Tackling the Climate Emergency - LibDem Policy Paper 139
by Duncan Brack.
14 Mar 2020
https://www.facebook.com/greenlibdems/posts/3935454063139121Tackling the Climate Emergency - LibDem Policy Paper 139 was proposed by Duncan Brack. and accepted by the 2019 Autumn Conference.
Chapter 4.3 on Greening Taxation includes "Widening the list of energy and emissions-saving products enjoying the 5 per cent rate of VAT"
Chapter 7 is on Decarbonising buildings: energy efficiency first.
In 2016 the number of domestic dwellings with Band A or B rating for insulation was a third of a million, the LibDem target for 2025 is 10 million and for 2030 is 27 million. This will need a lot of work, starting NOW.
7.1 "Reducing emissions, cutting fuel bills" blames George Osborne for setting too high interest rates for the Green Deal:
" Liberal Democrats in coalition made a determined effort to increase the scale of energy retrofits by introducing the Green Deal, a system through which households repaid the costs of the retrofit through the savings on their energy bills. But the system was excessively bureaucratic and the Treasury required too high an interest rate on repayments, so take-up of the finance package was very low. Even so, 1 million homes were insulated, funded mostly by householders. The Conservative government axed the scheme in 2015, but have put in place nothing to replace it - with the result that home insulation rates have fallen, with only 123,000 lofts or walls insulated in 2017, 5 per cent of the rate in 2012. They also scrapped the zero-carbon homes standard for new houses due in 2016; this would have required insulation and onsite renewable energy generation to reduce emissions to net zero.
A video of our Climate Emergency debate at conference is on our website with links to the full 85 page paper.
http://greenlibdems.org.uk/climate139
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