Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has warned that leaving the EU would make it more difficult for the UK to meet its carbon reduction targets but assured that the country’s commitment to action had not changed.
Rudd said, in a speech at the Business & Climate Summit in London earlier on Wednesday: “While I think the UK’s role in dealing with a warming planet may have been made harder by the decision last Thursday, our commitment to dealing with it has not gone away.”
“As a government,” she said, “we are fully committed to delivering the best outcome for the British people – and that includes delivering the secure, affordable, clean energy our families and business need.
“That commitment has not changed.”
“The challenges remain the same,” she said, “our commitment also remains the same”. However, she said, “the decision last week risks making it a harder road.”
Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN’s Climate Change division, said that following the triggering of Article 50, which formally begins the UK’s exit procedures, the resulting uncertainty will affect the UK drastically, but that climate change action should be one area where co-operation continues.
Speaking on Tuesday, Figueres said: “There is going to be quite a lot of uncertainty, transition, volatility for at least two years.
“Over these next two years, mu suggestion would be to use the proverbial UK ‘stay calm and transform on’. It’s not ‘stay calm and do nothing’, it’s ‘stay calm and transform on’ because the UK and EU have had very important leadership on climate change, there’s no reason to change that whatsoever.
“Climate change action is by now unstoppable,” she said, “it is global.”
What remains, regardless of EU membership, is the UK’s Climate Change Act, which forms an integral part of our efforts to gradually decarbonise and to reduce the effects of global warming.
Indeed Andrea Leadsom, Energy Minister who supported the Leave campaign throughout, focused on this as a means to dismiss Rudd’s claims that Brexit will make keeping good on climate commitments more difficult.
Leadsom said: “The UK’s Climate Change Act is absolutely key to our climate change objectives, we continue to be absolutely committed to those.
“In terms of interconnectors, those are businesses, those are run on commercial terms and nothing will change. In terms of cooperation on climate change and decarbonisation our own commitment remains as strong, but we never only working with EU, we were working globally.”
Part of the issue is not just joint commitments made with the EU though, but also the deterrence of investors in green technologies and business in the UK from overseas. And that investment is not only deterred by general reduction in the attractiveness of the UK for foreign investors following Brexit, but also by incoherent and inconsistent government policy beforehand.
A Greenpeace spokesperson said: “Green investor confidence in the UK was shaky before Brexit because of the government’s ever changing and incoherent policies, which neither [Rudd nor Leadsom] seem willing to get to grips with even now.”
Whether or not the government’s energy policy changes to make green technologies more attractive to investors will depend in part on who takes over the Conservative leadership following David Cameron’s resignation.
