Analysis

Video: Tory energy policy reset takes UK away from CO2 targets, warns Labour.

Labour environment spokesman Barry Gardiner warns EIC conference that Environment Secretary Amber Rudd’s recent energy policy shift to back gas will add 54M tonnes of CO2 and leave the UK 10% behind its carbon reduction targets.

Speaking at last week’s EIC Annual Conferenc Gardiner warned that instead of resetting the UK energy to help it meet it fourth carbon budget target, the new policy to switch away from renewable and coal toward gas would actually see the UK CO2 emissons “turbo charged in reverse”.

“Even her own department has had to admit that this reset has taken them in the wrong direction,” he said in and ACO On-Air interview at the conference.

“If you look at the changes that were made to the DEC website immediately after her speech they had to admit that the outcome was 54M Tonnes of extra CO2 in the atmosphere,” he added. “We have gone from 7% down on meeting the fourth carbon budget to 10% down – that is the scale of the shortfall. She has turbo charged it in reverse.”

Asked what the industry must do in response Gardiner said it was imperative that business was clear in talking much more about the jobs and the economic prosperity that it could bring to this country. 

“And it must be very clear in analysing precisely why when you keep on changing the regulatory framework and chopping and changing the incentives that are there it undermines the confidence in investment,” he said. “This in turn undermines the capacity for jobs and growth in the economy.”

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