From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

April 5, 2023 by oldbrew

Like many other countries, they’ve always been playing in the pie-in-the-sky league on climate policy, built on vague untestable conjectures and unreliable climate models.
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Key climate schemes trumpeted as part of the government’s net zero strategy are likely to fail, ministers were told before last week’s “green day” announcements, says The Times (via No2NuclearPower).

A leaked document by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reveals that officials told ministers they were not confident that key policies announced on Thursday — including tree planting, peat restoration and recycling targets — were realistic.

The ten-page advisory document — marked “not public facing” — was produced on February 20 for Grant Shapps, the energy security and net zero secretary.

It assessed the “delivery risk” and “delivery confidence” of each of the net zero measures proposed by Defra, which is run by Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary. Each was assessed with a traffic-light scale of green, amber and red.

Of 44 policies, 21 were marked red or red/amber, indicating they will be hard to achieve.

These policies encompass about 85 per cent of Defra’s proposed emissions savings, indicating officials expect to fall well short of what they claim.

A further 18 policies were marked as amber or amber/green, and only five were marked green, two of which disappeared from the final “carbon budget delivery plan” document published on Thursday.

Defra has long been warned it has not pulled its weight when it comes to cutting carbon.

Continued here.