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In the blizzard of announcements and rumours emerging from Westminster, what's real and what's just noise: what is the danger to the UK's efforts to address the climate and nature crises? And how seriously should we take it in a context where the herd instinct is moving against Prime Minister Truss? (Paul Goodman has usefully set out the process for how she could soon be removed from office.)
For now, let’s assume the new government does stick around - at least until Christmas - and examine what greenery is really at risk.
In my last post, just before she took office, I speculated she would most likely stick to Johnson's climate goals and double down on clean energy as the cheapest and most secure option available to her during this energy crunch; and that battles with the environmental community would more likely centre on the stripping away of countryside protections. A month into her premiership, this appears to be the case, although there is greater uncertainty for the clean energy sector than anticipated and the assault on the natural world is even more fierce than expected.
Clean energy lives, but how well?
On the upside, Truss has submitted a climate plan to the UN reaffirming her commitment to the Net Zero pathway Johnson and May signed up to. Both she and Jacob Rees-Mogg are understood to be attending the COP27 summit in Egypt next month. Onshore wind has been unblocked. The small energy efficiency scheme she inherited to fund insulation for households has been extended with an extra billion pounds. The original Net Zero champion, Chris Skidmore, has been appointed to review the approach to meeting climate targets to ensure it can contribute to growth but nobody doubts his intention to keep progress moving forwards. The Transport Secretary has categorically refuted claims the 2030 phase out of new petrol and diesel sales has been thrown into doubt. Jacob Rees Mogg has written in The Guardian about his newfound love of green energy, and has signalled he intends to prevent the new DEFRA Secretary from overzealously applying Truss’ campaign promise to block solar farms on farmland.
On the flipside, such a policy would effectively ban solar energy (the cheapest and most popular type of energy generation) from most of the country, jeopardising £20bn in private investment, and increasing reliance on expensive gas imports. Meanwhile, the renewables industry is facing a major windfall tax (potentially bigger than that being imposed on oil and gas). It remains to be seen if this will tip firms into ditching their planned investments in growth or will prompt them to move onto CfD contracts, which would prevent them from making a windfall but still enable a tidy profit. As Adam Bell's brilliant thread on the topic concludes, generators will be carefully considering their options.
Truss' decision to lift the fracking moratorium is unlikely to produce the intended results. Investors won’t want to put money into projects that would be cancelled by a Labour government, in a context where returns would take a few years to materialise. In the meantime, polling suggests the Tories will lose votes over the issue in marginal Red Wall seats, as it continues to spark Parliamentary rebellions.
More dangerously, Mogg's decision to hit pause on the new Energy Bill raises questions over the future of the mandate on heating manufacturers to produce more heat pumps, as well as future financing of hydrogen and CCS projects - uncertainty that could slow clean energy investments. All eyes are on the hotly anticipated Halloween fiscal statement for clues. Certainly, it is difficult to see the Treasury now choosing to raise or extend the carbon tax - something they had been contemplating in recent consultation documents.
Austerity 2.0: Which climate schemes will get the chop?
Vast cuts to public spending would likely present new challenges to Net Zero delivery. (That's if they get past MPs: something that looks unlikely when you consider the electoral implications.) But budgets for heat pump grants, active travel expansion, decarbonisation of heavy industries like steel, and science and innovation investment, are all now vulnerable. So is international climate finance, which flows via the aid budget and is expected to be cut again.
It would be more surprising if the Chancellor drops planned investment in CCS, hydrogen, renewables and EV infrastructure, given the government’s stated priority is economic growth and, without it, Ministers would struggle to put together any plausible plan to meet legally binding climate targets. The government's decision not to appeal a High Court ruling forcing Ministers to offer more detail on how their climate policies stack up, by March, may focus minds when it comes to spending decisions. Equally, it shouldn't be ruled out this review could prompt Ministers into a more dramatic pivot on the whole question of the climate targets.
"Attack on nature": what does it look like?
The most significant short-term threats all emerge from the Department of the Environment, ironically. MPs are reporting "Cummings-sized post bags" - the fullest they’ve been since that infamous drive to Barnard Castle - spilling over with constituent anger against “reforms” to environmental legislation, interpreted by the RSPB as an "attack on nature".
Middle England is in revolt with the ordinarily genteel National Trust and Wildlife Trusts pledging to join forces to organise protests with their many million members.
Three big changes are at the root of the controversy.
Changes to "ELMS": less birds, fewer wildflowers and trees, more carbon
Minister Mark Spencer - dubbed "our very own little Bolsonaro" by Zac Goldsmith - immediately set to work trying to gut Michael Gove's Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), which had been set to offer a "Brexit dividend" by enabling the UK to replace wasteful and unpopular EU agri subsidies with an approach where subsidies would incentivise environmentally-friendly farming methods and nature restoration.
A major announcement is expected on the scheme's future by the end of this month. Spencer reportedly suggested privately to farmers he hoped his review could end up seeing the UK revert back to an EU-style system - though the scale of the rebellion from Gove, Hague, Eustice, and other Conservative grandees as well as nature groups and many farmers - means this now looks very unlikely to happen. Another u-turn may be on the cards.
