stations St Helena and Mt. Pleasant, and two GUAN stations in UK overseas Gough Island (run by SAWS) and Bermuda. The Met Office assists BAS with its GUAN station at Halley and the BAS Rothera upper-air programme is GCOS compliant in all respects, except that it has flights on only four out of seven days a week. It is not a GUAN station but still submits its data via GTS. The Met Office also assists the GUAN Seychelles, Rarotonga, Tarawa and Funafuti through the ‘Voluntary Cooperation Programme’ (VCP). The Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research (CFARR) in southern England is funded by NERC and operated by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The activity collects water vapour density measurements. Co-located surface meteorological measurements including solar irradiance (relevant to the surface radiation budget) are taken. Continuous monitoring of cloud profiles has allowed evaluation of model biases or errors to be identified. Monitoring began in 1998 and is important for understanding the mechanisms by which aerosol in the atmosphere leads to the formation of different cloud types, which is important for predicting climate change. This approach, pioneered at Chilbolton, is being implemented at other observatories around the world, notably US ARM sites. 262 7th National Communication The British Antarctic Survey routinely measures mesospheric temperatures at Rothera and BEIS funds the DECC Network, is a network of tall tower sites which is used to monitor atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in order to verify the UK’s emissions inventory. The Met Office routinely produces many ocean products which contribute to larger international observational programmes. Observations from Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) provide measurements of sea surface temperature, sea ice and sea state (the latter two measurements being from manually observing VOS). Sub-surface observations are not made from any UK BAS ships observe sea-ice extent in an opportunistic manner through the VOS programme; it is observed as part of the 6-hourly meteorological synoptic observations disseminated via the WMO GTS/WWW system as part of BAS Antarctic operations. The Met Office acts as one of two Global Collecting Centres (GCC) for VOS data, with responsibility for basic quality control of ship data, and collection of those data in delayed-mode format (e.g. ship’s logbooks). As part of its role as a real-time monitoring centre for marine data the Met Office routinely monitors VOS data. The National Tidal and Sea Level Facility (NTSLF) is the UK centre of excellence for sea level measurement, computer modelling of tides and storm surges, and the statistical estimation of extreme sea levels. The core of NTSLF is based at the NOC in Liverpool and includes partners in top research universities, coastal engineering consultancies and the Met Office. The NTSLF manages precision tide gauges at 44 sites around the UK. NTSLF is also responsible for monitoring sea level in the British Overseas Territories, and at strategic sites in the south Atlantic as part of its contribution to international climate research. The Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS) Tide Gauges run by NOC, Liverpool, provides sea level and supporting measures of air pressure to the GLOSS Core Sea-Level Network. The UK contributes three from the UK itself (Lerwick, Newlyn and Stornoway) plus Gibraltar and eight sites in the South Atlantic (which are in different states of working or needing maintenance visits). Assistance is also provided for some stations situated in Africa. The three UK stations are part of the UK Tide Gauge Network. The RAPID-26N program maintains an array of instruments spanning the Atlantic that is designed to monitor the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the associated poleward transport of heat by the ocean. Lead by the NOC the array is a collaboration with the University The UK Argo Programme contributes to the international Argo array that makes global measurements of temperature and salinity in the water column. The UK presently has around 165 active floats contributing to the Argo float array, including seven floats that make additional measurements of bio-geochemical variables.
The UK Argo programme is managed by the Met Office and operated in partnership with NOC Southampton, BODC and PML. The Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) Observatory is a sustained, multidisciplinary observatory in the North Atlantic coordinated by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. It is part of the international OceanSITES network and a GCOS reference mooring site. There are timeseries in excess of 20 years and the observing meets the GCOS Climate Monitoring Principles

Chapter 7 – Research and Systematic Observation 263 7.4.4 Terrestrial observations The UK reports river discharge measurements from seven UK gauging stations to the Global Terrestrial Network for River Discharge (GTN-R), which forms part of the GTN-H. All seven sites operate in accordance with GCMPs. The majority of sites have a complete historical record with the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC). Data will continue to be provided to the GTN-R for all seven sites as part of the larger UK contribution of over 200 sites to the GRDC. The National Groundwater Level Archive (NGLA) is maintained by the British Geological Survey (BGS), part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and operated in close collaboration with the National River Flow Archive. The NGLA brings together water level data from across the UK for a set of boreholes chosen to provide a representative national network, with boreholes in all major aquifers, which can be used to assess seasonal resource variations Water quality monitoring is carried out in the UK by various organisations in response to water management and regulatory requirements including the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The WFD Surveillance monitoring network is a fixed monitoring network designed to measure long term environmental changes in rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters, with data collection of relevance to a range of terrestrial ECVs. Of the stations in the Met Office land surface network, 67 synoptic sites have automatic snow depth sensors. Some ordinary climate stations also periodically report snow depth. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) monitors and maintains networks of GPS stations measuring the movement of key icestreams and glaciers. Chapter 8 - Education, training and • Climate Change, and broader sustainability issues, feature in the educational curricula of the UK and its devolved administrations • Since the Sixth National Communication, the UK has continued to develop the 2050s Global calculator, as well as supporting 10 countries in developing their own calculators. All 10 calculators have now been launched, along with Global calculator. • The launch of the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy included a dedicated Green Britain week to focus on climate and air quality issues across the UK Education, training, public awareness raising and communications on climate change are an essential component of action on climate change. While government has its part to play, the government considers that climate change messages are best delivered by experts. As education, training and information raising is broadly a devolved area of competence, this chapter covers the actions that are supported by the UK government, devolved administrations The climate is a complex system and raising public awareness of the basic science, its uncertainties and the risks of climate change are vital in order to engage the public in a debate about the actions needed to combat climate change and reduce the future risks. It is often difficult for people to understand that scientific debate is normal and does not mean that the scientists are uncertain about the big picture or the basic physics. Therefore, we consider it is vital that climate scientists communicate their science effectively to the public. The new National Curriculum was first taught in schools from September 2014. The programmes of study for science and geography cover sustainability and climate change in depth at key stage 3 and above. At primary school level pupils are taught about the fundamental concepts and relevant background knowledge that underpin this topic. Whilst the National Curriculum does not have to be followed in Academy schools, most do use it as a benchmark for the curriculum they deliver. 266 7th National Communication In science, primary school pupils are taught the scientific concepts that underpin weather, climate and biodiversity. For instance, in key stage 1(5-7 year olds), pupils are taught to observe changes across the four seasons, including the weather associated with the seasons and how the length of the day varies. In key stage 2 (7-11 year olds), pupils are taught about the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and to associate the rate of evaporation with elements such as temperature. They are taught that environments can change, and that this can pose dangers to living things. They are also taught about the concept of gases and the movement of the earth relative to the sun. All of these topics provide a firm foundation for the study of climate science in key stage 3 (11- 14 years old), where pupils are taught about the composition of the atmosphere, the carbon cycle and the importance of recycling. Ecosystems and biodiversity are also covered in depth. Crucially, pupils are also taught specifically about the production of carbon dioxide by human activity and the effect that this has on the climate. The key stage 4 (14-16 years old) science curriculum sets out that pupils should be taught about evidence for the composition and evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere since its formation, and the evidence, and uncertainties in evidence, for additional anthropogenic causes of climate change. In geography, pupils are given more information about the different types of weather and climate in particular parts of the world, and the processes that give rise to them. In key stage 1, pupils are taught about seasonal and daily weather patterns in the UK, and the location of hot and cold areas of the world. In physical geography at key stage 2, pupils are taught about climate zones, biomes, vegetation belts and the water cycle. At key stage 3, pupils are taught about change in the climate from the Ice Age to the present.
In addition, pupils are taught how human and physical processes interact to influence and change landscapes, environments and the climate. They are also taught that human activity relies on effective functioning of natural systems. The Welsh Baccalaureate Qualification (WBQ) is delivered at Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced levels in schools, colleges and training centres across Wales. Within the compulsory Core at each level, there are opportunities to study the effects of climate change on the environment in both the Wales, Europe and the World element and also within Personal and Social Education (PSE). Additionally, there are opportunities for students to undertake work experience and voluntary activity. Further to this, all learners undertake an Individual Investigation (in the form of an extended essay). Some learners have chosen to look at the effects of climate change and what policies are being adopted in Wales and comparing this with another country. ‘Learning for Change’ – a web based action plan sets out the actions being taken forward in Scotland in the second half of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development across schools, universities and colleges, and community learning and development. 8.3.3.1 Curriculum for excellence Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is the national approach to learning and teaching for young people aged 3–18 in Scotland, implemented from August 2010. The curriculum in Scotland is not statutory, and responsibility for what is taught rests with local authorities and schools, taking into account national guidelines and advice. The purpose of CfE is to enable young people to become successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens. It provides learners with a range of personalised learning experiences and qualifications that meet their individual needs and

