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Rock star of climate change frozen out
James Button, Sydney Morning Herald
THE author of the world’s most influential recent report on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern, is to quit the British Treasury amid rumours of constant clashes with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.
The news came a day after Mr Brown made a pre-budget statement that embraced virtually none of the recommendations of the Stern report, and dashed hopes the Blair Government would move swiftly to a new environmental agenda.
Friends of Sir Nicholas told The Times that he was frozen out of Mr Brown’s inner circle, and a senior government source said the Chancellor was so reluctant to impose green taxes that Treasury bureaucrats had difficulty persuading him to take the steps that he did.
Green campaigners saw Mr Brown’s decision to double the tax on short flights – merely restoring it to the level of five years ago – and to introduce a 1.25 per cent increase in car fuel as minimal concessions to growing alarm about climate change.
…Several public servants told The Times that Mr Brown did not like some of Sir Nicholas’s advice, including “home truths” about long-term trends in the economy.
(9 Dec 2006)
British Government Proposing Transportation Tax Measures to Tackle Climate Change
Green Car Congress
A pre-budget report by UK Finance Minister Gordon Brown proposes a series of tax measures designed, according to the report, to protect the environment and tackle the global challenges of climate change.
Among the measures proposed are an increase in passenger taxes for short-haul flights; an inflation-based increase in the road fuel tax; measures to promote the use of cleaner fuels, including support for the development of biofuels; an inflation-based increase in the climate change levy (energy tax) on business; and a time-limited stamp duty exemption for the vast majority of new zero-carbon homes.
Passengers on short-haul flights originating in the UK will see a doubling of the passenger duty rate from £5 to £10 for the lowest class of travel, and from £10 to £20 for other classes. The increase is scheduled for 1 February 2007.
Increases in the road fuel duty include: 1.25 pence per liter for liquid fuels (including biofuels); 1.81 pence per kg for natural gas; and 3.21 pence per kg for LPG.
On the biofuels side, the government announced that it would extend the 20 pence per liter (ppl) fuel duty differential to enable a pilot involving the use of biomass in conventional fuel production to go ahead. (The fuel duty tax for gasoline and diesel is 47.1 ppl; for biofuels, it is 27.1 ppl.)
The government also will amend the definition of biodiesel to include new second-generation biodiesel produced from biomass and is capable of being blended in excess of 5% blends.
The government said that it will consider the case for an incentive in company car tax to support the adoption of flex-fuel vehicles capable of using high-blend bioethanol E85.
Reaction from industry was fairly swift.
The Chancellor’s announcement of a 1.25 pence per litre fuel duty rise—the first in three years—is yet another revenue-raising exercise by the Government, which will hit industry and all road transport users.
It is also hugely disappointing that—once again—no financial incentives are to be made available to petrol retailers to invest in bio-fuels. This is vital if these new fuels are to be made readily available to consumers at UK forecourts.
—Ray Holloway, Director of the RMI Petrol Retailers Association (PRA)
(7 Dec 2006)
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Fuel duty and the effect of oil prices on the UK economy
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum: Europe
UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has published his 274 page Pre-Budget Report (.pdf) today (06/12/06). This is the first policy statement from the treasury since the Stern review’s presentation of the economic case for addressing climate change. Stern concluded that to stabilise climate change at manageable levels, emissions would need to stabilise in the next 20 years and fall between 1% and 3% after that. This would cost 1% of GDP, considerably less than the impact of unchecked climate change.
How would Brown respond? Insufficiently, it would appear.
The only “green taxes” were to add 1.25p per litre to fuel duty from midnight and increase air passenger duty from £5 to £10 for most flights. Interestingly Brown rejected demands to re-link petrol prices to inflation.
(9 Dec 2006)
