Further details of what is expected in the UK’s budget on Wednesday are leaking out into the press. The Independent first reported the government’s plans for a green budget on 8 April (The Great Beyond).
Alastair Darling, the chancellor, is expected to announce a £500 million green stimulus package, including £200 million for wind turbines, hydro-electric power and other renewable energy technologies, says a report in the Times
The BBC reports that the chancellor will announce two carbon capture and storage demonstration projects. It is unclear if funding will be earmarked for these projects, though.
It has long been known that Darling will announce the world’s first legally binding targets for cutting greenhouse gases in his statement on Wednesday. The BBC notes that the carbon budgets will run for five-year periods up to 2022, when the UK should have cut emissions by between 34% and 42% from 1990 levels. But detailed government plans for the cuts are not expected until the summer.
Kevin Anderson, an energy scientist at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the headquarters of which are at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, UK, told the BBC, “I fear the cuts, radical as they seem, simply do not go far enough to meeting the UK’s share of what is needed to stabilize the climate.”
Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), a government quango, has warned that the UK economy risks losing £44 billion a year, unless funding for new technologies comes in Wednesday’s budget. The body calls on the government to set up a £1 billion fund to finance high-tech companies (PA, Management Today).
The Conservatives, the UK’s main opposition party, is also having its say. The Times reports that George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, will propose spending £350 million on funding for 25,000 new masters degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The degrees are aimed at helping graduates who will struggle to find work when they finish their courses to carry on their studies.