Government failing industry on green and growth ambitions

The UK’s manufacturers are calling for the government to review its climate and environment policies ahead of the upcoming Spending Review. They say that the current “complex, costly and incoherent” policies are failing to provide the right incentives to invest.

EEF, the manufacturer’s organisation has responded to the 2012 Climate and Environment Survey published by the government by saying that a more strategic approach to policy is required to realise the benefits of a low carbon economy. The organisation suggest that this would be more advantageous in reducing the costs and current administrative burden of existing policies.

EEF has proposed a “stress test” to look at green and growth which would require any new or revised legislation concerning the climate and environment is to show it can made a positive contribution to the Government’s green ambitions before it is then allowed to proceed.

EEF Chief Executive, Terry Scuoler said:

“Britain faces major challenge to de-carbonise our economy and strengthen economic growth. Despite some progress, the simple truth is the government’s own policies are failing to match industry’s own ambitions with a confused and cluttered landscape adding to the cost burdens rather than driving investment.” “We need a simpler and more coherent approach to climate change with a full review of the current set of tax and regulation measures. This must be accompanied by a new green and growth ‘stress test’ that all new legislation must pass before it goes ahead.” “Government must now learn from manufacturers’ own efforts and develop policies which work with the grain of industry, rather than against it. Such an approach will help us meet our ambitious green targets, enable manufacturers to grow their businesses and help rebalance the economy.” EEF’s recent survey reports that 70% of manufacturers have environmental targets that are more ambitious than the legislation and that the biggest barrier to further improvements is the current climate and environment legislation. Over 72% of SMEs have said that the cost of compliance has increased with a similar amount saying the time requirements for compliance are also increasing. Evidence used to illustrate the time and cost of compliance for larger companies was posed by EEF saying that larger companies will now be required to report under four different schemes (GHG, EU ETS, CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme and Climate Change Agreements) on four individual dates, using four different conversion factors and analysing four different types of emissions.

Key recommendations made include:

1. Review the reporting obligations for manufacturers so that they can produce a clear and manageable reporting schedule; 2. Extend the number of Climate Change Agreements to more industries; and 3. Consider further how policy aims or compliance with regulations can be achieved through voluntary approaches or environmental management systems.