Zero Carbon Britain – Taking a Global Lead

I've just read through the new national Lib Dem policy “Zero Carbon Britain – Taking a Global Lead”. The headline is it’s very good and I’m really, really happy with it.

In brief, it says the Lib Dems would:

• Seek to establish the UK as a leader on action against Climate Change by setting a target of producing 30% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050, and by pushing for much tougher targets in Phase 2 of the Kyoto Agreement.
• Work towards a post-Kyoto international framework based on “Contraction and Convergence” (This means all countries would end up having the same per capita allocation of carbon emissions which is the only way to persuade developing countries like China and India to take action.)
• Toughen the EU carbon trading system. (It doesn’t work at present because too many permits were given out and the price of carbon is therefore too low.)
• Lobby for the EU to tax aviation fuel, apply VAT to airline tickets and include airlines in the EU carbon trading system.

Here in the UK the Lib Dems would:

• Prepare a national Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.
• Invest in low carbon technologies rather than nuclear. (Nuclear is often touted as low carbon but it isn’t because of the high carbon emissions associated with uranium mining, power station construction and waste disposal. It’s also incredibly inefficient like all centralised power stations.)
• Promote Combined Heat & Power systems and district heating. (As per the Camden Sustainability Task Force Report on Energy.)
• Rule out major airport expansions and road-building schemes in favour of rail and cycle networks.
• Finance an expansion of UK rail networks paid for by charges on road freight and domestic flights.
• Require all UK homes to be built to the “Green House” standard by 2011. (This is based on the German Passif Haus standard and means no fossil fuels to be used for space heating. Definitely one for our new planning rules - the Local Development Framework.)
• Introduce “green mortgages” to allow householders to invest in energy efficiency measures and repay the loans out of savings on their energy bills. (The same sort of idea as Camden's Revolving Energy Fund for council buildings.)
• Impose carbon taxes on energy as it enters the economy.
• Establish preferential “feed-in tariffs” for individuals, institutions and businesses wishing to supply electricity to the National Grid. (This has been a huge success in Europe.)
• Require all gas to be used for heating to be bio gas made from food waste, animal waste or biomass by 2050. (Watch out for this in the Task Force Report on Waste and Recycling.)
• Force all vehicles to be low carbon by 2020 and zero carbon by 2040.
• Steeply increase vehicle excise duty for vehicles with the biggest engines. (Something for us to bear in mind in Camden when we review our emissions-based parking policy.)

All in all an excellent package as The Guardian belatedly made clear:

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/03/climatechange.energy

Now we need to step up to the plate in Camden.