An unsung hero here is the ZEV mandate, which is pushing down on prices with discounts and big incentives for manufacturers to give EVs mass appeal.
Shame we can't muster the same ambition for heat pump regs - MCS show HPs are still rising in price!
What's the policy framework here? Obviously UK are barely at 2011 levels in this graph but received wisdom is HPs are expensive in Germany + reasonably high spark gap + retreated from regs recently + similar subsidy scheme to UK so share double to half in a year seems huge!
Overall this is an important step but the rest is yet to come. We'll be looking for more details soon on how these commitments will be delivered. For more of our thoughts on decarbing farming, see here
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
And the framework takes risks to tenant farmers seriously: we can't let land use change become a source of insecurity for those renting their land. The Law Commission review to ensure tenants are included in this transition looks like the right kind of intervention
There are other things to applaud - developing the data for making good decisions isn't flashy but it's necessary (and exciting for us wonks) and long overdue - h/t to @guyshrubsole.bsky.social's long decade of campaigning for this!
What we need next is a better picture of how we will make sure decisions match principles. The Government needs to direct where change happens, not just publish maps. The framework hints at spatial targeting of subsidies and strong use of the planning system - but the devil will be in the detail.
But when we looked at this we found that getting the right land to change use will need a heavier hand than just extra information, and probably more than subsidies too - this is a really hard area on which many farmers are not yet persuaded.
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
Now Defra has set out what has to happen, they will need to be tougher to make it happen. Defra's principles on where land should change use, including most importantly that it should be the "right use, right place" are exactly right.
The Government's set out modelling showing around 15% of farmland needs to change by 2050 for climate reasons. Publishing that breakdown sends an important signal about the scale of change required - and shows that renewables aren't the main story
England's first Land Use Framework is finally here. It's been a long time coming and there's a lot to welcome. But when it comes do decarbonising land it leaves lots of the trickiest details - on how to not just inform land use decisions but shape them - to future work
www.gov.uk/government/p...
New work from us - we shouldn't waste the time we've been given to prepare for winter and get a proper social tariff sorted
💡 New @resolutionfoundation.org note on energy bills out over the weekend 💡
2026 energy bills are on track to be more than £200 lower, in real terms, than in 2024 – overwhelmingly driven by the Government’s discount kicking in this April.
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
There's more in the paper on our logic to this and we're always happy to discuss!
Against this, there are lots of reasons to think that subsidy is an inefficient way forward for food - costs could mount to get farmers onside and there's few market mechanisms to innovate costs down in a subsidy-only approach. And ultimately taxpayers are also food shoppers.
Simon is right that this is a price level effect, not annual inflation - if you managed to smooth our central estimate of 0.5% over 25 years of transition that's just 0.02% on annual inflation! Much of this will kick in way into the future - this is a long transition we're only just beginning
We also need to protect tenant farmers, who don't get to make their own decisions on how land is used. They're some of the nations best but most vulnerable farmers.
A fair transition can't sweep away productive tenants in favour of passive landlord income.
But many farmers reject this not because the money's bad, but because it's not what they're in the profession to do. If we also care about the right land changing use, then subsidy should go along with tougher measures to guide land use decisions. One for the upcoming land use framework.
Land use is a different challenge. Nearly a fifth of farmland may need to shift away from food - mostly to forestry and restored peatlands (solar and energy crops will play a much smaller role)
A mandate requiring supermarkets to source growing proportions of their food from farms meeting low-carbon standards would shift costs to where they can be absorbed - without crushing farmers or relying on inefficient subsidies.
So what to do? Our favoured approach is to regulate the supply chain. We should be thinking more about how to shift the regulatory burden to bigger actors like supermarkets, who are well placed to tackle these issues while keeping costs down.
The bad news: farmers can't absorb these costs. With razor-thin margins, even a 2.5% cost increase would cut average farm income by a fifth - from £43k to £35k.
Farmers have almost no pricing power, so they can't just pass costs to supermarkets.
The good news: decarbonising food production shouldn't be ruinously expensive. Costs peak at ~2.5% of farm output. If passed to consumers, food prices would rise by comfortably less than 1% - some individual months last year saw bigger jumps.
The sector isn't starting from a position of strength to deal well with further burdens. In 2024, the typical family farm made enough profit to pay its owners just £6/hour - half the minimum wage.
Nearly 1 in 3 farms lost money. Another quarter were only profitable because of government subsidies.
There's no silver bullet here. Unlike EVs for transport or heat pumps for homes, farming needs 30+ different measures to decarbonise - from greener machinery to changing what land is used for entirely.
And this comes on top of nature targets and major subsidy reforms already underway.
The transition hasn't really hit UK farms yet, with emissions declining just 5% since 2010. That's set to change soon, and it should - delaying further would add £12 billion to the capital cost of meeting net zero
🧵 New research on decarbonising UK farms and what it means for living standards.
The good news is decarbonisation should be manageable and won't cost the world - but it'll still be hard, as farming's in a fragile situation. Here's what we found 👇
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
Yes there'll be a recording in the same link after the fact, and the report will be up on our website tomorrow
