One of the most frustrating things whenever the government does high carbon - fracking, Heathrow, N Sea tax breaks, fuel duty freeze - is how badly it is done businessgreen.com/bg/news/303646…
Government could counter or even neutralise green criticism if these moves were made in conjunction with decarbonization plans. So, as CCC and industry task force said, green light for fracking should come with CCS & tighter methane rules (plus green heat R&D)
Heathrow should have come with massive low carbon flight R&D fund. N Sea tax breaks should come with an actual transition plan and retraining for workers. Fuel duty freeze should have been contingent of proper reform of road tax to turbo charge cleaner vehicles.
Instead its always talk about high carbon one day, glosses over how it threatens climate targets, then waits for the next space on the grid to talk about low carbon.
It is that disconnect, more than any other, that fuels the view that for all the encouraging progress that has been made the government is not nearly serious enough about climate change.