Chapter 8 - Education, training and public awareness 267 aspirations. It also frees teachers from prescription, providing a framework for learning through sets of experiences and outcomes in eight curricular areas. CfE enables young people in Scotland to learn about sustainability, including climate change, in a holistic way across the whole curriculum. Learning related to a number of important cross- cutting themes, including sustainable development and global citizenship, is built into the experiences and outcomes across all eight curriculum areas in CfE. Education Scotland promote climate change as a context for learning across the curriculum but in particular within sciences, technologies and social studies. Climate change is specifically referenced in the experiences and outcomes for the fourth level of the broad general education (which applies from age 3 up to 14/15) within the sciences and social studies. It will, therefore, typically, be introduced into a school’s curriculum as an explicit topic from first year in secondary school or the last years of primary education, building on learning that has been acquired from the early years onwards. Education Scotland also developed a number of online resources, including resources on Weather and Climate Change ,and Exploring Climate Change (https:// education.gov.scot/improvement/036-weather-and-climate-change improvement/exploring-climate-change). Learning for sustainability has been embedded within the suite of Professional Standards for teachers in Scotland to support teachers to actively embrace and promote principles and practices of sustainability in all aspects of their work. It has also been incorporated into the General Teaching Council of Scotland’s accreditation of initial teacher education in Scotland. The National Qualifications Geography Courses, National 3 to Higher, include an option to study Similarly, the Environmental Science Courses are explored through the following areas of 8.3.3.2 Learning for Sustainability (LfS) In March 2013 Scottish Ministers accepted all thirty-one recommendations in the LfS Report from the One Planet Schools Working Group (published December 2012 - Education/Schools/curriculum/ACE/OnePlanetSchools) and an LfS National Implementation Group was established in February 2014 to deliver on the recommendations. In March 2016 the LfS National Implementation Group published its concluding report, ‘Vision 2030+’. It noted the positive progress of LfS in Scottish schools whilst also making a number of recommendations to enable Scotland to meet the Group’s on-going vision for LfS to 2030 and beyond. The Scottish Government is committed to building on the progress which has been achieved to date and is taking action to ensure the profile of LfS is both maintained and enhanced. 268 7th National Communication 8.3.3.3 Learning for Sustainability Scotland (LfS Scotland) Learning for Sustainability Scotland – Scotland’s Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) acknowledged by the United Nations University – is a network of organisations and individuals working to harness the full potential of learning to create a sustainable where communities value the natural environment; societies are inclusive and equitable; and a vibrant economy contributes to flourishing ecosystems. LfS Scotland was established in 2013, is hosted by the University of Edinburgh and is part of a growing global network of more than 115 RCE’s. This international network allows regions to share and learn from each other, and establish or strengthen international partnerships. 8.3.3.4 Community learning – Climate Challenge Fund Scotland’s flagship Climate Challenge Fund provides support for communities throughout Scotland to reduce their carbon impact and move to low carbon living. Since it was established in 2008, the fund has awarded over £85 million to 986 individual projects across 622 communities. Current Ministerial priorities focus on projects which deliver the greatest reduction in carbon emissions and support to Scotland’s most deprived communities. The fund supports a range of activity and has helped communities to reduce, reuse and recycle their waste, increase the energy efficiency of homes and community buildings, encourage active travel and the use of low-carbon transport, and produce local food. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research affiliated training centre for Northern Europe. CIFAL is a hub for capacity building, leadership and knowledge sharing between local and regional authorities, international organisations, the private sector and civil society. The development of local industry is a driving force for the courses provided by the Ulster University in the area of Renewable Energy Engineering, with the intention to develop the local talent to service the ever increasing need for capable engineers.
These courses, which include an MSc in Renewable Energy and Energy Management, a BSc in Energy and a BEng in Renewable Energy Engineering, provide industry-ready engineers to address the current issues in the industry as well as developing new forms of power generation The Centre for Sustainable Technologies at Ulster University undertakes multidisciplinary research to design, create, develop, improve, demonstrate and evaluate emerging, existing and alternative sustainable renewable energy, building design, construction materials, transport and environmental modification technologies. Current research projects • Storage Platform for the Integration of Renewable Energy, focusing on how the wide- scale deployment of mass energy storage can allow very high levels of renewable energy to be integrated into power grids globally. • A modelling, optimisation and experimental study of distributed energy storage • Energy Storage and Demand-Side Flexibility within Future Electricity Markets In March 2017 , Ulster University was awarded a prestigious £633,044 research grant for a major study into safeguarding the security and stability of renewable energy supply across the island of Ireland. Funded by the Department for the Economy under the Science Foundation Ireland

Chapter 8 - Education, training and public awareness 269 Investigators Programme Partnership, Ulster University researchers will work in partnership with University College Dublin. The aim of the research is to explore the extent to which variable renewable energy, especially wind energy, can generate a stable electricity source to meet the Colleges in Northern Ireland also offer direct innovation and R&D support to employers and provide assistance to bring new ideas in the renewable energy and sustainable technology sectors to the market. This includes support for new product and process development in areas such as biogas, biomass, low energy construction (including Nearly Zero Energy Buildings and Passive House techniques) and industrial energy conservation. This support is channelled through College Innovation centres and one example is the Centre for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technologies (CREST) at South West College (SWC). CREST provides industry R&D, demonstration and testing facilities for new renewable energy products. The facilities are available to SMEs across Northern Ireland, who have ideas for new products or process developments but who do not have the physical and/or technical capacity to develop, test and commercialise them. The facilities include laboratory space, testing equipment, demonstration technologies and the assistance of technical staff to help bring ideas and concepts to the next stage of development. The CREST centre itself is a demonstrator of sustainable construction technologies and is one of the most sustainable buildings in the UK and Ireland, meeting the Passive House, BREEAM Excellent and Carbon Neutral building standards. The BEIS Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker (formerly the DECC Public attitudes tracker) runs four times a year and consists of one longer, annual survey and three shorter, quarterly surveys which focus on a subset of questions where government perceives attitudes might shift quickly or be affected by seasonal changes. The survey was set up 2012 by DECC to understand and monitor public attitudes to the Department’s main business priorities. rd Wave of data) was collected from 27th September – 1st October 2017 using face-to-face in-home interviews with a representative sample of 2,150 households in the As a world-leading weather and climate service, the Met Office works closely with governments, individuals and organisations to share its expert scientific knowledge and advice. Climate change science is a complex area of research which often looks at issues in terms of risk and probability. Effectively capturing the subtlety of the science can be challenging, so the Met Office has established a range of channels and approaches to conveying everything from the basics of climate science to its very latest world-class research. These • the main Met Office website has a set of pages dedicated to helping the wider public find out more about the climate system and climate change • climate issues are also covered through news releases and more technical summaries are provided through a ‘Research News’ channel on the main website;

