Net Zero Governance

The Net Zero Governance programme aims to enable those responsible for net zero strategies to: use SHAPE insights to articulate the importance of governance to an effective system of net zero delivery; support the application of mechanisms to direct; and, oversee and create accountability for net zero strategies within sustainable parameters (including setting relevant research agendas).

Ultimately, if the programme is successful and progress continues among the wider community of actors in this space, including among SHAPE and STEM researchers, and within and around organisations and institutions driving the transition, this programme will have contributed to improved progress towards net zero within sustainable parameters.

The programme is directly overseen by a working group: Professor Sarah Birch FBA (from February 2024), Professor Hilary Graham FBA, Dr Victoria Hirth (until December 2024), Professor Andy Jordan FBA and Professor Tim O’Riordan FBA.

The UK government is one of the few in the world to be bound to a legal commitment to reach ‘net zero’ carbon emissions against 1990 baselines by 2050. This is matched or bettered by growing parallel commitments from the four UK nations, most local authorities, cities and swathes of organisations and institutions, including significant chunks of the economy. These commitments reflect evidence of broad concern and support by UK citizens for stronger action by government on climate change, sentiment also reflected globally.

The scale and speed of change required by these net zero commitments lock in the need for urgent and unprecedented transformation of almost every decision undertaken within the UK. Despite these commitments being made globally over many years, global carbon emissions have increased every year since 1990 and some calculate that financial institutions have funded more since the Paris Agreement than prior. For its part, the UK’s Climate Change Committee stated in 2022 that the current strategy and suite of policies will not deliver net zero as required.

SHAPE research and insights highlight the challenge of such a transformation in the timescale required. They also emphasise the complex set of intersecting, urgent and important issues that simultaneously need to be addressed and the tendency for the transition to accelerate existing trends in related geographical and household inequalities, and remodel employment, skills and social norms.

These and many other well-documented issues are co-dependant on climate change responses but will also require distinct consideration when devising climate change policy. Hence net zero policy both needs to account for these urgent issues simultaneously while taking care not to exacerbate related problems. Overall, this complex picture demonstrates that technological solutions alone are not enough to address the crisis. The way the transformation is conducted has a material impact on the chances of success, and net zero must be delivered alongside other social, environmental and economic systems that underpin our collective wellbeing and which are also in need of urgent attention.

No single action and no single organisation (public, private or third sector) can solve this problem. Only careful decision-making, coordinated across sectors, places and scales, cognisant of the complexities and interconnectedness of the issues, and with an emphasis on people, can navigate these challenges. Therefore, the approaches to governance that shape, oversee and account for these decisions are critical to the collective effort across public, private and third sectors to deliver on net zero goals.

The programme generates readily accessible outputs, primarily in the form of Reports, Journal Articles, Summary Notes. These and other such outputs are built on a foundation of SHAPE research from the academic community and funded and peer reviewed British Academy funded research. The findings from the research together with insights from events we convene, bringing together academics, policymakers, members of civil society, local authorities and business contribute to our understanding of the topic. The public policy team analyses the material with oversight from internal governance mechanisms and its working group to generate the outputs that are shared with our network.

• Governance for Net Zero Report
• A SHAPE evidence roundtable on understanding publics and net zero - summary note
• DESNZ SHAPE Evidence Roundtables
• Governance for Net Zero Research-in-Practice event
• Practioner's Net Zero Governance workshop
• SHAPE knowledge exchange events 2024
• SHAPE evidence roundtable summary notes on net zero and understanding publics
• Cross-Academy parliamentary reception

• British Academy Journal- 2023 entry
• Research Project
• Considering the role of people and institutions in net zero policy in the UK- summary note
• Shared Understandings of a Sustainable Future- research projects

If you require further information on this scheme or would like to engage with us, please contact Chizitera Pennington on [email protected], Tuisku (Snow) Kolu on [email protected] or Henry Richards on [email protected].