But Spencer may still try to weaken each of the three existing pillars to the scheme. The Sunday Times reported that even before Johnson left office, Ministers - under pressure from the NFU - planned to pare back the level of funding for projects like tree planting and peatland restoration supported via the "Landscape Recovery" element of the scheme - one of three. The Observer then reported this part could be dropped altogether. A key question is whether funding will ever be replenished for this part of ELMS, even if the government decides - as is most likely - to keep it in existence.
Similarly, reports had suggested the "Local Nature Recovery" pillar of ELMS - designed to support wildlife by investment in protecting woodlands and wetlands in partnership with nature groups - could be axed altogether, though I hear this might now be kept but rebadged and cut back. Finally, the green criteria for the biggest part of the scheme, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which benefits farmers if they farm in a more nature-friendly manner, are still being wrestled over.
Green Alliance calculated there could be millions fewer birds in our countryside, depending on decisions over the implementation of ELMS. Their analysis also suggests the emissions savings from land use could take a very big hit, potentially jeopardising carbon targets. There would also be implications for levels of water pollution from farmland.
But will it happen?
Gove could lead a backbench rebellion to protect his "Green Brexit" legacy. Public outcry could mean Downing Street completes their u-turns on this, like everything else. The Treasury could kill off the changes on the basis it wants to reduce DEFRA's overall spending envelope, or because the scheme would no longer produce value for public money if the environmental benefits were stripped out. Green groups could drag Ministers to court to prevent the changes from happening. Game on.
570 environmental laws could all disappear at once: from animal welfare to toxic chemicals to clean air to water and wildlife protections. River pollution rules may be the first to go.
Until Brexit, around 85% of environmental measures in the UK derived from the EU and had force in law. Liz Truss' new legislation, The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, would see all 570 EU laws simply "sunset" automatically at the end of next year. Removing this "green tape" could end protections that exist to keep air and water clean, avoid harmful levels of chemical residues, maintain high levels of animal welfare, and support protected wildlife.
They would simply all just disappear unless Ministers choose to deliberately save particular ones (a process that itself requires new legislation to pass) or unless they choose to defer their expiry. It will be entirely at the discretion of DEFRA Ministers, unless MPs or more Senior Ministers find a way to step in and save them.
The government's new Environment Act was meant to set out new binding targets in many of these areas to complement the existing EU laws that were already in place in the UK, but few of these new measures are in place despite a legal deadline of October 31st requiring they be set in the next fortnight. This could mean Ministers are weeks away from legal action on the issue.
One critical green law deriving from our time in the EU, which the Prime Minister and Levelling Up Secretary have already labelled for the chop, is the Habitats Directive. This exists to protect endangered species. Current "nutrient neutrality" rules governing pollution in rivers exist to ensure the UK meets the requirements set out in this law. However, the extraordinary levels of pollution from farming means housing developments would not be able to proceed without concerted action to reduce these toxic deposits into our waterways. Keen to give way to developers but fearing another row with farmers - many of who are already switching to the Lib Dems - Ministers have decided to instead simply axe or weaken these river pollution rules, something they're able to do now Britain is outside the EU.
This means an early flash point is likely to be over the future of rivers and streams. Channel 4 reported more than 1700 breaches of river pollution rules occurred just in the last four years, with zero prosecutions of those responsible. The River Wye, like many rivers, is already close to becoming a dead zone, too dangerous for fish to live in or locals to swim in because of toxic pollution from the proliferation of nearby chicken farms. Top Lib Dems have told me river pollution is already showing up as an electoral issue. Sir Ed Davey found high phosphate levels in the River Axe during the Tiverton by-election. The damage occurring to chalk streams was also a doorstep issue in the Chesham and Amersham by-election.
The Times reported these rules, like broader environmental protections, could be suspended in areas that the government label as "investment zones" but it's not at all clear the change will be limited to these areas only. Nor is it clear how much of England these zones will cover.
I understand an amendment to the Levelling Up Bill could come to MPs as soon as this month to make the key change. Can a revolt by Tory backbenchers, working with opposition parties, still save our rivers? Can other crucial "green tape" also be saved from the chop? It's all to play for.
"Investment zones": areas entirely free from environmental protections?
There is mounting speculation that requirements for environmental assessments for new infrastructure projects could be stopped altogether in new "investment zones." Developers could get the green light to concrete over woodlands and meadows, for example, irrespective of whether endangered creatures live in them and irrespective of their value to local people or wildlife. It's why Oxfordshire Council has already refused to accept an investment zone. Other councils may yet follow suit.
The zones would first need to be enacted by MPs so a Parliamentary showdown could yet put a stop to a total environmental-free-for-all in these areas.
With Truss today attempting a re-set of her government as a last-throw-of-the-dice for her leadership, she could put out this bin fire she started at the same time.
Otherwise it will fall to MPs to intervene. Many have told journalists they are bewildered by the nature controversy since they don't really understand the basis for it. When they see these three big changes coming down the tracks, they should change their minds.
It isn't just political noise. What sort of country we live in is on the line.