by Gareth Stace, Head of Climate & Environment Policy
25. March 2011 16:23
Something slightly overlooked in the Budget this week, was the clear sign that government will not be looking to reduce the number of sectors that are currently eligible to enter into a Climate Change Agreement (CCA), once the current scheme ends in 2013.
The specific CCA HMRC briefing, issued on Wednesday, states “The Government announces that the CCA scheme will be extended to 2023 and the 54 participating sectors will continue to be eligible for the scheme.”
I believe that government had held fairly developed internal discussions about reducing the number of sectors that might be eligible to enter into a CCA from 2013. But, speaking to a few government officials since Wednesday, the message was that government had, for now, decided against this.
We think Government could go further. In fact, EEF believes there is room to expand CCAs to cover more manufacturing sectors to incentivise energy efficiency, a key policy position that we set out last June in our report ‘Changing the Climate for Manufacturers’, only weeks after the Coalition came to power.