Dear [Name],
In opposition Rachel Reeves promised to be "Britain's first green chancellor".The Budget was her opportunity to put our money where her mouth once was. How did she do?
The Budget contained some shocking climate wrong-turns, a start on fulfilling manifesto commitments and many valuable, technical, incremental improvements. Read on and judge for yourself.
As far as we can tell, none of the Budget items explicitly mentioned their impact on the UK's carbon footprint. A government that takes climate change seriously should do better than that. They should in future ask the Climate Change Committee to assess, just like the OBR does.
INEFFECTUAL: Air passenger duty will increase by £1 for domestic flights, £2 for short-haul and £12 for long-haul. Will air-travellers even notice?
MAYBE: Air passenger duty for large private jets will increase from £607 now to £1,141 by April 2026. Will this cause any millionaires to change behaviour?
CLIMATE CRIME: Lest we forget, Labour recently backed plans for Stansted Airport to double in size - suggesting they don't expect APD increases to reduce flights.
GOOD: Investment in rail lines and upgrades, including York to Manchester and Oxford to Cambridge. Plus electrifying other lines.
DISMAL: Repeating the Tories' previous perverse incentives, fuel duty is frozen at a 5p discount, instead of rising with inflation. Fuel duty has been frozen since 2010, and UK carbon emissions are 7% higher as a result, according to Carbon Brief.
VERY GOOD: Confirmed: the sale of new cars that "rely solely on internal combustion engines" will end by 2030.
GOOD: All new cars and vans sold by 2035 will have to be "zero emission", ie no hybrids.
GOOD: Tax incentives to encourage people to purchase EVs.
GOOD: Over £200m in 2025-26 for EV charging points.
GOOD: First-year Vehicle Excise Duty for cars emitting more than 76g CO2/km will double from 1 April 2025.
GOOD: Discounted bus fares, due to expire in December, have been extended to the end of 2025.
NOT SO GOOD: The fare cap will increase from £2 to £3.
VERY GOOD: : Dept for Energy and Net Zero budget increases from £6.4bn in 2023-24 to £14.1bn in 2025-26 - to pay for the following:
BRILLIANT: The government will help accelerate grid connections and build new network infrastructure.
GOOD: £2bn for electrolytic hydrogen production projects - so we don't have to switch off wind-turbines when renewable electricity supply exceeds demand.
LONG-SHOT: Another £2.7bn for Sizewell C - in case it gets built.
GOOD: The windfall tax on oil & gas company profits (on top of a basic 40%) has been increased from 35% to 38% and extended from 2029 to 2030.
HOWEVER: The windfall tax disappears if oil falls below $71.40 per barrel. Brent Crude is trading at around $72 per barrel.
GOOD: A decarbonisation allowance to encourage the oil & gas sector to invest in cleaner, lower-emission technologies will be set at 66%.
INTERESTING: A consultation into Scope-3 emissions from offshore oil & gas production, ie the emissions from burning the fossil fuels.
GOOD: The "Warm homes plan" will invest £3.4bn up to 2028 in decarbonising homes ie home insulation and heat pumps.
BAD: This is far short of the £13.2bn promised in their manifesto - will there be time to invest the missing £10bn before the end of the parliament?
EXCELLENT: Up to £400m for tree-planting and peatland restoration - the latter not mentioned in Labour manifesto.
CONTROVERSIAL: £3.9bn for CCS projects between 2025-2026.
ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE: A carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) from 2027 - to ensure low-carbon British production - eg steel, aluminium, fertiliser, cement - is not undercut by carbon-intensive imports. (The Conservatives initiated this).
????: More money for DEFRA, eg for "environmentally sustainable agricultural" but no mention of how emissions will be reduced.
Thanks to Carbon Brief for their excellent review UK autumn budget 2024: Key climate and energy announcements.
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