Coalition on course to miss carbon emissions targets, says CBI

Powerful business lobbyist says ministers failing on 12 of 13 environmental indicators after series of policy U-turns The UK government is failing on almost every environmental indicator, the Confederation of British Industry warned on Wednesday, as ministers have damaged business confidence and provided scant detail on their plans. The CBI tracks government aims on the environment and climate change through an online tracker, by which it judges the success of announced measures against the progress that needs to be made to hit the UK’s targets. But in the latest climate change tracker , ministers are shown to have failed on 12 out of 13 key indicators. Improving energy efficiency in buildings has been too slow, while greenhouse gas emissions from transport and industry are likely to remain high as new policies are not taking effect, the CBI said. Katja Hall, chief policy director at the CBI, said: “One year on from pledging to be the ‘greenest government ever’, the coalition has still not delivered the policy landscape needed to ensure we meet tough emissions targets. Decisions being taken now will make or break the UK’s low-carbon economy. Our latest tracker shows that progress is failing to match the government’s ambition.” She pointed to “sudden and unexpected policy shifts”, such as last autumn’s decision to divert funds raised from the carbon reduction commitment to the Treasury , instead of being reinvested in businesses to encourage energy efficiency, as well as the U-turn on feed-in tariffs , when ministers decided to confine the subsidies to households instead of allowing larger solar panel installations to reap the higher rate of tariff. The organisation – one of the UK’s most influential business lobbyists – warned: ” Investor confidence remains low .” Its analysts pointed to separate research which found that the UK had fallen from 3rd to 13th in a global ranking of low-carbon investment . Uncertainty also surrounds a number of major policies, according to the CBI, including electricity market reform, funding for carbon capture and storage technology, the renewable heat initiative and consumer grants for low-carbon vehicles. Hall said: “The carbon floor price and CRC have been dressed up as helping to achieve carbon targets but they risk becoming little more than revenue raisers for the Treasury. Meanwhile, there is also genuine concern about how the green deal and electricity market reform will work.” The Guardian recently revealed research showing that the green deal would not result in savings to consumers at commercial interest rates. The research said the initiative, by which householders can gain access to loans of up to £10,000 to carry out improvements such as insulation and potentially even solar panels , would be worthless unless ministers stepped in to ensure the deal could be provided with interest rates lower than those on offer in the markets. Citing an estimate that £150bn of investment will be needed to decarbonise the energy sector alone, the CBI laid out a series of actions it would like the government to take in the next six months to bring down emissions and stimulate the green economy. They are: Publish the electricity market reform white paper by July, providing greater clarity on the transitional arrangements for renewable energy. • Use the energy-intensive industries strategy to set out plans to protect vulnerable industries from carbon leakage. • Finalise the nuclear generic design assessment and designate the national policy statements for energy as soon as is practical. • Incentivise businesses to invest in energy efficiency measures by simplifying the CRC and wider issues of policy overlap. • Make a decision on the winner of the first carbon capture and storage demonstration plant, and confirm the future funding arrangements for CCS, the renewable heat incentive and the consumer grant for low-carbon vehicles. • Enact the localism bill by the end of 2011 and include provisions to streamline the fast-track process for major infrastructure, and ensure that crucial sub-national infrastructure can be delivered. • Enact the energy bill and work closely with industry to develop the secondary legislation that will successfully deliver the green deal. Carbon emissions Climate change Green politics Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 8, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.