Net zero and the every day
Tackle climate change by turning it into a series of deeply ordinary consumer decisions
This post was originally part of the UCL Policy Lab’s Ordinary Hope essay series. Thanks to them for both inviting me to contribute and repost the essay . You can read the full publication here.
Solving climate change can seem far from an ordinary hope. It will take an extraordinary effort to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Reaching net zero in the UK - a country further ahead than most - is still a monumental task. The new government likes to talk of difficult tasks now leading to a better future tomorrow. That it will be hard, but it’ll be worth it in the end. Their efforts to rebuild the public finances for example mean lower spending than hoped or higher taxes for some. Net zero is not in the same category. While it will be hard, it is not just for a single payoff far in 2050, when the UK’s net carbon emissions are zero. Instead, the process can be worth it too. Treating climate as a multitude of everyday consumer decisions can mean many individual gains along the way.
The UK’s route to net zero is easier than others. There is broad public support for the country tackling climate change, indeed good research suggests that electoral success now hinges on it. The public sees net zero as important to mitigate climate impacts and to protect future generations. In recent years, other benefits have come to the fore too. Clean energy is seen as the route to national security and as a way of bringing down bills.
Some argue that high support is fragile, people haven’t experienced the journey to net zero yet. Most people turn their lights on as they always have, it means little to them that their electricity comes from wind turbines rather than gas ones. Commentators also point to increasingly vocal campaigns against electricity transmission as further evidence of the nice in theory, poor in practice. The next stage of net zero will interact much more with everyday life. It will cross from an environmental issue into fundamental values like privacy, ownership or personal habits.
The last government used Germany as their fable for how net zero would lose popularity when it interacts with voters. The Conservatives argued that a rushed German heat pump law, rapidly transitioning away from gas boilers in the midst of an energy and economic crisis, empowered the far right.
But this risk does not have to mean shying away from the transition. The far-right in Germany has grown steadily over years, they did not start with a campaign against heat pumps. Instead they twisted climate action as an emblem for the public’s pre-existing concerns. The German Social Democrat-led coalition was perceived to be out of touch with the public, more focused with internal fights, than addressing the rising cost of living. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) was able to paint climate policy as something expensive, happening to people too quickly, with no clear immediate benefit.
Furthermore, net zero does not have to be grandiose or distant. Making a virtue of everyday concerns can turn that risk into a strength. Organisations like Round Our Way have already made great strides in communicating climate impacts, locally. We need a similar approach to climate action, ensuring the transition becomes a visible record of the government's connection to ordinary life. The new Labour government has made a strong start in this regard - bills and cost of living have been central to their message.
Yet there is still the political reflex to talk about new jobs. This can risk taking the argument away from the everyday. The public sometimes sees promises of many new jobs as abstract or unlikely to materialise. They feel burned by previous promises of green jobs under Johnson that turned out to be mere bombast.
“You’d have to be pretty certain you were going to be secure in it – there’s been so much uncertainty in the last year that it would need to be long term. It’s fashionable at the moment isn’t it [the environment] but if it falls out of fashion are you going to be out of a job?” Female, Nursey Worker, Rotherham, 2022
“[when asked what they thought of the green jobs] I don’t suit them… I don’t know they just sound a bit complicated” Female, Unemployed, Rosyth. Fife, 2024.
Public First Focus Groups
Moreover, for all the concerns about how things are right now, most people want the essence of their day-to-day lives to remain broadly the same, hopefully get a bit easier or a bit cheaper. Currently, aspects of net zero are seen as in competition with that sense of normality. While there’s a lot of goodwill, in focus groups we regularly hear things like “if I could” ,“If money wasn’t a thing”. Any sense of forcing things to fast could well set us up for a German-style failure.
Going with the grain of the everyday is crucial but it means a new approach to narrative and policy. It will mean a shift in the language that government uses when it speaks, and also for whoever else is given the platform to do so.
Language matters in all of this. The public do not talk about retrofitting their homes or greening them. People talk about renovations and upgrades. They’re not looking to find efficiencies, they’re looking for improvements. Charging an electric vehicle should be much more like your phone, little and often where you are, maybe with a spare charger if you’re out all day - rather than driving somewhere specific to fill up all in one go. Public First research points to central government being most effective when it's talking about the broad national and personal benefits of the transition - but only if that’s made relatable.
Timing matters too. We’re not expecting people to make changes tomorrow. Most people will swap to an electric vehicle when they change cars anyway. Most people will install a heat pump when they’re doing other home renovations or their boiler fails. They need the information to be available when they make that choice, not feel like they’re being forced to make that choice too early.
Actors matter as well. Government will need to loosen the centre’s grip on net zero. Both the timing of, and type of changes will look different across the country. Some areas will go faster on heat pumps, other communities, like my hometown Bristol, will have a heat network. Rural areas will use more electric vehicles than urban ones. There are efforts underway. Local Area Energy Plans and Regional Energy Strategic Planners will hopefully mean a transition that is more diverse across space, but also more effective.
As my colleagues said in Upgrade: How to Deliver Better Homes, no single actor is trusted at every stage of, for example, the home decarbonisation process. One way of overcoming this is to think more about relationships between people, rather than of organisations doing things to people. People care about climate change because they care about their families and younger generations. As the work of Robert Frank shows, people are also far more likely to pick up new technologies if families, friends or neighbours have already. This social contagion though will only work if government recognises the importance of place, and therefore provides greater space for local government to act.
A relational approach could also send things backward when things go wrong. It only takes one bad heat pump installation to put off those same friends and families. The downside of myriad actors is confusion from households over their rights and protections, and the possibility of bad actors using rapid growth of new tech to take advantage of them. Government needs to back up its rhetoric on benefits with clearly set out consumer protection frameworks for when things don’t go right.
Government should tackle net zero by turning it into a series of deeply ordinary decisions. Consumers make decisions for 1000 reasons. Like buying the latest phone, they might just think it’s cool to have better tech, or to compete with a mate that does. They might see it as the route to better financial security. Or it might be that they want to do their bit for the climate. It doesn’t really matter. Central government cares about the sum total of the decisions, but households can benefit from each one along the way. Those decisions are not just influenced by Whitehall but a whole range of actors across the country. Focusing more on those moments, and providing the power to those local organisation best suited to support them, can move net zero from a single monumental government task, to an eminently achievable series of personal ones.