270 7th National Communication • the Met Office has a developed a multi-award winning social media platform for delivering targeted and engaging information, with more than 1.1 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other channels ( themetoffice, • The Met Office Science Twitter account shares insights into Met Office weather and climate science, technology and STEM. Followers are highly engaged and the account performs exceptionally well, increasing the reach of Met Office science. • the Met Office’s YouTube channel hosts a range of videos which have had more than 6.6 million views ( • a wordpress blog features around 1000 posts across a wide range of weather and climate issues which have had 4.7 million views from 2.8 million visitors in total (http:// • a press office provides proactive and reactive responses to media requests across a range of campaigns and topical issues, dealing with around 10,000 calls a year on average as well as organising press conferences and briefings (often through the Science Media Centre) ( • the Met Office has an award-winning outreach programme aimed at encouraging young people to study science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and to find out more about the work of the Met Office, including climate science. More than 280 staff are STEM Ambassadors and the types of activities delivered vary widely, from workshops in schools to public engagement at music festivals. We reach more than 10,000 young people each year; • direct public participation in climate and weather science through the WOW site wow.metoffice.gov.uk/ and citizen-science research projects such as Old Weather 8.4.3 UK/Global 2050 Calculator The 2050 Calculator is a simple, user-friendly model of the UK’s energy system, launched in 2010. It allows a wide variety of people to explore the full range of options for reducing GHG emissions to the year 2050 and is based on rigorous scientific evidence.
People can use this open-source tool to see the impact of building nuclear power stations or wind farms, of reducing energy demand by insulating homes or driving less, and can build their own vision of the future. For each possible pathway the user can further investigate a range of impacts including on land- use, electricity, energy security, energy flows and costs. The Calculator has a unique web interface that is available for free online and is designed for policy makers and stakeholders. It provides instant results and allows users to consider the consequences and trade-offs of different scenarios. To aid transparency, the underlying Excel model is also available online, allowing technical users to explore all the assumptions and follow the calculations. From 2012 to 2017 a simplified, animated version called My2050 was available that allowed the public to build their own pathways that meet our 2050 emissions reduction target. A toolkit for teachers was also available to support its use in schools, offering lesson plans linked to the national curriculum. [The UK 2050 Calculator is currently being updated and is due to be launched in 2018.] The former Department for Energy and Climate Change (now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) received funding from the International Climate Fund to support 10 developing countries to build their own Calculators, as well as to develop a Global Calculator. Chapter 8 - Education, training and public awareness 271 All ten of these country Calculators have now launched, and they are having an impact on policy. For example, four countries used their models in the development of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for the Paris Agreement. There are now over 30 Calculators around the world covering different countries, regions and cities. The Global Calculator can be used to explore global options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting the international 2˚C target, and to see how those options affect one another. Access to the Calculator is available free online ( 8.4.4 Clean Growth Strategy and Green Great Britain Week In October 2017 , the Government published the Clean Growth Strategy, which sets out its proposal for decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy through the 2020s. As part of this, the strategy sets out plans to launch a Green Great Britain Week by working with private partners and NGOS. The aim of the event is to • focus on climate and air quality issues across the UK • Demonstrate our progress and successes on climate action • Share the latest climate science • Highlight and promote economic opportunities arising from clean growth especially to Social Media has been used as a tool to generate wider awareness of the UK government’s work on Clean Energy. In the run up to the publication of the Clean Growth strategy the BEIS twitter account @beisgovuk was used to raise awareness of the release and content of the strategy, including a livestream of the launch. 8.4.5 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and National Adaptation Programme Under the 2008 Climate Change Act, the government is required to publish a UK wide Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) every five years. The most recent one was published in 2017 . As part of this, the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) asked the Adaptation Sub Committee of the Committee on Climate Change to prepare an independent Evidence report on the latest risks and opportunities for the UK regarding climate change. The report will feed into the next UK National Adaptation Programme In compiling the report, the committee engaged with various stakeholders, and the report was peer reviewed by a technical review panel, and stakeholder and external reviewers, including a conference at the Royal Society174. Climate Local was the primary initiative for local government action on climate change. It offers a framework that can reflect local priorities and opportunities for action. It supports councils’ efforts both to reduce carbon emissions and to improve their resilience to the anticipated Getting involved in Climate Local helped councils across the country to capture the 172 173 assessment-2017/introduction-to-the-ccra/ 174 assessment-2017/introduction-to-the-ccra/

272 7th National Communication opportunities and benefits of action on a changing climate, through saving on their energy bills, generating income from renewable energy, attracting new jobs and investment in ‘green’ industries, reducing flood risks and managing the impacts of extreme weather. As of 2016, 113 councils and one national park had signed up to Climate Local and 71 action plans have been submitted, covering 96 councils and a national park.175 The programme Since 2013, the focus of the Welsh Government’s public awareness activity on climate change has been through digital channels, primarily the Welsh Government’s website, infographics and social media. Activity is planned around key milestones to maximise impact. For instance, digital public awareness campaigns were undertaken during UNFCCC COP 21 and COP 23 using social media and publishing of blog articles. The Welsh Government also uses online interactive tools to help the public understand greenhouse emissions and international mitigation activity. The Welsh government also provides practical guides to business, public and voluntary sectors in Wales to help make a robust and sustainable case for tackling the causes and consequences of climate change. For instance Resource Efficient Wales was a Welsh Government service (2014 to 2017) that provided trustworthy information, advice and help for people and organisations to save on energy, water and waste. The Welsh Government has recently strengthened its legislative framework on climate change through the introduction of the Well-Being of the Future Generations Act 2015 and Environment Act 2016. Climate change is integral to all the Well-being of Future Generations Act’s well-being goals which recognises that the case for action on climate change is clear and fundamental to our future prosperity and future resilience of our communities. This Act also established a Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and as at its heart effective public involvement to better understand the needs of communities and people.
Engagement work in 2016-17 has identified climate change as one of the Commissioner’s key emerging priorities. Young people are also at the heart of Welsh Government’s approach to public engagement on climate change and environmental matters. For instance during bill stages of the Environment Act the Keep Wale Tidy ran a completion using the Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) as the means of raising awareness among the 11-21 age group. In addition to funding the Eco-Schools programme (details at Chapter 3) which helps to raise awareness of climate change in schools containing over 400,000 children in Wales, the Welsh Government contributes funding towards the core costs of the tree-planting and conservation charity Size of Wales which was created by the Wales’ Millennium Development Goals Task Force as part of Wales’ response to the dual challenges of climate change and international The original aim of Size of Wales was to bring people in Wales together to help sustain an area of tropical forest “the size of Wales” (some two million hectares) as part of a national response to climate change. The goal was reached in March 2013 and, since then, Size of Wales and its supporters have set a new target of protecting an area of rainforest equivalent to “twice the size of Wales” (four million hectares). 175

Chapter 8 - Education, training and public awareness 273 Through its work, Size of Wales unites communities, businesses, third sector organisations and schools to help forge lasting links with some of the world’s poorest people. They have direct links to rainforest projects and communities to assist sustainable management of forest resources and to make a significant contribution to reducing global carbon emissions. By doing so, Size of Wales helps Wales meet its global responsibilities and targets for tackling climate change. Size of Wales is involved in work in Uganda, DR Congo, Kenya, Peru, Zimbabwe By providing support towards core funding costs, the Welsh Government ensures all funds raised by supporters can be allocated directly to rainforest projects. To date, the Waterloo Foundation has provided an annual “match funding” pot which ensures donations for forestry projects up to that amount are effectively doubled. Core funding also covers climate change education and awareness raising projects. This delivers a specific climate change education programme targeted at primary and secondary schools. The programme includes free workshops, assemblies, resources and projects about climate change and deforestation aimed at encouraging and enthusing pupils to understand and take action on climate change in their communities. Size of Wales’ work in schools helps to spread awareness of climate change and why forests are vital to our global climate systems by helping to absorb the carbon dioxide we emit. Size of Wales works closely with Eco-Schools in delivering this work to children and young people. Size of Wales also has close links with the “10 Million Trees” tree-planting project in Mbale, Uganda which receives ongoing funding under the Wales for Africa programme which comes under the responsibility of the Welsh Government’s First Minister. This project has already planted over 6 million trees and forms a key part of the education and engagement work carried out by Size of Wales. It showcases pioneering work in providing incomes for farmers and families through fruit and coffee crops and bee-keeping, shade for animals and people, soil stabilization and helping reduce carbon emissions. Go Green Day is the annual fundraising day organised by Size of Wales which sees schools, businesses and communities across Wales take action to increase climate change awareness and raise funds for forest projects across Africa and South America. Go Green Day helps deliver the two key priorities in tackling climate • By reducing greenhouse gases we produce by changing the way we use energy; • By preparing for the consequences of the climate change that is already happening because of greenhouse gases already emitted. Go Green Day provides an opportunity to support a Wales-wide fundraising day of action to help tackle climate change and safeguard tropical forests. All proceeds raised during Go Green Day are doubled by the Size of Wales match fund. People learn more about climate change and the importance of trees, both in a Wales and in a global context and the many environmental, social and economic benefits they bring. Size of Wales is also involved in the “Plant!” scheme whereby two new trees are planted to celebrate every new birth and adoption in Wales, one in Wales and one in Mbale, Uganda. The scheme is delivered in Wales by Natural Resources Wales in conjunction with the Woodland Trust. Over 300,000 trees have been planted to date and a series of events is planned for 2018 to commemorate the scheme’s 10

274 7th National Communication The Scottish government’s ‘Greener Together’ Campaign, running since January 2012, promotes 10 key behaviours to help householders reduce emissions. The campaign uses television, outdoor and digital social advertising, supported by a website and helpline. Through encouraging people to ‘Go Greener Together’ to create a cleaner, greener, healthier Scotland, the campaign’s focus on collective action is designed to have a significant and long- lasting impact on behaviours. As part of on-going engagement with the public, the Scottish Government initiated a series of climate conversations across Scotland to ‘take the temperature’ of public views on climate change and actions that might be needed to tackle it. Findings from the first series of Climate Conversations held throughout 2016 have been published on our the Other climate change public engagement and programmes which receive Scottish government • The Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SCCAN) – a network of community groups and organisations that aims to empower and enable communities to create a low carbon future, and promote local resilience and wellbeing. • Eco-Congregation Scotland – an ecumenical movement which helps congregations link environmental issues to their faith and take action in their church and local Through Scotland’s Climate Week, the Scottish Government supports engagement on climate change in the public sector.
Scotland’s Climate Week has been running since 2016. It is designed to engage people and organisations in events and activities in order to raise the profile of climate change and inspire action across the public sector and beyond. An objective of the current Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme is to raise awareness of the likely effects of climate change and the need for adaptation action. To meet this objective, Northern Ireland departments continually engage with sector stakeholders to improve resilience to the impacts of climate change and share best practice in Climate Northern Ireland, which was set up and is funded by the Northern Ireland Government, has formed an extensive partnership across government and through a number of external stakeholders. It brings together members from a range of key sectors to share best practice and promote positive action to address the impacts of a changing climate and raise awareness. 176

