New figures confirm UK Govt to miss 2010 manifesto target
Wed 04 February 2009
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The Guardian newspaper has reported that the latest data on greenhouse gas emissions levels, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), shows a reduction of 8.5% since the baseline year of 1990, falling signficantly short of of the Labour party's imanifesto pledge of 20% by 2010.
In the 1999 Pre-Budget Report the Government said it was going to: “reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2010.” In 2003 this became an aspiration to “move towards a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2010”. In 2005: “UK carbon dioxide emissions will be about 14 per cent below the 1990 level, and emissions of all greenhouse gases will be around 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
Robin Webster, of Friends of the Earth, pointed out that the figures do not include emissions from international aviation or shipping. "The reality is that UK carbon dioxide emissions are still higher than when Labour came to power in 1997, despite repeated promises of significant cuts," she said. Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, said the UK would cut emissions more quickly in the next few years.
Additionally, whilst emissions from energy supply, business and residential fossil fuel use have fallen since 2006 and the UK is on course to meet the target set by the international Kyoto protocol, emissions from road transport have risen by 1 per cent. The Climate Change Act, which became law on 26th November 2008, has also now set legally-binding targets for the UK to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and CO2 by at least 26 per cent by 2020.
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