Global climate targets could cost Guernsey £750m

Wednesday 20 March 2019

Guernsey will need to spend about £750million pounds on tackling climate change over the next ten years if it's to meet global targets, according to the Chair of Guernsey Green Finance.

Andy Sloan, who is also Deputy Chief Executive of Guernsey Finance, was speaking at last week's YouthAction4ClimateGSY where a panel of deputies and local environmentalists signed an agreement to make the island carbon neutral by 2030.

Doctor Sloan used this opportunity to set out the "scale of the task to hand", explaining that goals set out by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate 2.5% of global GDP annually needs to be invested in climate mitigation technology between 2016-2035 to reduce temperatures by 1.5℃.

In order to achieve this, Doctor Sloan believes Guernsey will need to invest around £750million over the coming decade.

Pictured: Andy Sloan speaking at a previous event.

"If we're looking at the scale of the investment that's going to be required we need to understand what we're talking about. There's no point talking about jolly good ideas without appreciating the actuality," he said. "That [£750million] happens to be around the scale - I'm not saying it's exactly right - of what is possibly required in terms of subsidies and investment to move to electrification of the automobile and also looking at zero carbon electricity generation as a project to be used towards that. Both of those are key aspects that we need to do domestically."

YouthAction4ClimateGSY was organised by students at the Grammar School and saw young people from different schools around the island join together to ask a panel of local leaders what can and is being done to combat climate change.

James Cleal (17), one of the organisers, finished the discussion by asking the panel to sign a document committing Guernsey to carbon net neutrality by 2030, in line with IPCC targets.

Pictured: YouthAction4ClimateGSY event.

Doctor Sloan was part of the panel. He said it is possible: "If it's not doable then we're deluding ourselves about our commitment to this green future and my point is to educate that this is the scale of the task to hand. It's all well and good having dialogue and discussion and signing pieces of paper, but that's without the context of the scale of the task ahead.

"It's not just the scale of what we're looking at. It's the scale of what the world is looking at."