(REPOST: ITV)
The report by the Committee on Climate Change is an update to the Government’s “clean growth strategy” published last year, which called for a raft of measures including incentives for householders to install energy efficiency measures and speeding up tree-planting to create 70,000 hectares of new woodlands by 2025.
Lord Deben, the committee’s chairman, said housebuilders, car companies and oil and gas firms should “step up” to play more of a role in the shift to a cleaner economy.
He said the strategy showed clean growth was now a “central part of the Government’s economic policy”.
But he warned: “The Government’s policies and proposals will need to be firmed up as a matter of urgency – and supplemented with additional measures if the UK is to deliver on its legal commitments and secure its position as an international climate change leader.”
He also said: “I think that the time has come for us to remind industry in many of these areas they have a real part to play.
“If you’re going to sell an electric car your dealers have to be very well aware, have got to understand these things, so training dealers is essential.
“If you’re running a big fossil fuel company, you have to start thinking about the realities of when, not if, because it is not if any longer, we use a lot less fossil fuels.”