The UK is pleased to submit its third biennial report. This provides information on GHG emissions and trends, including information on the UK 2. Information on greenhouse gas emissions and trends In 2015 total emissions for the UK by UNFCCC coverage were 506.8 MtCO2e. This compares with emissions of 796.8 MtCO2 in 1990, representing a decrease in emissions of around 36.4%. UK from 1990 to 2015 by gas and by sector. The data are presented under UNFCCC coverage with and without net emissions or removals from LULUCF. greenhouse gases (GHGs) covered by the Kyoto Protocol. Annual GHG emissions estimates for 2015 were an estimated 38% below the fixed base year1 emissions. This has been driven by a number of factors such as a move away from coal-fired generation towards the use of natural gas and renewable sources, tighter regulation of landfills, increased utilisation of landfill methane in gas flares and engines and abatement technology in adipic acid and nitric acid manufacture. Further information can be in found in sections 2.7 and 2.8 of the UK’s 7th National 1 The Base Year for emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide is 1990. The Base Year for emissions of fluorinated gases (F-gases) is 1995. The Fixed Base Year is taken from the UK’s Initial Report under the Kyoto Protocol. This report was submitted in 2006, based on emissions reported in the 1990-2004 Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and was subject to official review in 2007. For the purposes of calculating achievement of the Kyoto Protocol target emissions occurring in this base year are now fixed, in MtCO

278 7th National Communication Greenhouse gas emissions (MtCO2e) Total greenhouse gas emissions 2015 UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions Carbon dioxide had the largest share of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, making up 81% of the inventory. Methane was the second largest with 11%, followed by nitrous oxide with 5%, other greenhouse gases made up 3% of emissions. Further information can be in found in section 2.6 of the UK’s 7th National Communication. The Energy Supply sector had the largest share of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, making up 29% of the inventory, further information can be found in 2.6 of the UK’s 7th National Communication. 2.2 National inventory arrangements The UK’s GHG inventory is compiled under contract to the Department of Business Energy and 2 by a consortium led by the environment consultancy Ricardo Energy and Environment (REE). REE3 also compiles the UK’s Air Quality Pollutant Inventory, used for reporting emissions to other international agreements, including the Gothenburg Protocol and the UNECE Convention on Long Range Trans boundary Air Pollution. Most of the underlying information is held on common databases and this helps ensure consistency between these inventories. Emissions estimates from the energy supply sector, industrial processes sector and waste management sector are produced under the REE contract. Emissions from the agricultural sector are provided by Rothamsted Research under contract to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and emissions and removals in the LULUCF sector are produced on behalf of BEIS by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and The GHG inventory is compiled annually according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines and Good Practice Guidance (IPCC, 1996, 2000 and 2003) and with regard to the 2006 Guidelines (IPCC, 2006). 4 Methodological improvements take account of new data sources, updated guidance from IPCC, relevant work by organisations such as CORINAIR (the European inventory system for certain air pollutants) and specific research 2 Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET, +44(0) 2072155000, enquiries@beis.gov.uk 3 Ricardo Energy and Environment, 30 Eastbourne Terrace, London, W2 6LA, +44 (0) 1235 753 000, 4 IPCC

Annex 1: Quantified economy-wide emission reduction (QEWER) target 279 programmes sponsored by Government Departments including DECC, Defra and Department for Transport (DfT) together with the Devolved Administrations. All methodological improvements are applied back to 1990 to ensure a consistent time series. The UK operates an established national system for GHG emissions estimation, reporting and archiving. There are a wide range of activities that take place as part of this system. These • collecting and processing data from a wide range of sources; • selecting appropriate emissions factors and estimation methods according to IPCC • managing all aspects of inventory Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) • including the QC of raw and processed data and data management tools; • documentation and archiving; • prioritisation of methodology and data improvements; and • completing uncertainty assessments. Further information can be found in section 2.3 of the UK’s 7th National Communication. 2.3 Changes since the last National Communication Since the publication of the sixth National Communication in 2013, various updates and revisions to methodologies have been implemented in the UK’s GHG inventory that have impacted on the time-series of emissions. Summary information on the major revisions to the UK GHG since the publication of the UK’s sixth National Communication can be found in section 2.10 of the UK’s 7th National Communication. information see Chapter 2 of the UK’s Seventh National Communication. 3.
Quantified economy-wide emission reduction (QEWER) target Chapter 3 of the Seventh National Communication provides information on the policies and measures that contribute to the UK meeting its quantified economy-wide emissions targets. Alongside the European Union and its member States, the UK communicated an independent quantified economy-wide emission reduction target of 20% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels (base year). The target for the European Union and its member states is based on the understanding that it will be fulfilled jointly with the European Union and its member states. The 2020 target is unconditional and supported by legislation in place since 2009 (climate and The climate and energy package implements the 2020 emissions reduction target. The reduction effort is shared out as • a 21% reduction in emissions from sectors covered by the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) compared to 2005 levels;

280 7th National Communication • around 10% reduction from most other sectors compared to 2005. These sectors are covered by the Effort Sharing Decision (ESD). Since a single, EU-wide cap on EU ETS emissions has been introduced from 2013, the effort- sharing arrangement between member states under the ESD has been determined solely for the reduction in emissions from non-traded sectors that are not covered by the EU ETS. Further information can be found in the cross-cutting section of this chapter. The ESD establishes binding annual GHG emission targets for member states for the period 2013-2020. These targets concern emissions from most sectors not included in the EU ETS such as transport (except aviation and international maritime shipping), buildings, agriculture and waste. The UK’s ESD target is a reduction of 16% compared to 2005 GHG emissions levels By 2020, the UK’s national target along with other member state targets will collectively deliver a reduction of around 10% in total EU emissions from the sectors covered compared with 2005 levels. Together with a 21% cut in emissions covered by the EU ETS, this will accomplish the overall emission reduction goal of the climate and energy package of a 20% cut below 1990 The EU has also agreed on a new 2030 framework for Climate and Energy under the Clean Energy Package, which includes targets and policy aims and objects for the period 2020-2030. • at least a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions • at least a 27% share of renewable energy consumption 5 established the world’s first long-term legally-binding framework to reduce GHG emissions, committing the UK to reducing its emissions by at least 80% below the 1990 baselines levels by 2050, with an interim target to reduce GHG emissions by at least 34% compared to the 1990 baseline by 2020. This section discusses the carbon budgets and the UK’s progress in achieving them. The UK has established in law the first five carbon budgets covering the period from 2008-2032, with the sixth carbon budget due to be set in 2021. Each carbon budget is split • a traded sector, which covers power and heavy industry and for which the limit is based on the UK’s share of the EU ETS limit for the relevant period; and • a non-traded sector, which covers everything else, for example road transport, 5

Annex 1: Quantified economy-wide emission reduction (QEWER) target 281 To calculate UK performance against these targets, data is taken from the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory (as detailed in Chapter 2 of the Seventh National Communication). These include emissions from LULUCF. The data are then adjusted to take into account removals of emissions from the atmosphere by carbon sinks associated with LULUCF activity. 282 7th National Communication This gives net UK emissions, which are further adjusted to account • carbon units which have been bought in from overseas by Government and others to offset UK emissions (“credits”), thereby reducing the net UK carbon account; and • UK carbon units which have been sold to a third party outside the UK or otherwise disposed of (“debits”), which increase the net UK carbon account as the recipient can use these units to offset their own emissions and it would lead to double counting if they were also used to offset UK emissions. • The effect of these adjustments is that the traded sector of the UK’s net account is taken to be the same as the UK’s share of the EU ETS cap. The detailed rules for these calculations are contained in the Carbon Accounting Regulations 2009 • Further details on the approach to counting emissions and removals from the LULUCF sector can be found in Chapter 2 of the Sixth National Communication. International aviation and shipping emissions are not currently included within the 2050 target defined by the Act or within the four carbon budgets. The fifth carbon budget was set excluding aviation and shipping. Targets and projected performance CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 (2008-12) (2013-17) (2018-22) (2023-27) (2028-32) Carbon budget level (MtC02e) 3,018 2,782 2,544 1,950 1,725 of which traded 1,233 1,078 985 690 590 of which non-traded 1,785 1,704 1,559 1,260 1,135 Percentage reduction below base year levels 25% 31% 37% 51% 57% The carbon budgets extend to UK territory only (i.e. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and not to the UK’s Overseas territories. The government has in place a clearly defined suite of policies to reduce emissions to meet its carbon budgets, which are detailed in Chapter 3 of the Seventh National Communication, Emissions Projection, the UK met the first carbon budget with headroom of 36 MtCO and is projected to meet the second and third carbon budgets with headroom of 125 and There are projected shortfalls against the fourth and fifth carbon budgets of 94 MtCO2e and 196 MtCO2e, respectively, as policies and proposals in the Clean Growth Strategy6 are developed more fully, their impacts will be included as appropriate in future projections. In December 2011, the Government published its Carbon Plan which set out proposals for achieving the emissions reductions committed to in the first four carbon budgets.
In October 2017 , the Government published the Clean Growth Strategy, setting out possible pathways for meeting the fifth carbon budget. Focus on key policies and proposals • Improving business and industry efficiency accounting for 25% of UK emission. • Improving homes accounting for 13% of UK emissions. 6 BEIS Clean Growth Strategy, published in October 2017 , available system/uploads/attachment_data/file/651916/BEIS_The_Clean_Growth_online_12.10.17 .pdf

