Britain will not meet its targets on reducing carbon emissions, the government was warned today. According to the independent Committee on Climate Change, the only way the UK will live up to its 2020 EU targets is with drastic changes, such as reforming the electricity market and introducing more electric cars.
The committee also said that the large 8.6 per cent drop in greenhouse gas emissions seen last year was almost entirely to do with the recession and little to do with actual climate policies. The government has committed to a 34 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, but in its second progress report to Parliament, the group warned that once the recession is over the UK will be nowhere near this milestone.
Lord Adair Turner, the committee chairman, said the recession has wrongly led people to to believe that progress is being made. He added that the government must introduce more policies in order to tackle climate change and ensure low-carbon recovery.
The UK was the first country in the world to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act, which tied it to a long-term, legally binding framework to cut carbon emissions. Britain must meet a series of carbon budgets every five years, and the committee must monitor its performance.
The coalition government has promised to be the greenest in Britain’s history, but today’s report comes as a reminder that if it doesn’t act quickly, it will fail on even the most basic level. Areas earmarked for development by the report, were electric cars, agriculture, building insulation and the reform of the energy market. At present there are only thought to be a few hundred electric cars in the UK, but the committee wants this pushed up to 1.7 million by 2020.
|
|
