Broadcast: Monday 05 March 2007 08:00 PM |
The government is set to achieve only a third to a half of its overall policy target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
The expert-reviewed audit by the UCL Environment Institute is the first comprehensive investigation into the real impact of the Government's carbon-cutting policies across all government departments mandated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Each of the four most important sectors: Energy Supply, Business, Transport and Domestic have been reviewed.
The report: Audit of UK Greenhouse Gas emissions to 2020: Will current Government policies achieve significant reductions? written by Mark Maslin and a team of expert researchers at UCL, reveals that, at best, the government's existing policies (which are supposed to deliver a cut by 2020 in the UK's greenhouse gas emissions of 30 per cent on 1990 levels) will only deliver a reduction of between 12 per cent and 17 per cent.
The reasons for these failures of policy are due to the current voluntary nature of most of the policy. Where policies are mandatory there is currently no enforcement. If current policies were mandatory and new more prescriptive future policies were developed then the Audit believes the UK could still make significant cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, thus providing world leadership in combating climate change.
