Government's “schizophrenic attitude" to climate change

Labour’s Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary Caroline Flint has said that David Cameron's promise of the ‘greenest government ever’ is unravelling by the day.

Flint was responding to a report by the Environmental Audit Committee which criticised the Government’s “schizophrenic attitude" to climate change and warned it is undermining investor confidence in low-carbon industries.

Flint said:"This report exposes the chaos and confusion at the heart of the Tory-led Government’s energy policy – and the threat it poses to our carbon targets, our energy security and fair energy prices for families."

The committee warned that the promise to review the decision on the fourth carbon budget in 2014, potentially relaxing it if Europe was not making similar efforts, risked throwing efforts to cut emissions off course.

MP's also attacked the self-styled "greenest Government ever" for failing to adopt all the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, including tightening of the second and third budgets up to 2020.

The report follows the somewhat contradictory message from the Chancellor last week who told his party conference that the UK would cut emissions no faster than others in Europe, and that environmental measures would not be at the expense of British business.

Bag police about to invade Wales

From the 1st of October Wales will become the first UK country to introduce a charge for single use carrier bags.

The legislation, brought in by the devolved Welsh assembly,forces shops to charge 5p for single use carrier bags when people buy goods.

According to the government,the charge should be enough to influence consumer behaviour and reduce the number of bags given out without putting an unnecessary burden on shoppers, or preventing impulse shopping.

It estimates that 350 million carrier bags from the major supermarkets alone were given out in 2009 which they say equates to 273 bags per household.This,they add, does not include the bags picked up when shopping at high street stores and smaller shops.

Bags made from cloth,hessian,jute and cotton are excluded as are those needed for food safety, hygiene, animal welfare and public safety.For example food items that are unwrapped would be excluded.

However in a bid to close an obvious loophole,if an item which is not an exempt item is placed in the bag,the bag would need to be charged for.

The devolved government has made much of the fact that the money raised will not go back into its coffers but go towards good causes,preferably environmental good causes,but the business trade see this move as another stealth tax at a time when trade is difficult on the high street.

It also shot itself in the foot somewhat by announcing that a proportion of the charge subject to VAT will obviously go into government coffers.

Prepare for a legal minefield,the next time you go shopping in Wales then?

Let's invest in a yet to be invented technology

Following on from their investment in electric cars,a technology that has not been invented,the government has excelled again today by announcing plans for carbon capture which again has not been invented.

The energy and environment secretary earlier today announced plans to build new coal fired power stattions which would only go ahead if the technology was in place to capture their emissions.

According to Miliband the process will help cut carbon emissions by 90 per cent in a technique that removes carbon dioxide from burning coal, converts it to a liquid and pumps it underground.

The problem is that the technology is a yet unproven and may not work on a commercial scale.

Which may laeve the country pitifully short of power as we enter the 2020's

Osborne ups the anti on the green budget

A green theme to the blog this morning.

According to George Osborne

The Labour plan announced today is like giving people a grant to buy an internal combustion engine, without bothering to set up any petrol stations.

Hot on the heels of the government's announcements on electric cars,shadow chancellor George Osborne has been telling the country what green issues a Conservative chancellor would tackle if he was standing at the dispatch box next week.

The main stay appears to be a grant of £6,500 for every home to increase energy efficiency which would be paid for in the resultant fuel bill savings.

As a response to the electric car news,he committs the Tories to a the creation of a national recharging network for electric vehicles.

But also something that we are not hearing from Labour,investment in public transport.

A Tory governmnet would start work on plans for a new high speed rail network initially between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds which would be funded through a public-private partnership to enable construction to begin as soon as possible.

Electric Hype

So the government is thinking about a £5,000 pound scheme to get people top buy electric cars from 2011.

This is on top of a much flounted atempt to pay people £2,000 to trade in their old cars for more environmentally efficient ones.

Is this the right way to go?

Well read the editorial in the Guardian this morning

it provides dubious economic benefit, probable environmental harm and, crucially, will only heighten Britons' dependence on cars when we ought to be weaning ourselves off them. The economics are simple: all taxpayers - princes and paupers alike - will be paying for a few lucky souls to treat themselves to a new car. This scheme will pay for part of its own way, but it is likely to cost more than the loan guarantees that Jaguar-Land Rover asked for last autumn.

As for specifically electric cars,how exactly are these going to be made and the infrastructure put in to support a network?

We should be thinking about electric buses and more trains rather than cars, and emphasising public rather than private transport, especially in urban conurbations. Over the past century, the car has gone from rare luxury to commonplace utility. Over this century, it will need to reverse that journey.

New beginnings

I have written before on this blog about the opportunities that this recession will provide for the country to re-examine its growth policies.

One area is green technology which was sadly overlooked by the G20.

The Prime Minister though attempts to put that right in an exclusive interview with the Indy this morning.

He tells the paper that he wants

to make Britain "a world leader" in producing and exporting electric cars, hybrid petrol-electric vehicles and lighter cars using less petrol.

and that the budget in two weeks tine will see the first signs of this process.The country he says

could increase its output of environmental goods and services by 50 per cent to £1.5bn in the next few years.

as he heralds that 400,000 jobs could be created.

