'Staggering failure to act': Government attacked for allocating just £30m to zero-carbon goal

Money promised by the government to help the country meet its 2050 net-zero target is just 0.1 per cent of what is required, environmental experts have warned.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was awarded £30m extra in the latest spending round to “accelerate progress” on decarbonisation projects next year.

However, Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said the amount “completely undermines” the UK’s commitment to cut greenhouse gases to zero overall by 2050.

He described it as little more than a “few financial crumbs”.

Ahead of the review, Britain’s biggest environmental groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, wrote to chancellor Sajid Javid to urge him to investment at least £42bn – about 2 per cent of annual economic output – in tackling the climate crisis.

This is double the £17bn a year currently being spent.

The organisations warned that without significantly more investment, the government would miss its net-zero target and leave the next generation with a “planet-sized debt”.

Labour MP Matthew Pennycook described the funding as a “staggering failure to act” on the climate crisis.

He tweeted: “The Committee on Climate Change has made clear that 2 per cent of GDP needs to be directed towards decarbonisation if we are to meet our 2050 net-zero target. Yet the chancellor today only allocated £30m towards it. A staggering failure to act.”

Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace’s head of politics, said Boris Johnson had fallen “woefully short of addressing the single biggest issue of our time”.

She said the statement “missed the opportunity and simply kicked the can down the road”, adding: “We cannot allow the net-zero target to become just another empty politician’s promise. All other long-term investments become worthless if we don’t protect the life-support systems our survival depends on.”

In July, Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), compared the UK’s efforts to slash carbon emissions to a scene out of the 1970s sitcom Dad’s Army.

The independent body said Britain had delivered just one of 25 critical policies to get greenhouse gas reductions on track over the past year.

The government is doing less to help homes and businesses cope with the challenges of a warming climate than it was 10 years ago, despite declaring a climate change emergency in May, the CCC suggested.

Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, said there were “grounds for optimism”, saying that the £30m should mean a “huge increase” in staffing for net-zero. He tweeted: “Yes – it would have been lovely to see bigger steps today, but the political and fiscal constraints were pretty restrictive for it.”

Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, said the £30m would mean the UK continues to “lead the world in tackling this critical issue”.

Another £30m for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will be going into biodiversity, but Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, said he was “very disappointed” by the amount.

The non-departmental public body sponsored by Defra is responsible for ensuring that England’s land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils are protected and improved.

Natural England’s grant-in-aid has been cut by nearly 50 per cent over the past five years.

Mr Juniper tweeted: “We will do our best with slender resources, but we cannot do what is needed without increased investment.”

Martin Harper, the global conservation director of the RSPB, said it highlighted the “massive gap between ambition to restore nature in a generation”, adding that public investment in biodiversity has been declining for a decade.

More than half of Britons (52 per cent) think the government should be spending more on the environment, while only 8 per cent think it should be spending less, recent polling by Opinium suggested.

A Defra spokesperson said: “The £30 million allocated to improving biodiversity will enable us to support the maintenance and restoration of vital habitats for wildlife, and progress nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

“This will form a vital part of our work to deliver our ground-breaking 25-Year Environment Plan, which sets ambitious goals for nature in England to improve our precious environment.”