Annex 1: Quantified economy-wide emission reduction (QEWER) target 283 • Accelerating the Shift to Low Carbon Transport accounting for 24% of UK Emissions. • Delivering Clean, Smart, Flexible Power accounting for 21% of UK Emissions. • Enhancing the Benefits and value of our Natural Resources accounting for 15% of These are explored in more depth in Chapter 3 of the Seventh National Communication. The Climate Change Act permits the Government to use ‘flexibilities’, such as surplus from previous Carbon budgets or the purchase of good quality international carbon credits to meet carbon budgets. The government will decide whether to use flexibilities to help meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets following consultations with Devolved Administrations, and obtaining and taking into account advice from the Committee on Climate Change. 3.4 Monitoring progress and methodology The UK government’s approach to managing carbon budgets centres on a series of annually • An annual statement of emissions which shows what emissions were in the past year and where they came from (Annual statement of emissions for 2015 – Publications – • An annual report from the independent Committee on Climate Change on progress against carbon budgets (Meeting Carbon Budgets – 2016 Progress Report to Parliament | Committee on Climate Change); • Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change’s annual progress report (Committee on Climate Change progress government response – • Updated energy and emissions projections, which assess the expected impact of our policies on future emissions trends (Updated energy and emissions 2017 – The First Carbon budget required that total UK greenhouse gas emissions did not exceed total UK greenhouse gas emissions do not exceed 3,018 MtCO 2e over the five year budget period (2013-2017), which equated to approximately 25% below the Carbon budget. The net UK carbon account for the 2008-2012 period was 2,982 MtCO2e, meaning the first carbon budget was met with a headroom of 36 MtCO2e. The UK estimates future performance against the target’s using BEIS’ updated Energy and Emissions projections. Unlike the National Communication report, the Energy and Emissions 7 also includes planned policies (this scenario is known as ‘with additional measures’ or WAM). Further detail can be found in Chapter 4 of the Seventh National 7 Figures available in Energy and Emission Projection report due to be published in January 2018. 284 7th National Communication The level of emissions in the ‘base year’ is calculated on the basis of emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in 1990, and emissions of hydrofluorcarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexaflouride in 1995. The level of emissions in the base year also includes an allowance for net emissions from LULUCF sector in 1990. The baseline level of emissions is revised annually. 4. Progress in achievement of QEWER target 4.1 Performance against the second carbon budget, 2013-2017 The second carbon budget requires that total UK greenhouse gas emissions do not exceed 2e over the five year budget period (20013-2017), which equates to an average over the period of approximately 31% below the carbon budget baseline. 4.2 Pace of Emissions In October 2017 , the Government published its Clean Growth Strategy, 8 setting out policies and proposals for meeting future carbon budgets and illustrative pathways for the 2050 target. against carbon budgets9 with the initial estimates of a subset of new early stage policies and The updated projections for the fourth and fifth carbon budgets (including estimates of emission reductions from a subset of Clean Growth Strategy policies and proposals) suggests that the UK could deliver 97 per cent and 95 per cent of the required performance against 1990 levels – for carbon budgets which will end in ten and fifteen years’ time respectively. Actual Projection Projection Projection Projection Carbon Budget level, cumulative emissions 3,018 2,782 2,544 1,950 1,725 Average required reduction vs 1990 emissions, % -25% -31% -37% -51% -57% Existing policies10 Projected emissions, Mt 2,982 2,657 2,401 2,044 1,921 Projected emissions, Mt 2,982 2,657 2,401 2,014 1,841 emissions, Mt -36 -125 -143 64 116 Result vs. Budget, % -1.2% -4.5% -5.6% 3.3% 6.7% Energy and Emissions Projections 2017 8 Clean Growth published in October 2017. 9 The Clean Growth Strategy quoted the latest available projections at the time of publication (EEP 2016). Emissions projections from the Clean Growth Strategy are therefore not directly comparable to the projections 10 This represents the ‘with additional measures’ scenario, i.e. including planned policies but not including new policies and proposals from the Clean Growth Strategy. 11 Includes emissions reduction estimates of a subset of new early stage policies and proposals from the Clean Growth Strategy showing an additional potential reduction of up to 30Mt and 80Mt over the fourth and fifth carbon budget periods respectively. Based on the ‘with additional measures’ scenario, progress against future carbon budgets is • The 2017 projections show that the second and third carbon budgets, covering 2013 to 2022, are likely to be achieved. The reference case projection would meet the second carbon budget with a margin of 125 MtCO 2e and the third carbon budget with • There are projected shortfalls for the fourth carbon budget. These projections are highly uncertain and only some of this uncertainty is captured in modelling and presented in the ranges here (see Chapter 6 of the EEP report). • As policies and proposals in the Clean Growth Strategy are developed more fully, their impacts will be included as appropriate in future EEP editions. In 2015, emissions of the basket of seven greenhouse gases (GHGs) covered by the Kyoto 12 are estimated to be 499 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), 37.8% lower than the 1990 level of 803 MtCO2e.
Emissions from this basket of GHGs are projected to fall to 414 MtCO2e (48% below the 1990 level) by 2020 and 382 MtCO2e by 2030 (52% below • Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are projected to be 44%, 65% and 57% respectively, below 1990 levels by 2020. • Emissions of the fluorinated GHGs (Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF 6) are collectively projected to be 32% below their Since the 2nd Biennial Report, the UK has implemented further policies to help meet its EU effort sharing, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, and the Carbon Budgets13 set under the 2008 Climate Change Act.14 5.2 Overall projections of GHG emissions This chapter presents the UK’s GHG emissions projections, in a scenario ‘with existing measures’ (or ‘WEM’), along with assumptions and methodology. The UK projections provide the basis for this Biennial Report. 2020 to 2035, by GHG. The historic emissions set out in this chapter are based on the UK GHG inventory 1990 – 2015 published and submitted to the UNFCCC in 2017 . The tables of emissions in this chapter are reported on the basis of UNFCCC coverage, which includes UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories and excludes the impact of 12 The basket of greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol consists of seven carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride. 13 14

286 7th National Communication They show that UK GHG emissions including LULUCF are projected to be 48% below 1990 levels in 2020 and 52% below in 2030. GHG excluding LULUCF 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 Carbon Dioxide 595.3 559.8 560.6 563.6 507.5 415.7 346.5 318.1 322.9 326.4 Methane 135.3 128.8 111.0 89.3 68.2 52.6 46.8 43.7 41.2 40.3 Nitrous Oxide 48.9 39.5 29.2 25.4 22.5 21.7 20.5 20.1 20.0 20.0 Hydrofluorocarbons 14.4 19.1 9.9 13.2 16.5 16.0 11.1 7.3 4.3 2.7 Perfluorocarbons 1.7 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 Sulphur Hexafluoride 1.3 1.3 1.8 1.1 0.7 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.5 Nitrogen Trifluoride 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Total 796.8 749.1 713.1 692.9 615.7 506.8 425.5 389.9 389.1 390.1 Change from 1990 0.0 -0.1 -0.1 -0.1 -0.2 -0.4 -0.5 -0.5 -0.5 -0.5 Carbon Dioxide 598.5 560.4 558.8 558.4 499.9 406.8 333.8 3 07.4 314.2 319.3 Methane 135.3 128.8 111.1 89.4 68.3 52.6 46.8 43.7 41.2 40.3 Nitrous Oxide 51.3 41.9 31.4 27.3 24.2 23.2 22.1 21.9 21.9 22.0 Hydrofluorocarbons 14.4 19.1 9.9 13.2 16.5 16.0 11.1 7.3 4.3 2.7 Perfluorocarbons 1.7 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 Sulphur hexafluoride 1.3 1.3 1.8 1.1 0.7 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.5 Nitrogen Trifluoride 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Total 802.5 752.1 713.6 689.7 609.9 499.4 414.4 381.0 382.4 385.0 Change from 1990 0.0 -0.1 -0.1 -0.1 -0.2 -0.4 -0.5 -0.5 -0.5 -0.5 Carbon Dioxide 3.2 0.6 -1.8 -5.2 -7.5 -8.9 -12.7 -10.7 -8.6 -7.1 Methane 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Nitrous Oxide 2.5 2.4 2.3 1.9 1.7 1.5 1.6 1.8 1.9 2.0 Total 5.7 3.0 0.5 -3.2 -5.8 -7.4 -11.1 -8.9 -6.7 -5.1 UK GHG Inventory, 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections Sector 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2030 Agriculture 59.3 58.7 55.2 51.5 48.9 49.4 46.9 45.0 44.6 44.4 Business 114.6 112.5 116.5 110.1 95.1 84.9 76.2 66.7 60.0 57.5 Energy Supply 279.1 239.2 222.2 232.3 208.1 145.5 87.6 69.3 75.6 77.7 Industrial processes 60.0 50.9 27.1 20.6 12.7 12.7 10.0 9.4 9.0 8.8 5.7 3.0 0.5 -3.2 -5.8 -7.4 -11.1 -8.9 -6.7 -5.1 Public 13.5 13.3 12.1 11.2 9.7 8.1 7.0 6.9 7.5 7.9 Residential 80.4 82.0 89.1 86.1 87.9 66.7 66.8 67.7 71.7 75.4 Transport 123.0 123.3 127.8 131.7 121.3 121.0 117.1 112.8 109.4 107.7 Waste management 66.9 69.3 63.0 49.4 31.9 18.4 13.9 12.2 11.2 10.7 Total net GHG emissions 802.5 752.1 713.6 689.7 609.9 499.4 414.4 381.0 382.4 385.0 UK GHG Inventory, 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections

UK GHG Inventory, 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections UK GHG Inventory, 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections 5.5 Total effect of policies and measures The projections presented here (the ‘with existing measures’ scenario) include the impact of all the UK’s implemented and adopted policies and measures. These policies and measures and their projected CO2e savings are detailed in the Annex. It does not include policies which are classed as planned, so these figures differ from those quoted in the Energy and emissions attributable to policies adopted between April 2009 and July 2017 , as estimated in the 2017 UK EEP . For example, in 2020 we project that UK policies will deliver emissions reductions measures2015 2020 2025 2030 2035Source: 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections

288 7th National Communication 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections Emissions excluding the impact of measures adopted Savings from measures adopted 2009-15 (excluding Emissions including all implemented or adopted measures (excluding planned policies) Projections of the UK’s emissions of CO2 and combustion-related emissions of other greenhouses gases (CH4 and NO2) have been largely derived from the BEIS Energy and Emissions Projections (EEP) model suite. This models the UK energy market including final sector energy use and the electricity supply sector. It includes a mixed (top down/ bottom up) econometric model of energy demand and combustion related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the UK economy and a bottom-up supply side model. The sector classification source, and the principal source of energy statistics, is the Digest of UK Energy Energy use projections are converted to emissions projections using the same fuel emissions factors used to produce the UK National Inventory, with some additional calibration to take account of any energy uses not captured in the DUKES. Industrial process emissions are calibrated by relating inventory emission to production. The EEP model projects emissions using prospects for fossil fuel prices, carbon prices, economic growth and demographics. Sources for these assumptions are given in the chapter.
Projections of energy demand by fuel and sector start from a baseline econometric Business as Usual Projection, from which savings due to Policies and Measures are then subtracted. The projections include all firm and funded government environmental policy measures as most recently evaluated. These are all considered to be adopted policies, and for this National Communication we do not include those that only have planned status. The overall modelling approach is similar to that used in the previous Biennial Report, although there have been improvements in each sector. The UK’s dependant crown dependencies and overseas territories are not included in the projections the UK produces annually to monitor progress against its own carbon budgets. For this Biennial Report the UK has supplemented its annual projection with projections for these areas consistent with the UK 1990-2015 GHG Inventory (see chapter 1). The UK has produced simple trend projections for GHGs within each sector, assuming a continuation of the linear trends observed in the period 2007-2015. The UK’s energy and emissions projections are based on a set of key assumptions about UK economic growth, demographic changes in the UK and future fuel price trajectories. The main sources of the projections are the forecasts made by the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility and Office for National Statistics, supplemented by IMF projections of world growth. Fuel prices

Updated Energy and Emissions Projections are published annually. This uses the economic assumptions and projections produced for the UK government by the Office of Budget UK GDP up to 2021 is based on the March 2017 Economic and Fiscal Outlook15 and beyond 2021 is based on the January 2017 Fiscal Sustainability Report.16 Population projections were produced in 2014 by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS)17 alongside a supporting methodology description.18 Household projections are based on those produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government which combine ONS population projections with household formation propensities.19 Projections were produced separately for England (2014), Scotland (2012), Wales (2011) and Northern Ireland (2012) and combined to produce UK figures. 5.8 Quality Assurance/Quality Control Quality assurance of modelling undertaken by government departments has taken on a greater emphasis following the publication of the Macpherson Review in 2013.20 Energy projections and the energy-related emission projections are produced in BEIS by a small team (the ‘EEP modelling team’) whose key task is the production of energy and emissions projections and the communication of results. This team also puts together the overall projections and quality assures the inputs from the other teams. Changes are made to the model incrementally and then quality assured to confirm that the change has face validity. Results from the electricity generation sub-sector modelling are quality assured independently by the team responsible for the DDM. Both interim and final results are presented to a steering group and also circulated to The annual published projections are formally reviewed by the Committee on Climate Fossil fuel prices, policy impact, economic and demographic growth are all subject to modelling error and natural variation driven by factors such as temperature. In order to model this, randomly selected trajectories of values drawn from the uncertainty ranges for 36 key parameters, including GDP , population, fossil fuel prices, annual temperatures and policy savings were combined in a 10000 run Monte Carlo simulation to assess the 15 16 17 bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29 18 methodologies/nationalpopulationprojectionsqmi 19 20 analytical_models_final_report_040313.pdf

