ENVIRONMENT

DETAILS

OBJECTIVE

Force the UK’s top 100 carbon-major emitters to achieve real, absolute emissions cuts - 68% by 2030, 78% by 2035, and 100% by 2050 – by switching their climate change targets to Real Zero (no reliance on carbon offsets or carbon capture and storage (CCS)) instead of the accounting-trick targets of Net Zero.

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CORE POLICY FRAMEWORK

• 1. Binding emissions reduction targets:

  • 68% reduction from 1990 levels by 2030 (1 years).

  • 78% reduction by 2035 (6 years).

  • 100% reduction (Real Zero) by 2050 (21 years).

• 2. Aggressive carbon tax escalation:

  • Starting rate (2029): £100 per tonne of CO₂e (upper end of current projection).

  • Annual increases: £50 per tonne each year until 2035, then £75 per tonne each year until 2050.

  • Sectoral adjustments: Heavy industries (e.g., steel, chemicals) would face slightly staggered deadlines but no exemptions.

• 3. Severe penalties for non-compliance:

  • Financial: 4x the carbon tax rate for emissions exceeding annual limits.

  • Legal: Criminal negligence charges for executives of repeat violators.

  • Operational: Mandatory production freezes for companies failing three consecutive years.

• 4. Strict ban on offsets & CCS for compliance:

  • Only direct emissions cuts count, no carbon credits, tree-planting schemes, or unproven CCS.

  • Real-time emissions monitoring with publicly accessible data.

• 5. Revenue allocation (ringfenced for decarbonisation):

  • 50% to heavy industry transformation (green steel, zero-carbon cement, renewable hydrogen).

  • 30% to worker transition programs (retraining, wage support in affected sectors).

  • 20% to energy resilience (grid upgrades, offshore wind, and energy storage).

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ENFORCEMENT & ADDITIONAL MEASURES

• Carbon border tax: Penalise imports from countries with weaker climate policies to prevent offshoring.

• State intervention: Nationalise persistent violators if necessary (e.g. steel plants refusing to electrify) and delisting any company from the London Stock Exchange that fails to meet new ESG criteria.

• Public accountability: Quarterly progress reports audited by an independent climate judiciary.

START DATE RATIONALE

• No more delays: The UK has had decades to prepare; further stalling is unacceptable.

• Technological readiness: Clean alternatives (green hydrogen, electric furnaces, renewable energy) are now viable.

• Global leadership: Sets a precedent for post-2025 climate action ahead of COP30.

POTENTIAL PUSHBACK & REBUTTALS

• "Too fast for industry":

  • Rebuttal: Vested interests will always claim this. Firms have been legally bound to 68% (Net Zero) by 2030 since 2008 and have 6 years to prepare before the first proper adjusted target. If they haven’t acted by now, they are gambling with the climate.

• "Jobs will be lost":

  • Rebuttal: Our Job Guarantee will provide retraining and support for new business start-ups ensuring no worker is left behind. Polluting jobs cannot be kept simply because neoliberal politicians are too lazy/corrupt to invest in the future.

• "Competitiveness at risk":

  • Rebuttal: The carbon border tax protects UK industry while forcing global supply chains to decarbonise.

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CONCLUSION

This policy ensures the UK’s biggest polluters eliminate emissions, not outsource them. By starting in 2029, it acknowledges past failures while refusing further excuses. Real zero by 2050: no tricks, no loopholes.

PROGRESSIVE CARBON TAX POLICY FOR MAJOR EMITTERS

• Sustainable-cost accounting puts the cost of becoming net-zero on to a company’s balance sheet by demanding every company affected must prepare a plan to become net-zero, showing when costs will be incurred and on what. The total figure must then be included on their balance sheet.

  • Companies involved in the nuclear industry already have to include costs of cleaning up a nuclear power plant site at the end of its life, as do mining companies, so precedent exists. This extends the concept to all companies who will be affected by climate change.

  • Companies must recognise these costs at the start of a project.

• They report spending and cost changes to show their real capacity to tackle the problem.

• SCA covers all the emissions of a company – its own, within the supply chain, and the implicit emissions in the products and services it sells.

  • E.g. Gatwick Airport claims to be net-zero but has failed to account for the latter, i.e. the emissions created when aeroplanes take off and land, because they are operated by other companies, and so washed their hands of that part.

