Archived press release

Joint Committee on Draft Climate Change Bill recommend action on aviation

3 August 2007

The Joint Committee of MPs and Lords examining the draft Climate Change Bill has concluded that the Bill needs to be strengthened. It is the third committee of MPs to warn that the Bill does not go far enough.

Mike Childs, Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth, said:

"The Climate Change Bill must be strengthened. This is the clear conclusion from this joint report by members of the House of Commons and House of Lords. Gordon Brown now has a golden opportunity to demonstrate his green credentials. The Government must listen; it must include international aviation in the emissions reductions targets and it must set a higher target to cut emissions based on the latest scientific evidence."

The Joint Committee's report says:

• The failure to include international aviation emissions from the emissions reduction targets is a "serious weakness which, in view of the significant likely growth of such emissions, has the effect of reducing the credibility of the 60% carbon reduction target"
• The proposed Committee on Climate Change should urgently review the scientific basis for the 60 per cent target and consider setting a higher target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
• The government should set annual milestones to check that emissions cuts are on course

Notes

Three committees of MPs and Lords have now examined the draft Climate Change Bill. All have recommended that the Climate Change Bill should be strengthened. A detailed briefing is available from Friends of the Earth. Extracts below:

August 3^rd Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill:

"The draft Bill currently does not include within the scope of the targets, and the net UK carbon account, emissions from international aviation. We consider this to be a serious weakness which, in view of the significant likely growth of such emissions, has the effect of reducing the credibility of the 60% carbon reduction target." (Paragraph 3)

On July 30^th the Environmental Audit Committee report 'Beyond Stern: From the Climate Change Programme Review to the Draft Climate Change Bill' said:

"The Government's policy towards the UK's 2050 target is clearly incoherent. The Government remains committed to limiting global warming to a rise of 2oC; but it also acknowledges that, according to recent scientific research, a cut in UK emissions of 60% by 2050 is now very unlikely to be consistent with delivering this goal. …We recommend that the 2050 be strengthened to reflect current scientific understanding of the emission cuts required for a strong probability at stabilising warming at 2oC." (Paragraph 69)"

"Overall, we are unimpressed by the Government's arguments for excluding international aviation and shipping emissions from the UK's carbon reduction regime. While the draft Bill contains provisions that allow these emissions to be included in the future, we recommend that they be included immediately. … There already is an internationally agreed methodology for attributing and recording these emissions as memo items to national Kyoto accounts; the Government should simply use this to track these emissions within the UK's carbon budgets." (Paragraph 96)

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/ ¬
cmenvaud/460/460.pdf (PDF† )

On 27^th June the Environment Farming and Rural Affairs (EFRA) committee concluded in their report on the draft Climate Change Bill that:

"we recommend that clear annual `milestones' are set—and published—by the Committee on Climate Change in order that it may become apparent well before the end of a budgetary period whether or not policies are working. This also reflects the fundamental significance of cumulative emissions, and the trajectory involved, by which the five year budgets are reached." (Paragraph 51)

"As the years pass it will become increasingly artificial not to take account of the UK's share of emissions from international aviation and shipping, as indicated by the Government's Aviation White Paper. The Government argues that there is not yet any internationally agreed basis for allocating responsibility for emissions from international aviation and shipping. But these emissions are already reported to the UN as a `memo item'. This suggests that some basis for reporting has in fact been agreed. The inclusion of the UK's share of emissions from international aviation and shipping will have significant implications for the validity of the 2050 target. We recommend that the Committee on Climate Change should be required to report on the UK's emissions from international aviation and shipping, whether or not they are counted as part of the statutory target, in order more accurately to inform its recommendations regarding budgets and targets which will affect all other sectors of the economy." (paragraph 128)

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/ ¬
cmenvfru/534/534i.pdf (PDF† )

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