Budget 2009 - more ‘lean’ than ‘green’
Alistair Darling delivered an historic 2009 budget that leaves the high-bracket earners spitting blood, the country severely weighed down with the highest planned borrowing and debt since Bank of England records began and environmental issues clearly identified in this government’s list of priorities (low). Here’s what he ‘gave’ and what it means:
First official UK carbon budget
“The UK has committed to building a low carbon recovery with the announcement of the first legally binding carbon budget. The carbon budget aims to cut 34 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This will keep the UK on track for its long term goal of cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.” Before even getting into the detail, it should be remembered that this falls a long way short of what the science and our very own Lord Stern (in his Review) recommends as being a minimum effort required to avoid economic collapse by 2048 and too low to stimulate any real innovation… but maybe that was the point! So, how it’s all being ‘given’?
£1.4 billion of extra targeted support in the low-carbon sector
Actually a cobbling together of smaller amounts that build on the existing money that is still not being fully utilised; e.g. ‘£405 million to support low-carbon industries and advanced green manufacturing’.
The car scrappage scheme
This will see a discount of £2,000 on newer, more efficient vehicles when the owner scraps another car more than ten years old. Actually, the Govt. will contribute £1,000 and the manufactuer will have to make up the difference (not hard since they’ve had £ billions from the Govt already this year). You have to have owned the car for at least 12 months… and this ‘incentive’ won’t be introduced until March 2010.
£525m for offshore wind over next two years
Current estimates of the costs of building offshore wind to meet the Government’s renewable energy targets for 2020 are in the order of £70-90 billion so, although the Renewable Energy Association welcomes this money, it’s not nearly enough if, as is the case at present, there is no other ‘green’ alternative at the same stage of readiness for routine installation and implementation. This is especially disappointing in the light of the following ‘gift’ in the budget.
£90 million to fund up to four Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) projects
This was the carbon bomb that Energy & Climate Secretary Ed Miliband dropped on us at the after show simulcast of “The Age of Stupid”. So the Govt. is going to pump £90 million into looking at creating more coal fired power stations and capturing and storing the carbon output… completely missing the point that the major threat to business is the massive depletion of carbon resource that, at current rates of use, will leave us without the wherewithal to viably (either economically or sustainably) power the commercial sector within 50 years. In the words of Nick Reeves, Executive Director of CIWEM “clean coal is like friendly fire”.
£750m investment fund for emerging technologies.
Like a lot of the money that is being made available, this sum is almost entirely made up of funds that the Govt is trying to make easier to access by new-techs from the European Investment Bank.
£375 million over the next two years for energy and resource efficiency in households, businesses and public buildings. £70 million to be spent on small-scale and community low carbon energy and resource efficiency.
To put this figure into perspective, this is only marginally more than was made available earlier in the year to fund RBS bonuses.
There are a few other baubles, but you get the picture. Sadly, the increase in fuel duty will not be set aside for clean-tech in any way and, of course the landfill tax goes up (by £8 per tonne) and goodness only knows where that money disappears to; a missed trick in a muddled and messy budget.
I’m afraid that my reaction is shared by every independent body concerned with the lack of meaningful action by this Govt. when it comes to the threats of climate change and carbon resource depletion – token gestures, too little and what has been given has been spread over a period of time as to make many of the measures meaningless for anything other than short-lived headlines.
Those organisations involved in the clean- and new-tech industries are mildly warm and enthusiastic; but if you were desperate for any scrap, so would you be.
The overriding memory of this budget is not ‘green’ but ‘Brown’; unprecedented levels of borrowing and debt that will bring this country to its economic knees if even one of Alistair Darling’s (or Gordon Brown’s) predictions of economic recovery are missed… and all this on Earth Day!
