The Government Reliance On Market Mechanisms To Meet Carbon Emission Reduction Targets Is Too Narrow An Approach For These Critical Times, Says Lawyer

"In the recently published Energy National Policy Statements, the Government has not taken on board the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee to have explicit decarbonisation goals in the Energy NPSs. Instead, it is relying on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and other market mechanisms to get the UK to where its needs to be in terms of carbon emissions. This is too narrow an approach for these critical times" says Mothiur Rahman, lawyer, Bircham Dyson Bell LLP.

"During the passage of the Energy NPSs through public and parliamentary scrutiny, environmental protection bodies raised concerns that decision making by the IPC could give rise to energy generating infrastructure that risked breaching the UK's carbon budgets. The Parliamentary Committee stated that it was "worried that, as drafted, the NPSs could lead to a second 'dash for gas'" and that it remained "adamant that the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change that the electricity sector should be substanitally decarbonised by 2030 should be set out in the [Overarching Energy NPS] as an explicit goal for consideration in planning applications."

The Government has not taken these recommendations on board. Under the published NPSs, every project will be considered on its own merits by the IPC, without any weight given to the carbon emissions of that project. So, a gas power station might just as well get through the planning systems as much as a wind farm, all other things being equal. However, in the long term, once a gas power station is authorised and constructed, that means future generations have to live with those carbon emissions over the design life of the gas power station, which could be the next 50...