“Britain is back and ready to play its full part,” Andy Burnham has said at the opening of today’s Cop31 summit.The UK prime minister celebrated domestic clean energy projects including windfarms and electrified steel factories, stressed the need to make the transition affordable, and announced the UK’s first special representative for climate security, Madeleine Alessandri.“The climate crisis is not a distant threat, it is upon us now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere,” he said. Pointing to the effects of two global wars on energy prices, he added that the “common thread running through all of this is fossil fuels.”Burnham repeated the UK’s commitment to meeting its 2050 net zero emissions target and said he would work with all of partners to reach theirs.View image in fullscreenAndy Burnham addresses the Cop31 annual UN climate conference in Antalya, Turkey. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA“In that spirit, I am proud to support this Cop’s focus on electrification,” he said. “If we depend on energy we do not control, we depend on prices we cannot control. The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security.He called on industry to “play their part” in helping people on all incomes make the green transition.
He highlighted progress in bringing the price of clean technologies down for consumers.“If you drive a new electric car today in the UK, it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.”But he also warned that some of the fundamentals had worsened.“The consensus we once enjoyed on science is gone,” said Burnham. “And the reality is the world will breach the 1.5C target.”For more updates from the fourth day of the climate summit in Turkey, head over to our Cop31 live blog here:Cop31: “No one is coming to rescue us” Greta Thunberg tells climate summitRead more
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