On 22 May this year the CCC recommended that HMG legislate for the UK to be "net zero" with respect to greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. On 11th June PM Teresa May announced that such legislation would, indeed, be brought forth and on 12 June secondary legislation to do just that was tabled. All well and good but what does it all mean?
The first thing to note is that the current set of policies won't do the job. More is needed but HMG has been more or less silent on what. Furthermore, although it is clear that the country is way off track for reaching the targets in the 4th and 5th carbon budgets, little is being done to rectify that apart from some jiggery-pokery in carrying forward 88Mt of emissions from the 2013/17 budget (Philip Hammond at his worst). This is against the advice of the CCC.
Also against CCC advice is the inclusion of international carbon credits which many would regard as something of a moral outrage.
And the suggestion of bringing forward a ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 to 2035 or earlier has also been ignored. There's nothing like getting tomorrow to pay for today!
The CCC's latest progress report highlights further failings, in particular that only 1 of the 25 headline policy actions set for 2018 has been delivered in full and no progress has been made on 10 of the other actions. That is an absolutely woeful record and all the implicated ministers and departments should be hanging their collective heads in shame.
Possibly worst of all is May's "get out clause" to revoke the legislation if other countries do not follow suit. So much for climate leadership - more like climate equivocation. ("Faith, here's an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale").
So, while being a very welcome headline the reality is something of a curate's egg.
There's also the question of Johnson's reshuffle to be considered. Two of the key players are Andrea Leadsom and Theresa Villiers. Equivocation is again the word that springs to mind. A brief resume of their respective records is here.
What other headlines are there? Well, they are mixed:
HMG has rejected calls for mandatory environmental targets on big-name fashion brands.
It has been somewhat mean in funding new CCUS projects and facilitating aviation and road transport decarbonisation. However, I guess one should be thankful for anything!
It has unveiled a green finance strategy. Hopefully sensible policies will follow.
The Conservative Environment Network has spoken out. But will the government listen?
New research indicate that the UK lags behind mainland Europe in providing EV infrastructure. But we're not pulling forward fossil fuel road transport ………….. so ministers might say it does not matter.... :-(.
The CCC reports than none of the UK's largest 33 sector has made good progress in managing climate risk mainly because of poor policy support.
It looks as though the country is set to miss its 2020 renewable energy target. Well, well, well.
Rachel Reeves, chair of the BEIS Committee has penned an interesting letter to Andrea Leadsome. It's worth a look.
And finally, Ed Miliband's call for social justice to be embedded in the UK's drive to net zero is spot on the money in my book!
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