The UK needs to spend more on researching green energy

On the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate summit, then-UK prime minister David Cameron and 19 other world leaders made a promise to double green energy research and development by 2020.

The United Kingdom is on course to break that promise. As a percentage of GDP, spending on low-carbon energy R&D has stayed sluggishly around 0.02 per cent since 2015, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The United Kingdom is not alone. IEA data shows rich OECD countries are spending just 0.03 per cent of GDP on low-carbon energy R&D – a percentage that has not changed since the vow was made.

Climate policy has been littered with broken promises ever since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, the core promises written into the Paris Agreement are not being met. A recent study revealed that only 16 countries — the likes of Samoa and Algeria — are living up to their vows to reduce carbon emission growth, and they’re only doing so because they promised to do very, very little.