290 7th National Communication Annual total territorial emissions, MtCO2e 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections 2017 Energy and Emissions Projections 5.10 Differences from the last Biennial Report Report, which was based on projections produced in 2015. The main differences between the two projections include additional implemented and adopted polices, some re-estimations of the impact of policies, improved modelling, revised fossil fuel price and economic growth assumptions. The projections have also been updated to take into account improvements to the historical inventory and other improvements to methods, emission factors and activity data. The net effect of these changes is to reduce projected emissions in 2020 from 44% below 1990 levels in the Sixth National Communication to 48% below 1990 levels in the Second Biennial Report. The projected reduction of 40 MtCO 2 between the two projections is mostly due to projected reductions in CO2 emissions. Annex 1: Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to developing countries 291 Second Biennial Report Third Biennial Report GHG including LULUCF 1990 2020 Projected Carbon Dioxide 599.3 368.2 -39% 598.5 333.8 -44% Methane 137.2 48.0 -65% 135.3 46.8 -65% Nitrous Oxide 57.2 26.8 -53% 51.3 22.1 -57% Hydrofluorocarbons 14.6 11.0 -25% 14.4 11.1 -23% Perfluorocarbons 1.7 0.2 -87% 1.7 0.3 -84% Sulphur Hexafluoride 1.3 0.5 -63% 1.3 0.4 -70% Nitrogen Trifluoride – – -13% 0.0 0.0 -100% Total GHG 811.2 454.6 -44% 802.5 414.4 -48% 6. Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to • Building on the provision of £3.87 billion in International Climate Finance (ICF) between 2011/12-2015/16, the UK has committed to further scale up climate finance to at least £5.8 billion between 2016/17-2020/21.21 The UK’s ICF helps developing countries mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, reduce deforestation and pursue clean economic growth. UK ICF is focussed on transformational change, reflecting the scale of the challenge of climate change. This includes unlocking the potential of the private sector, with UK ICF mobilising £500 million in private finance • Since 2011, the UK has used its ICF to install more than 400 megawatts of clean energy capacity and to reduce or avoid 9.2m tonnes of CO will continue to grow as new and ambitious programmes like the £177 .5 million Sustainable Infrastructure Programme are delivered. The UK continues to apply and share lessons learned from its extensive ICF monitoring & evaluation framework, improving effectiveness and enhancing transparency. • Recognising that adaptation is a priority for many developing countries, the UK aims to spend half of its climate finance on adaptation, and achieved this aim in 2016. Since 2013, the UK has provided over £1.4 billion to in climate finance for adaptation.
To date, the UK’s ICF has supported more than 34 million people to adapt to the • The UK is committed to an effective international climate finance architecture, and has been one of the largest contributors to major multilateral climate funds like the Green Climate Fund (£720 million) and the Climate Investment Funds (£2 billion). The UK has also supported multilateral development bank ambition as they scale up their activities towards their 2020 climate finance pledges. • The UK has supported international knowledge generating organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has committed to global initiatives aimed at accelerating clean energy like Mission Innovation. 21 Financial years 2011/12 to 2014/15. 292 7th National Communication • In 2015, the UK, Germany and Norway (GNU) announced that they would provide up to $5 billion between 2015 and 2020 in finance to tackle deforestation, subject to ambitious and high quality proposals. • Through its ICF and other international action, the UK is continuing to scale up support towards the shared developed country goal of jointly mobilising $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries from a range of sources by 2020. Beyond this, the UK is focussed on helping developing countries put in place the conditions to align finance flows with low greenhouse gas and climate resilient development, including by creating the right conditions to unlock green investment for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and by phasing out the most polluting activities. Climate change is a global challenge requiring action from all countries. The UK has played a key role in demonstrating international leadership by reducing its own emissions and supporting other countries to do the same. This chapter will discuss the support and financial assistance that the UK provides to developing countries, where climate change represents the biggest challenge to long-term global poverty reduction, to help avert the worst outcomes of climate change and increase the resilience of the most vulnerable countries to a changing climate. The remainder of the section is structured as • An overview of the types of climate finance provided by the UK, centred around its International Climate Finance (ICF). • How climate finance has been allocated since the last Biennial Review, including adaptation and mitigation and with detailed examples of programming in UK priority areas of forestry, private finance and carbon markets. • How the UK is acting to promote, facilitate and transfer technology to • Other actions the UK is taking to help developing countries access finance, attract investment and align finance flows with low greenhouse gas and climate-resilient • How the ICF is using its monitoring and evaluation framework to apply lessons learned 6.3 Overview of UK Support and Channels The UK is among the largest contributors of public climate finance and is committed to providing support which is transparent, transformative and in line with the needs and priorities of developing countries. UK climate finance builds on a tradition of UK leadership in providing support to developing countries. UK climate finance is provided from the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget which has consistently risen over time, from £7 .3 billion in 2009 to £13.4 billion in 2016. UK climate finance represents a new commitment which is additional to historic ODA levels and is not diverting or detracting from broader development spending. The UK has a dedicated ring-fence of its ODA budget for climate finance – the ICF – and uses this as a frame of reference to ensure our climate finance is separate from non-climate ODA. We can also track the amount of climate finance within the overall ODA spend and also the non-climate related ODA spend to ensure that non-climate ODA is not decreasing as our climate spend increases. Annex 1: Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to developing countries 293 The UK remains committed to promoting climate smart development across the aid portfolio, consistent with the Global Goals and an essential condition for driving sustainable development A key objective of UK climate finance is to improve the effectiveness of the international climate finance architecture, including by building in-country support and enhancing country ownership for low carbon climate-resilient development. The UK has an extensive network of officials based in developing countries working for the Department for International Development (DFID) and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This ensures close relationships with governments and key organisations in these countries and the development of bilateral programmes based on developing country needs. The UK also provides support through multilateral funds and multilateral development banks. The UK continues to encourage and support the use of these funds in response to projects and plans driven by the needs of developing countries and in line with nationally determined comprehensive plans. The UK is firmly committed to the joint developed country agreement to mobilise $100 billion of climate finance a year from a variety of sources by 2020. At COP21 in Paris, developed countries were asked to produce a ‘concrete roadmap’ to show how they would achieve this goal. The UK and Australia, working with other developed countries, produced this Roadmap and presented it at COP22 in Marrakech. The Roadmap indicated that based on current pledges, and building on the estimated level of $62 billion in climate finance mobilised in 2014, the $100 billion goal could be achieved with a modest increase in the rate of mobilisation of private finance. The UK continues to work with its international partners to implement the actions outlined in the Roadmap and make progress towards the goal, in line with developing Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will require a broad shift in finance flows to align the global economy with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas and climate resilient development. This transformational goal provides the basis for the UK’s approach to climate finance, and the UK acts through a number of bilateral and multilateral channels to ensure that support helps to build capacity and nurture lasting change, for instance through engagement of private investors.
6.3.1 The UK’s International Climate Finance (ICF) Recognising the growing importance and urgency of tackling climate change and its impact on growth and poverty reduction, the UK invested £3.87 billion in International Climate Finance (ICF) from 2011-2016 (financial years 2011/12 to 2014/15). The UK has committed to provide at least a further £5.8 billion from 2016-2020 (financial years 2016/17 to 2020/21), with a commitment to achieve a 50:50 balance between mitigation and adaptation over this period. This will lead to a doubling in UK climate finance in 2020, relative to 2014. This commitment reflects the UK’s view that climate change is the biggest threat to the long-term eradication of global poverty, and that the impacts of climate change will hit the poorest hardest. The UK’s ICF is supporting a portfolio of investments managed by the Department for International Development (DFID), Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It aims to support international poverty eradication now and in the future by helping developing countries to manage risk and build resilience to the impacts of climate change, take up low-carbon development at scale, and manage natural resources sustainably. To achieve this, UK ICF delivers transformational change through well-targeted finance which, for example, helps to pay the incremental cost of making infrastructure investments climate-smart and avoid lock-in of high carbon technologies. It also incentivises countries to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable land use. This demonstrates that low-carbon,

294 7th National Communication climate-resilient development paths are viable and compatible with economic growth and Cumulative data collected between 2011/12 and 2016/17 shows that UK ICF • Supported 34 million people to cope with the effects of climate change; • Provided 12 million people with improved access to clean energy; • Reduced or avoided 9.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (tCO2e); • Installed more than 400 MW of clean energy capacity; and • Mobilised £500 million private finance for climate change purposes in The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and its network of Posts around the world have advocated for a high ambition response to the collective challenge of limiting climate change during the reporting period. The partnerships that have been created between the UK and other countries have benefited from practical co-operation projects funded by the FCO Prosperity Fund, and the energy/low carbon work stream of its successor, the Cross Government Prosperity Fund, launched in 2015. Programmes have focused on promoting reforms to energy markets drawing upon the UK’s world-leading expertise on policy frameworks, energy system optimisation, promotion of renewable energy, roll out of smart technologies, and building a green finance industry to accelerate the transition to low carbon growth. Multi-year programmes worth up to £120 million under the new Cross Government Prosperity Fund will be designed in close co-operation with South East Asia, China, India, Brazil, and Mexico, and will be launched 6.3.3 The Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund The Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund leverage the internationally recognised strength of the UK’s research base, ensuring that UK science takes a leading role in promoting research and innovation to address development challenges, including flooding and famine caused by climate change, environmental degradation and the development of low carbon energy. The funds play a critical role in advancing development for the poorest people and countries, promoting long term sustainable growth. 6.3.4 Contributions to Multilateral Development Banks The UK is one of the largest contributors to multilateral development banks (MDBs), which have collectively committed over $100 billion in climate finance over the last four years. The MDBs have made significant pledges to scale up climate finance by 2020 and to better integrate climate considerations across their activities. Since the previous National Communication the UK has provided further capital contributions to MDBs working in low income countries. The UK is the largest donor to the International Development Association and has committed £3,336 million to its 18th replenishment. The UK has also committed £460 million to the 14th replenishment of the African Development Fund. 22 2017 UK Climate Finance

Annex 1: Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to developing countries 295 The UK continues to work with the MDBs to encourage ambition, effectiveness and transparency in the scaling up their financing of climate activities in developing countries, their co-operation with national and regional institutions and the further mainstreaming of climate dimensions into development activities. MDBs have reported jointly on outflows of climate 6.3.5 UK and UNFCCC Mandatory and Voluntary Contributions As a signatory to the UNFCCC, the UK pays mandatory subscriptions to contribute to ensuring an effective Secretariat to the UNFCCC and meetings of its Parties. The UK also makes voluntary contributions each year to fund priority activities within the • The UNFCCC Trust Fund for Supplementary Activities; • The UNFCCC Trust Fund for Developing Country Participation; and • The UNFCCC additional intersessional meetings. In addition, the UK provides small scale funding to help contribute to the costs of the OECD Climate Change Experts Group programme and to provide some small-scale targeted support to the most progressive and vulnerable countries in the negotiations, including through the The UK is supporting Fiji as the first Small Island Developing States COP Presidency with £1.7 million of funding across 2017-2018. UK support to the Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) was also continued in 2017 with up to £2 million provided to enable effective participation of the poorest developing nations in the UN climate negotiations. As a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UK makes voluntary contributions each year to the IPCC’s Trust Fund. The UK has committed to contributing £115k per year in 2017 , 2018 and 2019. The UK also committed to contributing an additional £115k in 2017 only, making its contribution £230k in total for this year.
This section sets out how the UK directs its climate finance, firstly by outlining the support the UK provides to the operating entities of the UNFCCC Financial Mechanism and other cross- cutting multilateral funds; then providing an outline of UK support for mitigation and adaptation activities. Finally, the section sets out actions in a number of UK ICF sectoral priorities – forestry, mobilising private finance and establishing international carbon markets. 6.4.1 Cross-cutting support through Multilateral Climate Funds, including the operating entities of the UNFCCC financial mechanism The UK has been a key supporter of both the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) since their formation and is committed to ensuring their effectiveness in delivering climate finance within the broader financial architecture. Since becoming operational in 2015, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has become the key multilateral climate fund, operating at scale to support low-greenhouse gas, climate resilient development in developing countries, with a mandate to make ‘an ambitious contribution to the global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change’. The UK is a strong supporter of the GCF having committed £720 million for the initial

