The book looks at stopping climate change from a government policy and national economy point of view. This contrasts nicely with Bill Gates’ book which mostly focuses on the tech angle.
The first third of the book is an excellent analysis on the policies enacted in the last 30 years, how they failed, and how they will likely continue failing. Given that the author writes reports on climate change for the UK gov, this is clearly his area of expertise.
According to the author, the three principles for a sustainable economy are the polluter pays, public money for public goods, and net environmental gain. The discussion around all three is interesting, but I think the first one is the most important. The idea is that, since our goal is to get to net-zero globally, we have to not only tax local emitters of carbon, but also importers of carbon in order to encourage the origin countries to tax their own carbon emitters. If we only tax the local producers, then that just moves industry overseas where polluting is free. More generally, we need to target net-zero local consumption of carbon, not just net-zero local production.
At the very end of the book, there is also a short description on how to reform the electricity market to encourage decarbonization. Sadly, not a lot of details are given. I think this was further developed in the “Cost of Energy Review”, but I have not read that yet.
The main problem with the book is that the latter two thirds are a disorganized overview of climate change combined with wishy-washy technobabble. The Gates book makes for a much better overview.