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The Marine Bill was designed to establish a new UK-wide strategic system of marine planning to balance conservation, energy and resource needs, based on the principle of sustainable development and working with the devolved administrations. The Committee reports here reservations about the framework nature of the draft Bill. It was felt that too much of its policy is contained in secondary legislation or guidance. That there are significant areas of confusion of responsibility - between UK and international, especially EU, obligations; between devolved adminstrations; the many agencies and other bodies who will be involved in delivering the proposals in the Bill.
This is the Committee's eighth report on the sustainable operations on the Government estate. There has been some progress against targets but the Sustainable Development Commission has found that in 2007-08 the Government was not on track to meet its target for the reduction of carbon emissions from its own buildings. The Government was on track to meet its targets for recycling and for the sourcing of electricity from renewable sources, but it performed less well than it had in 2006-07. It must improve the sustainability of its operations each year. The ease with which the Government continues to meet some targets, even when its performance worsens, indicates the urgent need for the Government to set itself more stringent targets. The Government should extend the system of targets and monitoring beyond central government and agencies to the wider public sector, including its outsourced operations. The Government has the potential to drive change in the wider economy through sustainable procurement, through investment in low carbon technologies and by driving the development of "green" skills in the workforce. But the Sustainable Development Commission found that Government performed poorly against its own targets. The Government must use its buying power to drive progress towards a greener economy. Many of the changes to the governance of Government's sustainable operations have been confusing or ineffective. The Government must ensure that there is a clear line of accountability for these matters, and the Cabinet Office Minister responsible must take an active role in overseeing performance management.
An area of tropical forest the size of England continues to be lost each year. This gives rise to around 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, greater than global emissions from transport. Addressing deforestation is as essential as decarbonising electricity or transport if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. A failure to act on deforestation could double the cost of avoiding dangerous climate change to 2030. Deforestation is caused by a range of factors, many of which are exacerbated by a growing global population and increasing consumption. Halting deforestation requires: (a) support for rainforest nations to help them manage their development so that it does not allow continued deforestation; (b) management of the demand for commodities whose production encourages deforestation; and (c) the introduction of a mechanism to pay developing countries for maintaining, and in due course recreating, their forests. The UK needs to act in all three areas if its policies on deforestation are to be successful. Ignoring any one undermines the effectiveness and durability of action in the other areas. As part of this work the Government must: remove subsidies that contribute to deforestation, such as biofuels policy; develop sustainability standards for agricultural commodities; implement and enforce government timber procurement; and, seek an EU-wide ban on illegal timber imports combined with robust sanctions. Illegal timber imports are still a fact of life within the UK timber trade. The economic, environmental and development case for immediate action on deforestation is clear. But success is possible only if the international community works together effectively.
Greening Government operations is important in its own right, because of the size and range of their environmental impacts. Each year central Government offices produce approximately 2.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (around 0.4 per cent of the UK total) and 309,000 tonnes of waste. Central Government spends £60 billion on goods and services each year and through sustainable procurement it could accelerate the take-up of environmentally friendly products. This report examines progress relating to: carbon emissions; renewable energy; carbon neutrality; energy consumption; Government response to the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC); the role of the Sustainable Development Commission. The record is poor on carbon emissions. Excellent progress has been made on increasing the use of green electricity, but progress on generating its own electricity from on-site or district renewables has been very disappointing. The target of making the Government Estate carbon neutral by 2012 will depend very heavily on buying offsets. It is important the Government does as much as possible to reduce its own emissions. The newly-announced Greening Government IT programme is encouraging, given that increased use of IT would appear to be the biggest single factor in the upward trend in emissions from civil departments. The Government has, encouragingly, announced significant reforms in its response to the SDC's report. The Commission is having a significant influence in galvanising Government to improve its structures.
In this report (HC 243, session 2008-09, ISBN 9780215529220) the Environmental Audit Committee calls for a sector-based universal labelling scheme comparable to those emerging for food products. The Committee says the Government should be prepared to legislate for such a scheme if necessary. The Committee found greenwash - the use of insubstantial or meaningless claims to promote a product - to be a growing problem and that the Government has a role in policing ’green' labels. Commenting on the report, Colin Challen MP, Chairman of the Environmental Information Sub-Committee, said: "The Government has to act to deal with the problem of greenwash. Clear labels are needed to help consumers make informed choices but for consumers to have confidence in them, environmental labels must be backed up by independent monitoring that is fully verified." Further, that "The proliferation of labels means we urgently need a universal scheme to help consumers discriminate between products on the basis of environmental factors. A robust labelling regime would also change the way many businesses behave and help drive up environmental standards across whole sectors of the economy." The Committee calls for more resources to be put into environmental labelling, including efforts to raise public awareness. It also wants more information to be made available on the standards and processes that underpin any label, with the Government setting clear standards and guidelines on the content and presentation of such information. In addition, the Committee emphasises that the Government should encourage carbon labelling on all products as part of a universal sector-based environmental labelling scheme.
The Government has highlighted the importance of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in providing the cornerstone of its policy framework to tackle climate change. The Committee published its report on the Scheme (HCP 70, session 2006-07; ISBN 9780215032720) in March 2007, in which it made an assessment of the likely impact of the ETS to 2012 and its implication for the UK Climate Change programme. This report contains the Government's reply to the Committee's report, together with the Committee's thoughts on that reply. Amongst its findings, the Committee concludes that emissions trading can be very valuable, enabling emissions cuts to be made in the most economically efficient manner irrespective of location. However, their report raises ongoing concerns about i) the transparency of the reporting process on emissions trading and the risk that the complexities of such transactions might obscure whether they are reducing the full amount of emissions they ostensibly represent. It is especially important to get the transparency of reporting right at this stage, given the Government's plans under the forthcoming Climate Change Bill, to make use of international emissions trading within a national carbon budgeting system; and ii) the Government's presentation in some publications of the purchase of carbon credits by the UK as being, in practice, synonymous with reducing emissions within the UK, since buying emissions credits from other countries does not necessarily translate into cutting emissions, at home or abroad.
