‘Urgent action needed on clean cars and energy-saving homes’

Three-fifths of new cars and vans should be electric by 2030 to meet legal targets to cut greenhouse gases, Government climate advisers have said.

New homes should also be being built to more energy-efficient standards to save people money on their bills and reduce emissions, they said.

A report from the Committee on Climate Change warned the Government’s “clean growth strategy”, published in October, did not go far enough to meet targets to cut greenhouse gases by the 2020s and 2030s under UK law.

The report called for more firm policies and action, from incentives for “able to pay” householders to install energy efficiency measures to speeding up tree-planting to create 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of new woodlands by 2025.

Lord Deben, the committee’s chairman, said housebuilders, car companies and oil and gas firms should “step up” to play more of a role in the shift to a cleaner economy.

He said the strategy showed clean growth was now a “central part of the Government’s economic policy” but warned: “The Government’s policies and proposals will need to be firmed up as a matter of urgency – and supplemented with additional measures if the UK is to deliver on its legal commitments and secure its position as an international climate change leader”.

He added: “I think that the time has come for us to remind industry in many of these areas they have a real part to play.”

Oil and gas businesses should be investing more in technology to capture and store carbon emissions from power plants and industry, without which the cost of cutting greenhouse gases from the economy will be more expensive, the committee said.

Lord Deben also criticised construction firms for only doing the “absolute minimum” required on building energy efficient homes, saying the “people who suffer” from homes that are not properly insulated are the buyers who have to pay higher energy bills.