The road to zero carbon: Government to legislate on environmental standards and fund emission cuts from homes

News

19 February 2020

Green economy

Legislation currently progressing through Parliament will bring in a new system of planning, targeting, monitoring, accountability and enforcement aimed at creating a more sustainable circular economy. The Environment Bill embeds environmental values at the heart of Government policymaking and includes measures on:  

  • minimising waste, securing resilient water and wastewater services, and improving air and water quality 

  • extending producer responsibility and ‘polluter pays’ schemes, new charges for single-use plastic items, and powers to ban the export of polluting plastic waste to non-OECD countries  

  • addressing biodiversity loss. 

Meanwhile, the Government has recently announced a £90 million low carbon package, which will: fund nine smart home energy schemes, enabling more than 250,000 people to switch to local renewable energy sources by 2030; develop Europe’s first green hydrogen production plants, potentially generating enough energy to heat over 200,000 homes; and trial technologies to switch carbon intensive industries to run on renewables.