Comment: ‘Green week’ was more of a green wash
The Carbon Plan looked like a train timetable listing the times of the trains, but not their destinations.
By Martyn Williams
After almost a year in office, the government has just held ‘green week’. This package of policy announcements was clearly designed, depending on your level of cynicism, to kick-start further progress, or to gloss over the fact that green progress so far has been disappointingly limited.
Despite Nick Clegg announcing the package a month ago, it looked to be a rush job – seemingly scrambled together at short notice with shifting announcement times and embarrassingly inaccurate information.
The centrepiece of the week – the draft ‘Carbon Plan’ – contained few new ideas, just timing for existing policy commitments. Strangely, all sorts of policy deadlines were set out in great detail, but the actual aim of all these policies remained a mystery. The Carbon Plan looked like a train timetable listing the times of the trains, but not their destinations.
The government has been sitting on official advice from the committee on climate change since before Christmas, which says how ambitious UK carbon cuts need to be. At one time the Conservative party said such advice should be accepted without debate. Experts should set targets – not politicians, it argued.
In opposition, senior Conservatives often said they would implement green policies early if they won the election. This was not just because tackling climate change is urgent, but because if it takes four years to launch a home insulation scheme – for example – few voters would notice by the next election.
Despite this, the government’s big ticket environmental policies are moving pretty slowly.
Green week said little about tackling waste – a quick and easy way of cutting our carbon emissions. The government’s waste review is worryingly lacking ambition, with communities secretary Eric Pickles more interested in telling councils when to collect bins than how to reduce the amount of rubbish going in them.
The ‘green investment bank’ is still not confirmed as a bank (it could yet just be a fund), and it may not even be particularly green. Many remain unconvinced that the much vaunted loans to help pay for home energy efficiency improvements – the ‘green deal’ – will actually do enough to cut energy waste, and the loan structure itself is likely to limit people to basic measures like loft insulation.
Boosting small-scale renewable energy technologies was something the Conservatives made much of in opposition, and the confirmation of the renewable heat incentive is good news. But the government has even managed to take the shine off this with an early review of the feed-in tariff scheme – badly shaking investor confidence in the renewable energy industry. Many of the same companies who have seen their solar energy projects hit by the FITs review are now being asked to scale up their operations to fit solar hot water panels. You could hardly blame them for thinking twice.
One development that certainly missed the headlines during green week was the signing of an agreement between central and local government on how they will work together to cut emissions both in the councils’ own estate and in their local communities.
This is a crucially important focus. The vast majority of carbon emissions (around 80%) are from our every day energy use in our local communities – things like how we heat and power our homes and travel to work and school – and local support is vital to making changes. The coalition has scrapped all requirements on councils to tackle climate change. But they themselves are asking for the energy bill to be amended to make action on climate a core responsibility for every local authority, and for clarity to be given on the scale of action needed for councils to do their bit to meet UK Climate Change Act targets.
The verdict: was it more of a green wash than a green week? Yes, it was. The renewable heat incentive was an important step forward but how sustainable it is remains to be seen, and there are still far too many gaps and questions to be answered on a huge range of other policies. Could I propose a green month – or a green year in fact – to allow ministers to really get to grips with tackling our most pressing environmental and economic issues? Maybe they should start with the Budget.
Martyn Williams is Friends of the Earth’s senior parliamentary campaigner.
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