CCC calls for early action on climate change from new Parliament to keep UK 'on track'

Tue 30 June 2015 View all news

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has published its first report in the new Parliament about progress towards meeting targets to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Committee says that urgent action is needed now to avoid increasing costs and impacts of climate change in the UK.

The Committee's press release notes that many policies designed to reduce future emissions are due to expire over the course of the current Parliament. This includes funding for low-carbon electricity and heat, measures to encourage low-emission vehicle use and energy efficiency. Uncertainty created by the lack of policies after 2020 will lead to stop-start investment, higher costs for all and risks failing to meet legal obligations to reduce emissions.

The findings are part of the Committee’s new progress report which is published half way through what it points out is a crucial year for global climate action. 196 nations will meet in Paris in December to agree a new international deal to limit global warming.

Additionally work is now underway to set the UK’s fifth Carbon Budgets for the period 2018 to 2032.

Transport is the only sector where emissions have increased in the last year and an area where without strong policy measures, emissions will inevitably continue to rise.

The Committee is advising Government to:

  • extend funding for low-carbon electricity generation to 2025, to support investment and innovation and to continue cutting costs
  • agree an action plan that delivers low-carbon heatand energy efficiency to allow homes to be heated for less while addressing the risks from rising temperatures and flooding
  • continue support for efficient, low-emission vehicles to save drivers money
  • develop new infrastructure that helps to combat climate change and is resilient to its impacts
  • act to preserve the fertility and organic content of soils and counter the decline in productive farmland.

Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, said: “This Government has a unique opportunity to shape climate policy through the 2020s. It must act now to set out how it plans to keep the UK on track. Acting early will help to reduce costs to households, business and the Exchequer. It will improve people’s health and wellbeing and create opportunities for business in manufacturing and in the service sector.”

Andy Eastlake, the LowCVP's Managing Director commented: “The CCC has identified several critical risk areas where policies on transport and fuels are missing for the period beyond 2020, leaving industry investors completely in the dark.”

Responding to the CCC report on current UK policies, a spokesman for WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff one of the world's leading engineering professional services consulting firms said: “We already have many of the policies we need for a low carbon economy – what is needed is both to continue this support and also to be seen to actively support a low carbon Britain .Too often the impact of generally positive policies is crowded out by mixed messages: Britain appears open for shale gas extraction but not onshore wind. Britain supports innovation and aspiration, but this doesn’t extend to low carbon homes and renewable energy because they’re too expensive.

“Our future world will be energy efficient, powered by low carbon electricity and making the most of new technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles. This is a positive, aspirational world and one the new Government should be at the heart of building.”

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