Budget special - how was it for you?
Probably the biggest piece of good news for sustainability in the m&e sector from the “world's first carbon budget” this week was the announcement of £435 million for energy saving measures in domestic and commercial properties.
The Chancellor Alistair Darling has signalled that this is an important area in his headline drive to cut carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020.
There was also notable good news for combined heat and power (CHP) with the announcement that fuel derived from CHP would continue to be exempt from the Climate Change Levy beyond the original cut off point of 2013.
The Chancellor stated that this should stimulate around £2.5 billion worth of investment in the technology and the CHP Association later announced that figure could rise to £7.5bn. However, the Government's original target of having 10,000 mW of installed CHP capacity by 2010 looks like a pipedream, with only half that currently in place. The extension of the CCL exemption may, however, help the country towards that amount of capacity by some point in the next decade.
The £45m announced for small-scale renewable electricity and heating technologies, primarily through the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, and the £25m in funding for low-carbon community heating schemes, while welcome, looks like pretty small beer alongside the headline figure of £175bn that Mr Darling says the country will have to borrow to stimulate an economic recovery.
We also await the detail of the £405 million announced to support the development of "a world-leading low-carbon energy and advanced green manufacturing sector in the UK".
Wind power is also to receive a further £525m to help it expand off-shore capacity.