The Government should establish a 2030 energy decarbonisation target and review its renewables target, manufacturer’s body the EEF says.
The recommendations are part of a major report to be launched later today in Parliament that effectively call for an entire overhaul of the Government’s current
climate change strategy. The
EEF, which represents 6,000 companies across engineering, manufacturing and technology, is also calling for the abolition of the
Carbon Floor Price and the
Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme.
The EEF claims the Government’s current
green policies are too complex and are driving investment abroad. It wants manufacturing to be put at the heart of the Government green strategy and says a decarbonisation target for 2030 would set "long-term ambition and certainty" and help meet the UK’s ambitious carbon reduction targets at the same time as stimulating balanced economic growth.
"Industry can play a major role in growing and greening our economy but until recently, there has been insufficient attention on helping to achieve this," EEF chief executive, Terry Scuoler, said. "Manufacturers have ambitions to be part of a low carbon economy but not enough of them currently see the UK as good place to invest in this area.
"We now need a newer, more positive approach that gives industry the certainty and incentives to invest and, understands the competitive pressures they are facing."
Today’s report, 'Green and Growth Solutions for Growing a Green Economy’, makes a number of recommendations that it says will help Government work with industry to meet its carbon reduction targets and generate green investment.
Helping to make the case against current UK climate change policies, a survey of UK manufacturing companies by the EEF shows only one in eight view the UK as a favourable place for low carbon investment and three quarters say the cost of environmental policies has risen and will damage competitiveness.
Renewables target
While the EEF is not calling for the abolition of the
renewables target, it clearly sees meeting it could prove too costly and may be unachievable. It has therefore called on the Government to produce more evidence that it is working. The target requires that 15 per cent of the UK’s energy comes from renewables by 2020.
Carbon Floor Price
It is more decisive about the Carbon Price Floor, saying it should be scrapped "as soon as fiscally possible". Instead it wants to see the Government focus on Feed-in Tariffs, which it believes are a more cost-effective mechanism to decarbonise the UK’s energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, it wants to see fewer measures to tackle carbon emissions within business. At such, it is calling for CRC to be abolished by 2015, and UK Climate Change Agreements extended instead.
Other recommendations
Other recommendations it makes in today’s report, include a move away from an absolute cap on emissions towards carbon intensity targets for certain sectors, such as steel; a Green Investment Bank that supports manufacturing by investing in energy efficiency and low carbon product development; and the extension of funding for carbon capture and storage to industrial projects.
Scuoler, said that by adopting this new approach, the Government could provide "the best kind of leadership to the rest of the world by demonstrating that it can achieve success on both the green and growth fronts at the same time."
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