Monday 9 March 2020

Budget announcement ‘must unveil £33bn of new spending to put UK on path to net zero by 2050’

The government's upcoming Budget announcement must unveil £33 billion of new funding a year to put the UK on a pathway to net zero by 2050.

That's the suggestion from policy thinktank IPPR, which stresses significantly more investment is needed in public transport, low carbon housing and the restoration of nature - Ed Miliband and Caroline Lucas, two chairs of the cross-party IPPR Environmental Justice Commission, say it must be the ‘first budget for climate and nature’.

They suggest around £12 billion of the additional annual investment would need to be in low carbon transport and around £10 billion in low carbon buildings.

It notes the government is currently spending £17 billion per year on climate and environment and has calculated it would need to invest at least a further £11 billion just to achieve its previous target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with £33 billion needed to bring this to 100% decarbonisation.

Bringing the total spending on climate and nature up to £50 billion per year as suggested would equate to just above 2% of GDP being invested in the area.

IPPR also highlights a 'Just Transition Fund' is needed to ensure industrial decarbonisation doesn’t unfairly damage affected communities and allows them to instead benefit from the benefits offered.

Ed Miliband MP, Environmental Justice Commission Co-Chair and Labour MP for Doncaster North, said: "This is the government’s opportunity, in the year of the COP, to show true global leadership on the climate crisis.

“We need a significantly tougher UK target for 2030 put in place this year to encourage other countries to follow and a budget that puts tackling the climate emergency at its heart. This will take investment but making these decisions will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, improve our natural environment, cut air pollution and make Britain a better place to live."