The Environment Agency consult the public on certain applications for the abstraction and impoundment of water.
These notices explain:
In June 2017 the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) published the ninth progress report on Government’s mitigation activity and the second statutory assessment of the National Adaptation Programme. A third document provided a summary of the issues for both adaptation and mitigation and presented the CCC’s main recommendations for Government on climate change. The Government has responded separately on mitigation and adaptation.
The mitigation response addresses the CCC’s recommendations on progress towards meeting carbon budgets. It covers the following sectors: power, buildings, industry, transport, agriculture and land use, land-use change and forestry, waste and f-gases. This document should be read alongside the government’s Clean Growth Strategy.
The adaptation response addresses the ASC’s 28 detailed recommendations on preparing for the impacts of climate change. It covers activity relating to the natural environment, people and the built environment, infrastructure, business and local government.
Updated: Outcome and summary of responses added.
This call for evidence is to improve our knowledge of stakeholders’ views on the Green Deal Framework, and whether there is scope for changing the framework so that it can better support current and future needs.
We are seeking views on the framework as a whole, all the elements within it and on factors that may warrant changes to it. The government will ensure throughout any review that the interests of consumers are foremost.
The government is today publishing the Clean Growth Strategy – an ambitious strategy to cut emissions while keeping costs down for consumers, creating good jobs and growing the economy. This is an important component of our modern Industrial Strategy. We are also laying our responses to the Committee on Climate Change’s 2017 Progress Report to Parliament and publishing a suite of related documents.
Clean growth can make a real difference to people’s lives, from reducing energy bills and improving air quality, to supporting new technologies and boosting earning power in high-quality jobs.
We start from a position of strength. We have already made significant progress towards our legally binding 2050 target to reduce emissions by at least 80 per cent against 1990 levels. We exceeded the target emissions reductions of our first carbon budget (2008 to 2012) by one per cent of the budget level and we project that we will outperform against our second and third budgets covering the years 2013 to 2022 by almost five per cent and four per cent respectively.
The UK is a world leader in cutting emissions while growing the economy. Provisional statistics indicate that UK emissions in 2016 were 42 per cent lower than in 1990 and 6 per cent below those in 2015. At the same time, the UK’s GDP has increased by 67 per cent since 1990 showing that a strong, growing economy can go hand in hand with reduced emissions. On a per person basis, this means that we have reduced emissions faster than any other G7 nation and led the G7 group in growth in national income over the period.
The global transition to a low carbon economy offers huge growth opportunities which the UK is well placed to take advantage of as a core element of our Industrial Strategy. Our low carbon sector already employs over 230,000 people directly and another 200,000 through supply chains. Analysis for the Committee on Climate Change estimated that the low carbon economy has the potential to grow 11 per cent per year between 2015 and 2030 – four times faster than the rest of the economy.
While we have performed strongly to date, the task ahead is significant. The Clean Growth Strategy sets out policies and proposals across the whole of the economy and the country including business, housing, transport, power, the natural environment and the public sector.
Low carbon innovation is at the heart of our approach, with over £2.5 billion of government investment from 2015 to 2021. This forms part of the largest increase in public spending on UK science, research and innovation in almost 40 years.
The Clean Growth Strategy is an important milestone in the UK’s work to cut emissions and grow the economy. But it is not the end of the process. Clean technology is developing at a rapid pace and costs are falling faster than many predicted – for example, the cost of offshore wind has halved in two years. We look forward to working with colleagues across both Houses and the Devolved Administrations, and with people and organisations across the country, to ensure the UK can continue to lead the world in clean growth.
The UK will establish a domestic nuclear safeguards regime under measures contained in the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, introduced to Parliament today (Wednesday 11 October).
As set out by Business Secretary Greg Clark on 14 September 2017, the government is committed to a domestic nuclear safeguards regime which will deliver to existing European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) standards, exceeding those required by the wider international community.
The Bill, first announced in the Queen’s Speech, will bolster the roles and responsibilities of the UK’s existing nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), once the UK leaves Euratom.
The UK will continue to be a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and work is ongoing on new agreements with international parties to ensure it continues to meet relevant international standards.
Energy Minister Richard Harrington said:
The Nuclear Safeguards Bill will help secure the future of the UK’s nuclear industry and high standards of nuclear safety and safeguards once we leave Euratom.
We are bringing forward the UK’s first new nuclear power plants in a generation and it is in our mutual benefit to maintain the successful working relationship we have now with Europe, and the rest of the world, on nuclear matters. This is what we will be looking to secure in negotiations with our partners.
Nuclear safeguards are processes which allow countries to show to the international community that civil nuclear material is used for peaceful purposes.
The UK will withdraw from Euratom in 2019 as a result of the decision to leave the EU and the Nuclear Safeguards Bill will ensure that the UK has the right regime in place for the ONR to regulate nuclear safeguards.