THE Government has now introduced its new 10-point plan for the environment.

1 investing in more offshore wind. This is proven to be effective.

2 Generate more hydrogen for industry, transport, power and homes. Hydrogen can be made using renewable energy and water, but the fossil fuel companies are pushing to produce it from natural gas. That’s more polluting.

3 Generate nuclear power, both large and small scale.

It’s half the price, and safer, to increase generation using existing renewable technologies. Alongside this, we should encourage powering down, i.e. use less energy, don’t be wasteful.

4 Transform national infrastructure to better support electric vehicles (EV) and EV production.

Many issues over lithium-ion in batteries. What about hydrogen combustion or hydrogen fuel cells?

5 Make cycling and walking more attractive ways to travel and invest in zero-emission public transport.

Except the government then cut funding for cycling by 15% for 2020/21.

6 Support difficult-to-decarbonise industries to become greener through research projects for zero-emission planes and ships.

Will be years before this can be achieved. Could start by ensuring those industries decarbonise now where they can. Currently, no requirement for them to do so.

7 Make homes, schools and hospitals greener, warmer and more energy-efficient by installing 600,000 heat pumps every year.

The Future Homes Standard is a ‘guidance’ on building regulations, itself set at a very low level. The stumbling block is central government, no matter which political party is in power, refuses to change planning legislation so developers have to build zero-carbon homes. The technology has existed for over 20 years to build to this standard.

8 Carbon capture, planning to remove 10MT of CO2 by 2030.

Clusters for capturing carbon to be placed in the North East, the Humber, North West and in Scotland and Wales. Then bury it under the North Sea. Is this a Trojan horse to keep using fossil fuels?

9 Plant 30,000 hectares of trees every year. Create and retain thousands of jobs.

This could, indeed, create lots of jobs, but lots of education/training is also needed.

10 Make City of London global centre of green finance. Does that include stopping financing fossil-fuel extraction?

Follow this link to read more details. https://tinyurl.com/y689xxmb

And this to see Friends of the Earth’s analysis https://tinyurl.com/y2e2c2ny