What is United Kingdom's pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C?

In the HPA scenario, primary energy demand falls around 20% between 2025–2035. This is due to the inherently inefficient nature of fossil fuels – when coal, oil and gas are burned to create electricity or motion, a large amount of their energy is wasted as heat. Electrification, on the other hand, provides energy services with near 100% efficiency (and in the case of heat pumps, even more). Electrification technologies are around 2-4 times more efficient than their fossil counterparts.¹1 Electrifying the energy system can reduce the scale of energy supply needed, even while meeting a growing demand for energy services.

After 2035, efficiency gains from electrification begin to plateau. This is because most fossil fuels have been eliminated by now, and there is also growing deployment of energy-intensive indirect electrification options (hydrogen and synthetic fuels) in hard-to-abate sectors like international transport. This offsets efficiency gains from electrification. However, primary energy demand does not grow, even as energy service demands continue to rise.

The HPA scenario charts a path to a fossil free future. Reaching real zero, i.e. the full elimination of fossil fuels, rather than net zero (where some residual fossil fuels can be compensated for by CDR deployment), can help minimise the magnitude and duration of any overshoot of 1.5ºC, by ensuring that all CDR successfully deployed is used to reduce temperatures, rather than compensating for continued fossil fuel use.²2

The UK achieves a fossil free energy system by 2050 in the HPA scenario, with strong reductions by 2035. The very limited remaining coal use in the UK (for steel and cement production) is eliminated by 2030, while fossil gas is phased out by 2040 and oil by 2050. Achieving these phase-outs requires concerted effort to scale electrification, as well as the use of hydrogen, sustainable biomass and synthetic fuels as alternatives for sectors where electrification faces challenges (e.g. international aviation).

The UK is a net fossil fuel importer, and in 2024 net imports represented around 40% of its oil and 50% of its gas demand.³3 This makes the UK’s economy vulnerable to volatile international fossil fuel markets. Concerted action to electrify the economy means that, in the HPA scenario, oil demand would fall by at least 50% by 2035 and gas demand by 85%. Even when accounting for the UK’s future production of oil and gas from the North Sea,⁴4 this can halve net oil imports and cut gas imports by over 90%, even accounting for declining domestic production. Renewables and electrification, not renewed drilling, is the pathway to energy security and independence for the UK.