Key UK Government Advisors Recommend Combining COVID Recovery with Sustainable Practices
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
By Tom Carter, Amplia Group Senior Associate
An influential UK government think tank is recommending that the government’s COVID recovery actions be designed and taken to simultaneously create a lower carbon economy. This is in line with the EU Roadmap for Recovery, which combines implementation of the European Green Deal with COVID recovery.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is an independent, statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008 to advise the UK, national, and local governments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change.
The CCC recently released a statement recommending that COVID recovery actions be designed and taken to simultaneously create a lower carbon economy. This is in line with the EU Green Recovery plan, which combines implementation of the European Green Deal with COVID recovery.
The Committee contends that rebuilding economies without learning lessons from the past or considering climate impacts could send the UK and the world into a deeper climate crisis. Instead they urge developing a well-coordinated and purposeful recovery to take advantage of the opportunity to encourage low-carbon activities and incorporate superior and efficient technologies for transportation, manufacturing, and energy production, distribution, and consumption.
Specifically, the CCC recommends that governments in all UK nations should act to recover from the pandemic based on six resilience principles. These are:
Use climate investments to support economic recovery and jobs: reduce emissions by, for example, investing in broadband over road building; manage the social, environmental and economic impacts of climate change; create labour-intensive, green jobs, such as installing home insulation.
Lead a shift towards positive, long-term behaviours: encourage new social norms that benefit wellbeing, improve productivity, and reduce emissions, such as home working, walking, cycling, and remote medical consultations.
Tackle the wider “resilience deficit” on climate change: create policies to reduce vulnerability to future health crises, climate change impacts, and a disorderly transition to a carbon-free economy.
Embed fairness as a core principle: ensure that costs of climate mitigation are borne by the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, rather than the poor, who are at greatest risk to COVID 19, economic collapse, and climate change impacts.
Ensure the recovery does not lock-in greenhouse gas emissions or increased vulnerability to climate change: support for carbon-intensive sectors such as power production, automobiles, or air travel, should be contingent on them taking real and lasting action on climate change; new investments should be resilient to future climate risks.
Strengthen incentives to reduce emissions when considering tax changes: raise revenue by establishing carbon prices that reflect the full costs of emitting greenhouse gases; the current low global oil prices enable this with minimal impact on consumers.
See the full CCC statement here.
What does this mean for you?
In order to achieve its goals, Europe needs help from sustainable companies - in the form of new technologies, expertise, investment, and business partnerships.
Amplia Group and Passerelle Public Affairs are offering a series of free online networking and information-sharing sessions to introduce North American providers of sustainable services and products to representatives of multinational other industry leaders already doing business in Europe.
Together we will explore opportunities to collaborate on public policy, production, and market penetration efforts that can open doors for growing companies while introducing Europe to the sustainable products, systems, and services necessary to simultaneously rebuild their economies and carry out the EGD.
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For more details about our perspective on the European Green Deal, check out Amplia Group’s four-part blog series on the EGD. Meet our Sustainability team, composed of experts in EU policy, sustainability, and marketing and public affairs.
Our upcoming video conference will show companies how to access the European Green Recovery, which combines implementation of the European Green Deal with the COVID-19 recovery plan.
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