We have though heard this before and one wonders how this sits alongside yesterday's decision to pump more money into an ailing car industry.

The paper's leading article is optimistic

Mr Brown is certainly right when he argues that Britain will need to find some way of creating jobs in a post-recession world in which the City, our dominant employer of late, will be much diminished. Furthermore, we will need to expand our renewable industry rapidly if we are to meet our EU target of producing 15 per cent of our energy from low carbon sources by 2020. There is plainly scope for growth in the labour-intensive green economy.

Where our environmental concerns should be focused

More than 80 per cent of the human population is in developing countries. Population growth is also concentrated there. Of more than 90m people who engross the human population every year, about 90 per cent is expected to live in developing countries. The problem seems clearly to be in the developing world.

writes Julio Cesar Centenon at the New Statesman.

I believe he makes a good point in this is where the world's eforts need to be directed but as he points out the main impact on the planet comes from

The consumption of resources and the production of waste and pollutants

which comes in most part from the developed world

industrial countries accounted for nearly 80 per cent of all resources consumed. They were also responsible for the production of nearly 80 per cent of all waste and pollutants.

Green shoots will also now divide the parties

Hot on the heals of the Heathrow announcenment comes the Tory proposals for a green future,no doubt timed to coincide with the Hoon announcement yesterday.

Peter Hoskin writing at Coffee House says that

After the Heathrow announcement yesterday, talk of a greener national infrastructure by the Tory leader is sure to irk a few Labour MPs, and could set the political dividing lines in his party's favour. What's more, the Tory policy idea - a £1 billion "investment" in what would apparently be a smarter, cleaner, more efficent National Grid - sounds like something that even the envirosceptics can sign up to; depending, of course, on where that £1 billion comes from.

So what is in the proposals?

David Cameron chose this morning's Guardian to give a lowdown on his thinking and at the head of them is

turning Britain's national grid into an online network in which consumers and suppliers will interact in a new process that will bring down prices and cut emissions.

Could Benn be on the way out

Three Line Whip believes that Hillary Benn may be on the way out.

His opposition to the planned third runway at Heathrow is the problem.

Andrew Porter says there is

"irritation" inside Number 10 at Benn's refusal, in a 45 minute interview with the Sunday Times, to even support in principle the Government policy on the third runway - regardless of his doubts about meeting climate change commitments

.

Running dry on oil and running dry on natural resources

This morning's lead story in the FT is worth a read.

The paper has got hold of a draft report which says that

Output from the world’s oilfields is declining faster than previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest fields shows.
Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook,

The consequences are pretty obvious if this is correct although it was written prior to the chain of events which will see the world economy lapse into recession.However

The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term de­mand. The effort will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are delayed.

Allied to this the Guardian takes a look at the wider world of resource management

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet,

The report by The Living Planet says that

humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis

The tipping point for Green policy as fuel prices rocket

The papers have turned on the government over the price of motoring this morning.

The main gripe with the government is that the tax changes to older cars mean that according to the Telegraph

the changes to the Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) will affect nearly seven in 10 of the country's 26 million drivers.
Many of those who will be most heavily penalised by the rises are people on low incomes, who could have to pay up to an extra £245 a year to tax the family car.

This is really the first test of the conflict between the green argument and the economic realities for the public.

There has been much talk about how the political parties will be forced to drop green policies when voters realise that it is going to cost them more money.

Of course the real issue behind this increase in motoring costs is the rising price of oil,something that government's can do little about.

This in itself may force the public to cut back on carbon use but in reality,any cutbacks in the West will be balanced by increased use in the developing economies of India and China.

It is demand from these areas that is pushing petrol prices up.

This morning the business secretary John Hutton will make a speech in which he will argue that high oil prices must translate into action on investment on new energy sources whilst calling for action from oil producing countries to increase production and drive down prices.

The Independent adds he will say

"In the long term the only effective way to insulate ourselves and other oil consuming countries from future oil price spikes is energy efficiency and substitution.
"In the early 1970s the world faced comparable price volatility. Some economies had the vision to diversify and innovate. California blazed a trail, invested heavily in exploiting its natural resources, and is today a world leader in renew ables like solar and wind power. This should be the inspiration for responsible economies today."

As for today's fuel protests,well yes the government could take action over duty especially over commercial hauliers to protect UK firms.However there is little room for manoeuvre over domestic duty.

Brown's VAT proposals grounded in Brussels

Mark Mardell reminds us of something that occuured in the EU a couple of months ago when Gordon Brown managed to persuade the other leaders to look into cuting VAT on environmentallly friendly goods.

Unfortunately as Mark reveals it has become stuck in the mud so to speak

Many at the time thought the leaders and the Commission were willing to give him the headline, but precious little of real value.
British diplomats haven't been told by Downing Street to push the idea, and currently it's stuck in the office of the commissioner for taxation.
The Commission tells me that this is not a new idea; it is at least two years old.