UK Government defends green record

It will be a year tomorrow since Prime Minister David Cameron pledged in a speech to make the Coalition Government the “greenest ever”, but its commitment to the environment is being called into question.

There have been reports of disagreements between Government minsters over carbon emission targets, while Friends of the Earth (Foe) has given a scathing verdict of the Coalition’s green policies 12 months after Mr Cameron’s headline-grabbing speech.

FoE says that the Government is failing to deliver on most of its green pledges, with many policies delayed or watered down.

It has examined 77 green policies – and found little or no progress in over three quarters of them (58).

Greenest ever pledge – ‘vanishingly remote’

Examples of Government failures to champion green issues, according to FoE, include the Treasury’s refusal to let the Green Investment Bank borrow funds until at least 2015, which has reduced its ability to invest in green technologies. It has also abandoned plans to make airlines pay aviation duty per plane, rather than per person.

The likelihood of the coalition Government living up to its greenest-Government-ever pledge is “vanishingly remote” without a huge improvement in its performance, says former Sustainable Development Commission chairman Jonathon Porritt in the FoE report, which was published last week.

But despite disappointment over government progress on the environment, Martyn Williams, senior parliamentary campaigner at FoE, tells Channel 4 News that Mr Cameron can still achieve his green promise if he shows more leadership on the issue.

“We are not writing off the government’s [ambition] but are saying that there is no way it will it will become the greenest one, unless it pulls its finger out and Cameron shows more commitment on the issue,” he says.

When it comes to renewable energy the UK still lags behind other governments, such as Germany, Mr Williams adds.

Green successes

For its part, the Government says it has made good progress over the past year. Successes include plans to boost the use of renewable energy by reforming electricity markets, a “Green Deal” Bill which provides homeowners with up to £6,000 for insulation and places of legal obligations on power companies to cut emissions.

And a spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), told Channel 4 News that the Government is on track to meet an early green target for Whitehall departments to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 per cent by May this year. He said Government still has a “bit of time” before it becomes the greenest ever, but it can stand by its record over the past year pointing out that no other government has set legally-binding targets for reducing carbon emissions before.

In about six week’s time the Government faces an important deadline in its timetable for reducing greenhouse gases. It has to publish a fourth “carbon budget” for the period between 2023 and 2027 by 30 June. The carbon budgets, which require Governments to publish a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, are seen as essential if it is to meet its legal obligation to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.