296 7th National Communication resource mobilisation period (2015-18), and is committed to ensuring that the GCF delivers maximum impacts in the developing countries it supports. The GCF funds transformational projects with a strong focus on leveraging private finance, with a commitment to provide 50% of its resources for mitigation and 50% for adaptation. At least 50% of its adaptation support will be provided to particularly vulnerable countries including Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and African States. In the past year, the GCF has made significant progress in terms of developing its project portfolio, refining its policy framework, and building the Secretariat’s capacity. So far, the GCF has committed $2.65 billion of funding to 54 projects, representing a balanced geographical and thematic split, with around 50% of funds going to private sector projects, and over $400 million to Small Island Developing States. Progress has also been made on enhancing direct access to finance, with the agreement in 2017 to pilot a Simplified Approvals Process for projects with up to $10 million of GCF financing, and the ongoing work to facilitate increased proposals from direct access entities which saw nine new direct access entities accredited to the GCF in 2017 . The Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme set up by the GCF also aims to facilitate the activity of the Fund, recognising the need to support direct access entities in their applications and to assist countries with related processes under the UNFCCC such as the preparation of National Adaptation Plans. Over $40 million of GEF funds have been approved for readiness activities, with 60 countries benefitting from this support to date. The Global Environment Facility The UK is a long-standing contributor to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to fund projects and activities providing not only climate change benefits, but also tackling broader environmental issues such as biodiversity and land degradation. The GEF is a funding mechanism for five UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; Minamata Convention on Mercury; UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as well as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Programmes are implemented through 18 partners including multilateral development banks, UN agencies, and NGOs. The GEF budget is replenished on 4-yearly cycles and a total of 39 countries contribute. The current sixth replenishment period (2014-2018) has a budget of $4.43 billion. The UK is contributing £210 million in total to GEF-6. Since its creation in 1991, the GEF has implemented 1,010 climate change mitigation projects contributing to 2.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emission reductions, equivalent of taking 560 million cars off the road each year. It has also led to the creation of 3,300 protected areas, covering more than, 860 million hectares, an area The UK is the largest investor in the $8.3 billion Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), having invested £1,253 million between 2011/12 and 2016/17 , to pilot low-emission and climate resilient development through projects implemented by the multilateral development banks. The CIFs now operate across 72 countries and have a total portfolio of 310 projects. CIFs finance is enabling the building of the equivalent of over a quarter of the current global installed geothermal and concentrated solar power. The projects are unlocking finance flows in the green markets of developing countries and are expected to generate $58 billion of co-financing. The CIFs are comprised of four key programmes, further detailed as appropriate in the below sections, explaining how UK ICF support contributes to each of these programmes individually. Annex 1: Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to developing countries 297 6.4.2 activities undertaken by the public and private sectors to finance The Paris Agreement requires all Parties to put forward “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), setting national targets for reducing emissions towards the common ‘well below 2°C’ increase goal. The UK’s mitigation efforts seek to help meet the financing challenge of realising these emissions reductions by reducing risks to private investment, halting deforestation and accelerating technological change at scale. The UK is using its International Climate Finance to effect “transformational change” through targeted investment in innovative projects with the potential to be scaled up and replicated by others, and by tackling barriers that hold the private sector back from investing. This section describes some of the initiatives and actions that the UK is undertaking to support decarbonisation activities in developing countries. Through and beyond these examples, the UK also aims to raise capacity in countries and build on the UK’s low carbon experience and expertise. Further examples of how the UK is enabling in country capacity are set out in section 5 of this chapter. Accelerating technological change at scale Raising ambition and accelerating the rate of decarbonisation is critical to achieving global climate goals.
There has been a rapid shift towards renewable energy over the last few years. Sectors such as transport, buildings, urban planning, and energy efficiency offer significant potential to reduce emissions while delivering major economic, health and environmental benefits, but are not yet on a pathway consistent with the ‘well below 2°C’ goal. The UK’s ICF is supporting developing countries to achieve economic growth in a sustainable way. Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable modern energy is central to this. Interventions are being supported at the regional, national, sub-national or sectoral level through UK bilateral and multilateral support. Many of these interventions aim to lay the conditions for increasing The UK’s main priorities are • Build capacity and capability in countries to implement their NDCs and raise ambition further, working to overcome regulatory and institutional barriers, including sharing UK skills and expertise where it is helpful; • Deliver clean energy to the millions of people currently without any access to electricity and other forms of modern energy; • Push frontiers by demonstrating and deploying technologies, policies and approaches that are critical for a ‘well below 2°C’ trajectory; and • Drive decarbonisation at scale through the international development system – supporting the development banks to scale up their climate investments and become more climate-smart across their activities. Contributing to international climate change mitigation funds The following are examples of UK contributions to international climate change funds, in addition 23 The UK provides the majority of its funding through trusted delivery partners which leads to complex delivery chains from its fund through to the final recipient. For this reason, the UK does not systematically track who the ultimate end recipient is (including whether it is public or private) and what their role is in the project. Examples of support are provided in CTF tables. 298 7th National Communication The Clean Technology Fund (CTF) – Of the four funds that sit under the Climate Investment Fund, the UK has contributed £701 million between 2011/12 to 2016/17 to the Clean Technology Fund (CTF). The CTF provides concessional finance and technical assistance in 21 countries, delivering significant development benefits, such as increased energy security, reduced local air pollution, and job opportunities. It has supported national governments to identify and implement ambitious low carbon investment plans, and helped demonstrate technologies and create markets. South Africa’s KaXu Solar One Concentrated Solar Power project, with funding from the CTF, has recently been awarded a Momentum for Change Award by the UNFCCC for its innovative and game-changing approach to climate change and wider economic, social and The Scaling up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) is another of the four Climate Investment Funds. The UK has provided £268m to SREP , which aims to stimulate energy access and economic activity by working with governments to build renewable energy markets and support productive uses of energy at the household level. As of June 2017 , SREP had endorsed investment plans for 19 pilot countries. Expected results under these plans, and the Fund’s Private Sector Set Aside, include an estimated 6,686 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity to be generated annually from renewable energy sources (equivalent to the annual electricity production of Armenia) and new or improved access to clean, modern energy services for 17 .3 million people (approximately the population of Malawi). The total estimated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be avoided are approximately 5.4 million tons CO The Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) Facility is a bilateral programme supported by the UK, working in partnership with the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUB), Denmark and the European Commission. NAMAs are country owned projects, policies, or programmes that shift a technology or sector in a country onto a low- carbon development trajectory. The Facility seeks to support and fund the implementation of the most transformational parts of the NAMAs, for which countries are unable to attract private sector funding. It has an open application process, welcoming projects across a diverse range of sectors and geographies. Since 2012, 20 climate mitigation projects across 16 countries have been supported, with each project chosen for its ability to catalyse change in the sector. To support this demand the UK has committed £140 million into the Facility, of which £40 million has been allocated to the 5th Call of the Facility launched on 13 November 2017 . Further details on mitigation finance activities through the UK’s focus on forestry, mobilising private finance and carbon pricing are found in subsequent sections. 6.4.3 Adaptation, including assistance provided to developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting the cost of adaptation UK ICF investments aim to support international poverty reduction now and in the future by helping developing countries manage risk and build resilience to the impacts of climate change, take up low-carbon development at scale, and manage natural resources sustainably. The poorest and most vulnerable people in the world will be hit first and hardest by the impacts of climate change. This is why the UK aims to spend half of its climate finance on adaptation – in 2016, 51% of the UK’s ICF was spent on adaptation, with a focus on the poorest and most The UK recognises that the central importance of countries having a clear plan for adaptation that is tailored to the risks they are likely to face. The UK is committed to helping countries ensure they are able to put in place such plans to guide action. The UK has already provided over £1.6 billion to help vulnerable developing countries between 2011 and 2016. The UK’s ICF has to date helped 34 million people cope with the effects of climate change through by assisting developing countries to

Annex 1: Provision of financial, technological and capability-building support to developing countries 299 • adapt to long-term impacts well in advance, for example by changing or diversifying livelihoods and ensuring infrastructure is fit for purpose.