Sunak lacking commitment on renewables
LAST year Rishi Sunak said his daughters wanted him to do more on climate change. However, those entreaties clearly fell on deaf ears, because the topic didn’t feature in his speech on entering Downing Street as Prime Minister or in his priorities for 2023.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore’s recent review concluded that the Conservatives have failed on nearly every aspect of Net Zero policy.
Schemes for insulating our housing stock and boiler replacement have been lamentable failures.
Despite their horrifying carbon emissions, Sunak slashed the aviation tax on domestic flights and the Government waived over £300m in charges due from airlines under the Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme.
The fossil fuel industry can evade much of the windfall tax on excessive profits by investing in further, disastrous exploration and, since 2015 the UK government has given £20bn more in support to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables.
Last year the UK’S net zero strategy was found to have breached the Climate Change Act. Forced to respond, the Government has produced aspirations but few concrete plans.
Although proven to be highly cost-effective, onshore wind projects are almost impossible to get off the ground and money is being risked on unproven carbon capture – effectively a get out of jail card for fossil fuels. No surprise then that oil and gas companies are huge donors to the Tory Party.
Sunak’s personal actions are revealing. He frequently travels by private jet and his new swimming pool uses so much electricity that the local grid connection had to be upgraded.
Not only is he disastrously failing on carbon emissions, but also he clearly can’t understand the importance to ordinary people of energy efficiency schemes and cheaper renewables.
For someone so well briefed, there are no excuses for this.
Terry Riordan.