This report examines, firstly, the Treasury's response to recession. The fiscal stimulus measures intended to pull the economy out of recession represent an invaluable opportunity to transform the UK into a low carbon economy. But meeting climate change and renewable energy targets will require a step-change in environmental investment. This year's Pre-Budget Report announced a £535m package of green fiscal stimulus measures designed to tackle economic and environmental problems simultaneously. This investment is welcome, but the scale too small- most of this funding was already committed, and will be offset by reduced spending in 2010-11. Extra funding announced for the Warm Front programme will not deliver the scale and speed of change that is needed. Programmes aimed at improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings should be the number one priority for green fiscal stimulus. It is disappointing that the wider fiscal stimulus package contains hundreds of millions of pounds for road building and widening. The Treasury should publish an assessment of the net impacts of its fiscal stimulus package on the environment. The second part of the report looks at green taxation. In real terms, revenue from green taxes has gone down slightly since 1998, while revenue from all taxation has increased by around 30 per cent. On aviation taxes, the Committee criticise the Treasury's backtracking on replacing Air Passenger Duty with a 'per plane' charge, and exhorts the Government to seek reform of the Chicago Convention so as to allow taxation of international aviation fuel. On motoring taxes, it calls for re-examination of the merits and practicalities of a 'car scrappage' scheme to pay people to trade in their existing, older cars, for newer, more efficient models.
As part of the Committee's annual inquiry into the Treasury's Pre-Budget Report (PBR) and the progress made towards achieving environmental objectives with regards to its tax and spending policies, this publication examines the PBR's fiscal policy announcements in relation to the aviation, motoring, waste and energy sectors, focusing on the findings of the Stern Review of the economics of climate change (ISBN 9780102944204) published in October 2006. Amongst the 40 conclusions and recommendations made, the Committee notes that the Stern Review highlights the central problem involved in efforts to address the effects of global warning, that is the need to take action now before the more serious effects have begun to be felt in order to benefit future generations, a problem that will be both practically and politically challenging. The Committee urges the Government to use the Stern Report in order to promote a better informed public discussion of the science of climate change, so that we can use the limited window of opportunity presently available to prevent greenhouse gases growing to dangerous levels beyond which there are risks of major irreversible impacts, and recognising the Stern Review's accompanying argument that the sooner the world begins to cut its emissions, the easier and less costly mitigation will become.
The emission of greenhouse gases from shipping is a serious problem for international climate change policy and they cannot be allowed to grow uncontrolled. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has estimated that international shipping was responsible for annual emissions of around 843 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) in 2007, or around 3 per cent of total man-made carbon emissions. This report follows up an earlier inquiry (Reducing carbon emissions from transport, HC 981-I, 9th report of session 2005-06, ISBN 9780215030412)and examines what efforts the Government is making in three main respects: (a) negotiations to tackle shipping emissions at an international level (within the IMO, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the EU); (b) measures by which the UK is to take into account its share of international shipping emissions in domestic carbon budgets (through the Climate Change Act 2008); and (c) support in the UK for operational improvements and technological R&D aimed at reducing emissions from shipping. Very little progress has been made at the international level. A lack of urgency shown by industrialised nations and blocking actions by developing economies share the blame. The Government admits that the current calculation of the UK's share of international shipping emissions is an underestimate and should consult on how to improve the methodology it uses to calculate the UK's share of international shipping emissions. Government support for research and development should focus on technologies that can be retrofitted to existing ships, and offer a genuine alternative to fossil fuels, such as hydrogen fuel cells. There should be drastic acceleration of R&D into low- and zero-carbon propulsion systems.
The Government has missed a big opportunity to kick start a green-industrial revolution with its £3bn fiscal stimulus. Germany, the US, Japan and China have invested billions in their low-carbon industries. But only one sixth of the UK's Government's fiscal stimulus package was devoted to green industry. Many of the policies needed to cut carbon emissions will provide good opportunities to increase employment and could give the UK a competitive advantage in the coming decades. The UK has the potential to take a leading global role in a number of low carbon sectors. Creating a strong home market in off-shore wind could ensure UK companies are well placed to exploit export opportunities to other EU countries - or promising markets such as the US and China. Increasing the speed and scale of the programme to insulate UK homes could also sustain employment and kick start a market estimated to be worth between £3.5 - 6.5 billion a year. Business needs confidence that financial incentives and regulation designed to promote low carbon industries will be maintained. Although it is recognised that the UK government has made significant investment for delivery of its Low Carbon Industrial Strategy and its Low Carbon Transition Plan it is not sufficient to meet emissions targets or to provide the economic advantage needed. It is felt that the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy does not effectively address a transition across the whole economy. The Committee on Climate Change has identified key sectors in which energy savings must be made and the Government's strategy on green jobs must be directly linked to these sectoral targets and green industries developed to achieve these. The Committee also feels that, in particular, a 'quick win' street-by-street programme of energy saving measures for households that will boost employment and keep UK building firms in business should be developed as a priority. The market-based, demand-led approach to skills has not worked because employers are unable to effectively articulate their needs. The Government's new skills strategy must prioritise the skills needed to drive the economy through the low-carbon transition. A body to lead the green skills agenda must be found and low-carbon skills need to be integrated through the whole skills delivery system to encourage behavioural change across the entire economy