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· , the Secretary of State
for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has today
published the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate
Change’s (CCC) annual progress report
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· The
report highlighted that the Government’s policies and plans are
insufficient to meet the fourth or fifth carbon budgets
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· In
response the Government propose establishing new governance
arrangements and potentially a new cabinet sub-committee
Earlier this afternoon MP stated that the
Government could ‘potentially’ introduce a new cabinet
sub-committee on climate change in the Government’s response to
the CCC’s annual progress report.
This sub-committee would be part of a proposal to establish new
governance arrangements to drive forward cross-government efforts
to deliver the net zero target. Additional proposals to ensuring
the UK meets the fourth and fifth carbon budgets as well as net
zero by 2050 include:
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· Improving
the energy performance of non-domestic buildings – potentially
saving businesses around £1 billion per year in energy costs by
2030;
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· Developing
a new, holistic Transport Decarbonisation Plan to step up the
pace of progress towards a cleaner, more sustainable and
innovative transport network;
This response comes three months after the CCC claimed that only
one of 25 headline policy actions outlined in the 2018 progress
report had been delivered and that the Government's own
projections demonstrate that its policies and plans are
insufficient to meet the fourth or fifth carbon budgets. The
report also highlighted that this policy gap had widened in the
last year.
Commenting on the proposals, Dr Nina Skorupska CBE, Chief
Executive at the REA said:
“The CCC were right to highlight the inefficiency of the
current disjointed approach, achieving our legally binding carbon
targets cannot and should not be the sole responsibility of a
handful of departments across the Government. Responsibility and
accountability for implementing the policies and infrastructure
urgently needed to address the climate emergency must sit at the
top, with No 10 and the Cabinet Office. The Government must treat
this as an emergency and must oversee the delivery.
“Andrea Leadsom and the Government must follow through on
this proposal or risk missing not only the fourth and fifth
carbon budgets but our net zero target.”
—ENDS—
Notes to editors
