The UK must take urgent action to prepare for the impact of climate change, the government has been warned.Ministers should focus on the future risks of heatwaves and flooding, says the Committee on Climate Change.
Its report said more needed to be done to keep emissions on track, although the government said it was committed to meeting its climate change target.
It also warned a decision to stop onshore wind farm subsidies early could potentially add £1bn a year to bills.
The report by the Committee on Climate Change looked at progress towards meeting carbon emission targets and how the UK is preparing for climate change risks.
Chairmen Lord Deben and Lord Krebs said measures were needed to address increased flood risk to homes and to protect farmland from declines in productivity.
Lord Krebs said: “By the 2050s the sort of heatwaves we might experience in the next few days will be the norm, a typical summer.”
The committee also called for action to make homes and buildings safer during heatwaves.
“Just as we’ve been encouraging on the mitigation side retrofit of loft insulation and so on, we need to think how to develop passive cooling measures maybe tinted glass, shading, again as is common in other countries,” Lord Krebs said.
Lord Deben added that decisions on carbon-cutting policies needed to be made “urgently” to give companies time to invest.
The committee is also advising the government to:
• Extend funding for low-carbon electricity generation to 2025
• Continue support for efficient, low-emission vehicles
• Develop new infrastructure that is resilient to the impacts of climate change
• Act to counter the decline in productive farmland.
The committee said the government has a duty to explain to the public how it intends to replace the energy from wind turbines in the countryside.
‘Coherent policies’
Onshore wind is the cheapest option but the government announced it would end subsidies from April 2016, a year early, after protests from countryside residents.
The committee’s calculation of the additional £1bn a year on bills would be the result of ministers deciding to replace the lost output from onshore wind by increasing the supply of electricity for offshore wind.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said the government was committed to meetings its climate change target of an 80% emissions reduction by 2050.
Press link for more: Helen Briggs | bbc.com
jpratt27 