Academy responds to IPCC Sixth Assessment Report

On 9 August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its Working Group I report Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis, the first installment of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

In response to the report, Dr Nick Starkey, Royal Academy of Engineering Policy Director, said:

“This latest report from the IPCC puts in clear terms the scale of the present threat of climate change, and demonstrates the need for a clear, comprehensive and specific strategy for climate action. The UK is not on track to meet our existing carbon targets, and our goal of 78% emissions reduction by 2035 will not be reached without deep energy efficiency measures and ensuring that policies right across government actively contribute to achieving this target.

“There is no single technology, solution or action that can address the challenge alone, so a successful strategy must connect many different solutions and actions as a whole system. This means recognising the increasing connectivity and interdependency of the world’s infrastructure and economies, setting a clear time frame and process for eliminating the emissions within our control, and engaging citizens to help fairly distribute the costs and benefits of the transition to net zero. Engineers of all kinds have a crucial role decarbonising the UK,both in developing innovations and new solutions, and in designing, building, retrofitting, operating and ensuring the safety of the infrastructure and technologies for a decarbonised UK.”