UK National Audit Office Publishes Overview of New Government’s approach to Environment and Climate Change
On 15 October, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog (the National Audit Office or NAO) published its overview of the Government’s approach to the three areas of environmental improvement, net zero and climate change adaptation.
The report provides a high-level critique of Government programmes to date on these three interrelated areas emphasising the scale of the policy challenges and setting out a summary of how the Government proposes to finance the solutions to these issues.
In terms of environmental improvement, the NAO notes that last Government’s Environmental Improvement Programme (EIP) included 10 long-term goals, covering issues from halting species decline, through reducing water and air pollution and increasing tree and woodland coverage. In 2023, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) concluded that the Government was “largely off track” in meeting 7 out of 10 of these goals.
The new Government’s response has been to commit to a “rapid review” of the EIP, to be published by May 2025.
On net zero, the NAO points out that again, a policy vacuum is hindering progress against targets. In particular, the previous Government’s 2023 Net Zero Growth Plan was successfully challenged in the High Court. The new Government has promised a response to be published by May 2025.
On adaptation, there are no UK legally binding obligations other than to produce a climate change risk assessment every 5 years. The current National Adaptation Programme is for the period 2023-2028.
The NAO then turns to the funding needed to meet these various challenges. It says that a further £50-60 billion of capital investment will be needed by the late 2020s to meet net zero targets.
To halt the decline in biodiversity at least £500 million per year will be needed rising to £1 billion by 2030.
And to meet the adaptation challenge, £10 billion per year may be needed this decade.
Most of this money will need to come from the private sector and, with this in mind, the previous Government launched the UK’s Green Financing Programme in 2021. So far this has raised £41.6 billion through green gilts, and Green Savings Bonds. In 2022-3 alone, the Programme raised £10.5 billion.
The largest proportion of the funds is allocated to railtrack renewal, followed by renewable energy and then climate change adaptation.
Although the costs of the Government’s programmes are significant, the report also points out that it is expected that green trade is expected to deliver up to £170 billion of export sales in goods and services to the UK by 2030.
The post UK National Audit Office Publishes Overview of New Government’s approach to Environment and Climate Change appeared first on Eye on ESG.