UK Budget 2016 - what does it mean for the environment

[Apologies, this blog should have been up on Sunday, but had some difficulties.  All is now well and will be posting again on Sunday as usual]

You would be forgiven for thinking that this year would be the year of the 'green' budget.  After all, the Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom did say that the UK would put in law a long term goal to reduce carbon emissions to zero, in keeping with the Paris climate deal, and George Osborne himself states that this would be the Budget that 'puts the next generation first'.  So it was a bit of a disappointment when the full budget was released.  There was some good points, but these were unfortunately few and far between.

Let's start with the good:

• the National infrastructure Commission's report into the UK's future low-carbon energy system has lead the the Budget allocating at least £50m to innovations in energy storage, demand-side response and other smart technologies for the next 5 years.
• £730m will be dedicated the the new Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction for offshore wind and 'other less-established technologies', which is double that put aside in the first CfD auction.
• additional spending of over £700m will be made on flood defences and resilience by 2010-2021.  This will hopefully increase the chances of us coping with one of the greatest risks to the UK from Climate Change.
• there is a small mention of measures to support the transition to a cleaner, zero and ultra-low emission vehicles.

And now for the bad:

• there is a reduction in the plastic packaging recycling targets, which have gone from 57% by 2017 to 49% by 2017 and only a 2% increase each year until 2020 only reaching 57%.
• the landfill tax has also been changed so that the cost will increase in accordance to the retail price index.  This means that landfill costs will not be expensive enough to discourage the use of them.
• the Government will launch the first stage of a competition to identify a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) to be built in the UK, with a SMR delivery roadmap to be published later this year.  The Budget also allocated at least £30m for the R&D in advanced nuclear manufacturing.
• the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will be abolished from the end of 2018-2019, mainly, it would seem, because the retailers don't like it.  This will be replaced with a 'revenue-neutral' increase in the Climate Change Levy (CCL) from 2019.  This will lead to the renewable energy sector now having to pay a higher tax, as Osborne removed the CCL exemption for clean energy generation last year, which will make them more expensive.
• the Budget announced tax breaks for the oil and gas industry for the second year in a row.  The reason given is that the industry is struggling with the low oil prices, but it seems to have completely ignored the also hard-hit renewable sector and shows no support for the thousands of people who have lost their jobs in the onshore wind and solar sector.

This year's Budget has shown a Government that has failed to rise to the challenges set by the ambitious Paris Agreement.  But perhaps the strangest thing about this Budget is the lack of reference to Climate Change, arguably the greatest threat facing the next generation.  Afterall, didn't George Osborne say 'I am not prepared to look back at my time here in this parliament, doing this job and say to my children’s generation: I’m sorry. We knew there was a problem.....but we ducked the difficult decisions and we did nothing.'