Labour will next week be confronted with stark policy choices that threaten to expose the fault lines between the Treasury and the government’s green ambitions, as advice for the UK’s next carbon budget is published.
With the UK well off track to meet its current carbon budgets, more action will be needed in the short and longer term, in every sector of the economy, involving changes to nearly every aspect of our lives from how we live at home to how we get around, what we work on and what we eat.
Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said: “The cost to the global economy [of failing to control temperature rises] could reach $38tn a year, according to research published in 2024.
Pitting green as the antithesis to growth also risks alienating business, says Rachel Solomon Williams, the executive director at the Aldersgate Group of companies that push for a green economy.
Ed Matthew, the director of the UK programme at the E3G thinktank, said: “The power system is key because both heating and transport and about two-thirds of industry will need to be electrified.
