DfT sets out delivery plan for cutting road transport carbon
Wed 31 March 2010
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The Department for Transport has published a carbon reduction delivery plan which sets out how the Government aims to deliver on its earlier strategy - Low Carbon Transport: a Greener Future - which was published in July 2009. The Department has also published a climate change adaptation plan for transport setting out how the UK's transport system will be prepared to adapt to future climate change. The DfT's publications appear alonside similar documents from other major government departments.
The delivery plan is set out in the context of the Climate Change Act 2008 which has created for the first time a legal requirement for at least a 34% reduction in UK greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and at least an 80% reduction by 2050, from a 1990 baseline.
The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, published in July 2009, set out a pilot system of departmental carbon budgets, designed to ensure clarity over the allocation of responsibility across Government for meeting the UK carbon budget for the first 5 year carbon budget period.
The Department for Transport has been allocated responsibility for a 76% share of transport emissions over 2008-2012. Reflecting the wide range of influences on transport's emissions beyond DfT's policies, responsibility for the remainder is divided between several other Government departments to represent the impact of other sectors of the economy in generating transport emissions.
The measures set out in Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future, mean that the DfT projects savings of around 85 million tonnes of CO2 over the third carbon budget period from 2018-2022, in addition to existing policies.
The transport carbon delivery plan fulfils the DfT's commitment to publish an implementation plan setting out milestones and monitoring mechanisms for delivering carbon reductions in the transport sector.
The plan sets out:
- How the Government will measure progress towards reducing greenhouse gases in the transport sector
- How the Government is implementing UK transport carbon reduction plans, focusing in particular on the actions in Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future
- The contribution of other Government Departments to reducing transport emissions
- What DfT is doing to contribute to emissions reductions in the sectors for which it has a share of emissions, namely waste, workplaces and jobs and agriculture, forestry and land management
- How DfT is reducing emissions from its own estate and operations and how progress is measured
Alongside the plan for carbon reduction, the DfT's adaptation plan for transport is an acknowledgment that transport networks can be affected by projected changes in the weather which may increase the frequency of potentially disruptive events. These impacts could have social and economic costs so the Department is aiming to identify and manage the risks at an early stage through the development of adaptive measures and the provision of contingency plans for unexpected events.
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