Environmental Lobby Welcomes Green-Tinged UK Budget
Date: 23-Mar-06
Country: UK
Author: Jeremy Lovell
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown index-linked the business Climate Change Levy, revamped vehicle excise duties to hit gas-guzzlers and announced a 20 million pound fund to promote new environmental technologies.
Brown, delivering his 10th budget, said a new fund starting with 50 million pounds would be created to boost microgeneration technologies -- from wind to solar power -- as part of the new Microgeneration Strategy to be announced next Wednesday.
He also announced an agreement with energy companies to insulate an extra 250,000 homes over the next two years, a pilot scheme to begin water metering and a new labelling scheme promoting energy-efficient consumer goods.
He also said that an annual carbon report would be part of the steps Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett will announce next Tuesday to get the country back on target to meet its own goals of cutting CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2010.
"This is the greenest budget since the Chancellor introduced the Climate Change Levy," said Guy Thompson of the Green Alliance lobby group.
"Gordon Brown has set the right direction of travel on climate change and these measures signal intent to start changing behaviour at a household level," he added. "To be honest, I was surprised at how far he went."
The Climate Change Levy, a tax on industry's use of energy that currently adds about 15 percent to fuel bills, has been static since its inception in 2001. From next year it will rise in line with inflation.
The top rate of vehicle excise tax, currently 170 pounds, is to rise immediately to 210 pounds on the worst carbon emitting cars, while those with the lowest emissions like the new breeds of hybrid will pay nothing.
In between there will be a sliding scale from 40 pounds to 100, 125, 150 and 190.
WAKING UP TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Friends of the Earth welcomed the measures but complained that they were but a tiny step in the right direction in slashing carbon emissions that are blamed for global warming.
"At long last the Chancellor appears to be waking up to the enormous threat posed by climate change and is taking some steps to put us in a better position to act," said FoE's chief Tony Juniper.
"However, the measures announced today are still insufficient. Making urban owners of big gas-guzzlers pay an extra 40 pounds a year, about the equivalent of a cappuccino a month, is unlikely to encourage them to drive greener cars," he added.
Greenpeace chief Stephen Tindale, whose group had called for the top rate of road vehicle tax to be raised to a penal 1,800 pounds, echoed those sentiments.
"Many of these measures will make a difference if properly implemented, though the real test for Brown comes next month when the government has to decide how much carbon British industry is allowed to emit," he said.
"We'll see whether Brown, unlike (Prime Minister Tony) Blair, follows rhetoric with action when the government publishes its plans for the next stage of (European) emissions trading before Easter," he added.
BIOFUELS AT RISK?
Repeating the government's long-established position, Brown said he would push his EU counterparts to extend the EU Emissions Trading Scheme beyond its current expiry date of 2012.
Brown, who has already announced plans to make road fuels contain five percent biofuel by 2010, said the existing 20 pence per litre duty differential would rise to 35 pence by 2008.
The Renewables Association welcomed the maintenance of the 20 pence differential but complained that Brown had put the biofuel sector at risk by raising the differential so little.
"If the Government is to meet its targets we need effective incentives that deliver growth, not measures that maintain the status quo," said Graham Meeks, the association's head of fuels and heat.
"The oil industry, not the environment, is the real winner here. Government must ensure that the oil indu