  • Under SCA, enabling an emission makes that business responsible for changing its business practices so that emission does not occur.

    • This is not double-counting because emissions are the output of one business and the input of another. This is about microeconomic accounting of climate change and both have to be counted.

  • Net-zero already requires businesses to think ‘beginning-to-end’ about their business processes because passing the buck to someone else is how humanity has got to the point where the climate is an issue. SCA simply requires businesses to finally accept accountability.

• The International Accounting Standards Board’s IAS 37 provision (that sets rules for recognising provisions, and contingent liabilities and assets) is insufficient as it lets the company decide when to make the provision.

  • This is not possible with climate change. COP26 and the law requires the change to take place and that reality be respected. Reality in this case is that businesses must become net-zero, therefore there is no choice about making a climate change provision. If there is a cost, a provision must be made and IAS 37 doesn’t require that.

  • It also allows companies to discount the value of future liabilities they put on their balance sheets, presuming that the future cost will be lower by deferring the spending and thus saving money in the present. This does not work with climate change because the longer action is delayed, the more damage will be incurred because the scale of the problem will have increased, and the more it will cost to fix.

  • Instead of discounting, the value of future costs should be compounded i.e. if costs are deferred then the total will increase over time.

• The business lobby will scream that this is unfair, but this is a reflection of science and the real world, and if accounting doesn’t reflect reality then it has no purpose.

• SCA incentivises business to take action quickly to reduce their costs.

• SCA does not allow for mythology and lies.

  • No claim can be made in a company’s transition plan for technologies that are currently unproven e.g. nuclear fusion, carbon capture and storage etc.

    • Only real, proven solutions will be acceptable.

    • The cost of investing in solutions can be included in the plan, and then if they are conclusively proved to work, the liabilities on the balance sheet can be reduced. Until then, prudence should be applied.

  • Offsetting will not be allowed. If Shell wanted to offset all its emissions, it would need to forest a landmass the size of India. That is an unrealistic proposition unless they can prove they already own the land required to undertake the activity, and that the activity will be new.

• SCA surpasses current accounting standards because other standards claim climate change costs may be ‘immaterial’ (‘insignificant’ in plain English).

  • However, climate change and sustainability is significant over the long-term, while most accounting only cares about it and whether or not a company is a going concern over the short-term.

  • The International Accounting Standards Framework for Disclosure – the ‘Sustainability Standards’ - is little more than greenwashing as a result and often provides no useful information as companies establish their own rules for reporting with which they magically end up complying.

• ‘Going concern’ is an auditor’s assessment of whether a company is likely to survive into future reporting periods. Current standards only assess this over a period of roughly 12 months, so a revised principle is needed for SCA, assessing viability of a business surviving to 2050 and, by extension, whether it has the financial resources to finance the cost of its climate transition.

• SCA will require two entries on a balance sheet: one in the shareholders’ funds recognising future costs as a debit reserve, and one for the outlined liabilities as a credit.

  • Every year afterwards would add a third item: financial movement during the year showing if the cost estimates have risen or shrunk and why, and how much has been spent, with the goal of avoiding carbon insolvency.

  • Prudence will prevent companies anticipating income from benefitting from climate change.

• Carbon insolvency is where the costs of transitioning to net-zero exceed a company’s assets and it cannot command the capital it needs to survive in its current state.

  • Investors will want to know the company’s financial fitness and the consequences for their future ownership now that carbon insolvency is recognised.

  • If the company is at risk of carbon insolvency, they may need to take action to prevent this e.g. stopping dividends, acquiring new capital by attracting new shareholders, or new borrowing.

  • This means shareholders will be asked to pay for the company’s survival and raise a red flag saying the company may be in trouble if no action is taken, which is the purpose of SCA.

  • This is a good thing because society will get a real estimate of how healthy these companies are as the economy has (so far) been built on false assumptions of financial strength by ignoring climate change entirely and don’t reflect current risks.

  • Continuing as we are risks potential mass failure of business along with ecological failure. Capital must be reallocated to ensure the survival of the planet AND of the business environment otherwise we will not get the outcomes we want or the survival of our way of life. We cannot afford to delay any longer and we cannot continue pretending the old models work anymore. We can all see that they don’t. We cannot manage the challenge of climate change without measuring it.

SUSTAINABLE-COST ACCOUNTING

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