Responding to the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) report on
the Sixth Carbon Budget, CLA Deputy President Mark Tufnell said:
“Cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 63% across the economy
over the next 15 years is an extremely ambitious target.
“To reach this goal, the CCC has scaled up the level of ambition
required from the agriculture and land use sectors, calling for
emission reductions in farming alongside large targets for tree
planting and peatland restoration – strengthening land use is a
big part of the ‘solution’ to achieving net zero.
“For this to be feasible, government policies to support urgent
action from English and Welsh landowners need to be put in place.
The new Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMS) is seen as
the main vehicle to reduce these emissions from agriculture,
alongside increasing biodiversity and meeting other environmental
targets. However, ELMS will not be available until 2024, and so
we also need the right policy framework to allow private
investment to come onstream, such as for carbon offsetting.
“Many rural businesses are already taking steps to move towards
low carbon farming practices from improving sequestration and
carbon storage, and are keen to encourage the rapid adoption of
new technologies and innovation. However, the wider needs of both
farming and nature must be considered in plans to combat climate
change.”
“The CLA is also supportive of decarbonising the building stock,
although this hugely ambitious target can only be achieved if the
EPC methodology accurately assesses the thermal capacity of older
buildings and the metric moves from using the fuel cost to carbon
cost in its calculations. Targeted support must be made available
for off-gas grid rural homes to enable an effective transition to
low carbon heating. Furthermore, rural electricity grids need to
be upgraded to cope with more electric heating.”
