Environmental Audit Committee consults on low carbon road transport
Fri 20 January 2006
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The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has launched an inquiry to examine the effectiveness of the UK Government's policies to reduce carbon emissions from transport. The inquiry is particularly focusing on road, rail and the maritime sector.
The Committee is inviting organisations and members of the public make submissions.
Strategic issues in which the Committee is particularly interested include:
• what progress the DfT is making against key carbon reduction targets or forecasts included in the Ten Year Plan (2000), the Climate Change Strategy (2000), the 2004 Transport White Paper, the 2004 PSA, Powering Future Vehicles (2004), and other documents;
• whether the DfT’s carbon reduction target is underpinned by a coherent strategy stretching across the department’s entire range of activities;
• whether the current balance of expenditure between the DfT’s objectives (as revealed in its 2005 departmental report, Annex A) adequately reflects the environmental challenges it faces;
• what realistically the DfT could achieve by 2010 and 2020 in terms of reducing transport-related carbon emissions, and the role that demand management should play in doing so; and
• what specific steps the department should now take to reduce road transport carbon emissions and congestion over the next decade.
In relation to the Powering Future Vehicles Strategy, the Committee is also specifically interested in:
• whether the targets set out in the Powering Future Vehicles strategy were adequate and what progress has been made against them since 2002;
• what organisations and funding sources are involved, whether there is adequate coordination between them, and whether the overall funding available and spent in support of the strategy is adequate in view of the environmental challenges DfT is facing.
The Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership is in the process of preparing a submission agreed by stakeholders.
The deadline for the Committee to receive written evidence is 24 February 2006.
Related Links
Environmental Audit Committee press release
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