Low-carbon Britain looks like it will be built slowly

8:18am Wednesday 26th March 2008

The section in the recent Budget on tackling climate change is called Building a Low-Carbon Britain and it covers most of the opportunities. It's just a pity that it's short on decisions and long on voluntary commitment and delays.

Perhaps there will be more action in April 2009, when the mandatory targets on carbon budgets from the new Climate Change Committee are announced, but as they won't be assessed until 2014, there will be a large amount of CO2 allowed unchallenged into the atmosphere in the interim. An annual target would be more helpful.

The report states that 28 per cent of the CO2 emissions are from transport, and yet the actions taken to reduce them are, at best, timid. The promised 2p increase in fuel duty was delayed for six months and changes to road tax could be more helpful.

The press anticipated that gas guzzlers' would have to pay £2,000 a year, but the expensive vehicles that produce over 255 gms/km of CO2 will be charged just £950 in the first year as a purchase tax' and then only £455 thereafter. The same problem appears in the other bands and the new arrangement is less of a deterrent as it only begins in 2010.

There is a proposed link with India to produce a low-carbon car, perhaps electric or compressed air, when there should be detailed subsidies and dedicated tax for improving public transport. This is a certain way to reduce congestion rather than continuing to trial different road pricing schemes.

There is, however, a nod to the damage done by flying as the tax will apply to the plane and not individual passengers, in 2010. This should encourage full aeroplanes, and so fewer of them, but the CO2 savings are paltry compared with accepting the expansion of Heathrow and Stansted airports.

Plastic carrier bags are an example of the reluctance to act. There's to be further consultation with the retail industry and the promise of legislation if the voluntary effort fails. Making a decision would have reduced the waste and CO2, and saved the odd barrel of oil.

There are some useful initiatives even if they are well down the line, in 2012. Auctioning the Carbon Trading Allowances to the electricity companies instead of giving them away should encourage more renewable technology and energy efficiency, though the latter could be funded directly from a profits windfall tax.

Carbon capture and storage is to be investigated for new coal-fired power stations, but a serious omission was not arranging a proper feed in tariff for electricity from domestic solar panels and wind turbines.

It seems that Low-carbon Britain is to be built rather slowly, and unfortunately CO2 emissions will show no sign of serious reduction until the difficult decisions are made.

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