Archived press release

Government legal challenge to allow UK to pollute more under EU climate scheme

18 October 2005

The UK Government's commitment to tackling climate change took a further blow today after it started a legal challenge to allow UK companies to pollute more under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Friends of the Earth said that if successful, this would knock the UK Government's climate strategy even further off course [1].

The European Court of First Instance will hear the UK's legal challenge against the European Commission today. The case has been brought because the UK wants the amount of carbon dioxide it is allowed to emit under the Emissions Trading Scheme [2] to be increased by 20 million tonnes between 2005 and 2008.

The Government approved and submitted its original plan in May 2004 for the amount of carbon dioxide it should be allowed to emit under the ETS. But following intense lobbying from industry it submitted a new plan in November 2004, which would have increased its pollution permits by 20 million tonnes. The revised (weaker) proposal was rejected by the EU.

Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner, Germana Canzi, said;

"The UK Government's climate strategy is failing and our Kyoto target is under threat. But rather than taking tough action to tackle the problem, the Government is mounting a legal challenge to be allowed to pollute even more under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. And if this happens Government targets will be knocked even further off course. So much for UK leadership on global warming."

The UK Government has promised to put climate change at the top of the international agenda. The problem has been described by Tony Blair as "so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence". But UK emissions of carbon dioxide have risen under Labour.

And last month Tony Blair raised concerns by appearing to shift toward a more Bush-friendly view of tackling global warming: against treaties and targets for cutting emissions and toward technological solutions. He told a conference in New York "to be honest, I don't think people are going, at least in the short term… to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto"

But the UK Government still believes it is doing a good job internationally on climate change. Earlier this month Trade and Industry Secretary Alan Johnson told BBC News "around the world, environmentalists are delighted" with the British government's record on combating climate change [3]

Notes

1. The Government has promised to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 based on 1990 levels. A Government review of its climate strategy is due to report imminently.

2. Under the EU ETS a budget is set for the amount of carbon that companies are allowed to emit. The emissions trading scheme allows European companies that emit less carbon dioxide than allowed to sell unused allotments to those who overshoot the target.

3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4310642.stm

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust