Today’s announcement of a new low carbon industrial strategy is an incredibly important milestone in the UK’s approach to tackling climate change.
The urgent case for action to tackle the impact of climate change has been widely acknowledged by most mainstream politicians. The real challenges are now in the tough questions around delivery on our domestic carbon targets and building an effective international coalition for change ahead of the Copenhagen negotiations in December.
According to the government’s estimates we will be on target to produce 40% of the country’s electricity from low carbon sources by 2020, double the amount produced today. Aside from disagreements over the cost and role of nuclear, this is a remarkable target and a sign of the reforming intent brought together by Ed Miliband, Peter Mandelson and Andrew Adonis.
In practical terms, climate change has come a long way in just a few years. In 1997, global warming was just a footnote in Labour’s environmental manifesto with greater attention paid to environmental protection, water and air quality. It was not even a footnote for the then Conservative government. And even though there is a strong argument that politicians have been slow to wake up to the scale of the problem, Labour ministers have been leading the debate in recent years. The Climate Change Act, last year, was a world-first setting legally binding targets for the UK government to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. Internationally, as well, the government has provided an effective hand in guiding the preliminary discussions on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol towards agreement on measures to limit global temperature rises to two degrees.
Even in the face of the financial crisis and global downturn, the government stuck to its green guns and set aside £1.4bn of the fiscal stimulus to invest in new technologies and developing a low carbon infrastructure. In contrast, the Tories have opposed the government’s intervention to help the economy at every step, something the green lobby has been remarkably silent about.
So, what does the new package include? The plan covers a wide range of initiatives from helping homeowners reduce bills, investing in new technologies, boosting jobs and cutting transport emissions, as well as tackling climate change. In particular, it includes plans for a major expansion of renewable and clean energy, with major investment planned to boost off-shore wind, make it easier for renewable projects to connect to the National Grid, and develop the UK’s natural advantages in marine and tidal power. For householders, it includes a focus on ‘pay as you save’ pilots to help people invest in making their homes greener by using the savings from future energy bills to repay the upfront costs of installation. Every home will have a smart meter in place within a decade, giving people greater information and control over their energy usage and helping to cut both bills and carbon emissions. Importantly, it also re-affirms the UK’s commitment to become a world leader in clean coal technology and develop our own domestic industry in carbon capture and storage.
I am particularly pleased about the proposals to introduce Feed in Tariffs from April next year, providing a ‘clean energy cash-back’ scheme for people that generate their own electricity from green sources. The proposals also include the potential to expand community energy initiatives, helping to generate more energy at a local level, and to meet a long-held demand of SERA to see a ‘community dividend’ paid out to towns and villages that produce their own power. In essence, the community dividend would be a community version of the Feed in Tariff and encourage communities to host wind turbines and other local renewable schemes in return for a direct local benefit, such a payment towards local facilities.
The scale of these plans has left the Tories on the back foot. Increasingly, they act like spoilt teenagers desperately trying to claim that the government has copied their homework. Sadly, their claims ring hollow given the level of cuts they are now proposing.
In many respects the green elements of the plan are secondary to today’s announcements, and that is a positive outcome. It demonstrates how environmental arguments are becoming a mainstream issue for government rather than a peripheral concern. To paraphrase the hit 80s movie: Nobody puts climate change in the corner – or at least nobody should do. Yet too often politicians and campaigners still regard the environment as a single issue divorced from other political concerns. The importance of the transition plan is that it is more about energy security, creating jobs, tackling fuel poverty and improving our public transport, than it is about climate change.
The UK is not out of the woods yet. There are still thorny issues to be resolved around aviation and the speed in which we can make the transition. There is a legitimate public debate to be had on where the balance of costs should lay. The government also needs to show a deft hand in achieving the kind of results we all want to see around Copenhagen. Yet on the major questions of the day about climate change the government is on the right side of the debate.
Andrew Pakes is right about the need to get Climate Change out of the corner. And here in Manchester, the local environmental groups are working with the City Green Team to write a Climate Action Plan. No set of officers or individual Councillors can turn around the attitudes and behaviours of a whole city on their own. In university cities we also have the asset of thousands of potential managers and leaders who can contribute to the whole city effort. But it has to start in our own streets and allotment sites, in our local stores and groups. So it takes more than just a Grand Plan. Thanks for the Miliband initiative, now we have to get on with Transition in our own back yards.
Green taxes are doing my head in. We pay so much in the UK compared to everywhere else. If there’s one reason I want to leave the UK permanently, that is it. I believe there is very little to show for all that green tax. And now the Goverment is “waking up”, perhaps because a General Election is getting close? It’s pathetic. If they wanted us to use electric cars and wind turbines, they should’ve incentivised these things much sooner. In short, I think green tax is a con. It’s regressive and not ring-fenced for anything environmental. Even though I avail of my parent’s car, home and electricity, I still have to pay green tax on all goods I buy from shops and online. As if VAT wasn’t high enough already? Rant over.
Am I alone in finding the welcome commitment to renewables and energy efficiency in the new plan in conflict with the parallel commitment to a new expanded nuclear programme? At a time when renewables are struggling to get established in a tight market (as witness Vestas’ closure of their Isle of While wind turbine plant with the loss of 425 jobs), £15m has been allocated fora new Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. and £20m for a UK Nuclear Centre of Excellence to ‘promote wider access to civil nuclear power across the world’. Meanwhile EDF tells us that if large nuclear programme would not be compatible with a large wind programme. They are right. Which do we want?