Cameron: we can't afford not to go green

Greenbang has been just finished trawling through 4,390 words of political speech. And she’s going temporarily mad as a result. Not even the promised cup of tea at the end of it helped keep her completely sane.

The UK’s Conservative Party leader, David Cameron has been making a speech to environmental leaders today outlining how the party’s Blue/Green Charter will “develop a strategy for realistic environmentalism – not ignoring economic realities and just pressing on regardless but understanding economic realities and using them as a spur to innovation and imagination”

Tidal power, carbon capture and green cars are all high on the agenda. Nuclear is too.

To save you becoming discombobulated, and David Cameron’s usual Gordon slamming, Greenbang has compiled the highlights of the five point plan:

• 1) On Markets and Innovation: “We can create the green products and services, the clean cars and the energy-efficient planes, that will transform our environment and our economy. All that needs to happen is for government to give our businesses, our industry, our innovators, the certainty they need to research, develop and invest. Let me give you two concrete examples of what I mean.
  • Green Cars – “we’ve set an aggressive long-range target to bring the average emissions level for new cars down to 100 grammes per kilometre by 2022” … “I want Britain to be the world leader in hydrogen fuel cell or battery powered cars”
  • Carbon Capture – “we’ve got the depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea in which to store the carbon”…” a Conservative Government will follow the Californian model, and implement an Emissions Performance Standard. This would mean the carbon emissions rate of all electricity generated in our country cannot be any higher than that generated in a modern gas plant”…”a Conservative Government would take money from the auctioned EU Emissions Trading Scheme credits and use it to fund at least three CCS demonstration projects over the next five to ten years”

• 2) On green taxes – “Green taxes, properly used, are a key way of encouraging investment in – and take-up of – green technologies…Green taxes as replacement taxes, not new taxes.”

• 3) On Energy security – “We’ve got to wake up to the fact that relying on oil and gas isn’t just bad for our wallets, isn’t just bad for our environment, it’s also bad for our national security.”
  • Micro-power generation “We’ve got to wake up to the fact that relying on oil and gas isn’t just bad for our wallets, isn’t just bad for our environment, it’s also bad for our national security.”
  • Tidal power – “That’s why I am today committing a Conservative Government to making this research and development a priority for Britain – right at the top of our green agenda. The next Conservative government will put rocket boosters behind this area of research”
  • Nuclear – “his is an area where we have taken a responsible long-term view, avoiding ideological posturing. We have set out a framework in which nuclear power stations can be built, but not with blank cheque subsidies from government.”

• 4) On efficiency – “every gas and electricity bill [will] contain information that allows each household to compare their energy consumption with other households.”

• 5) On Transport – “We’ve got to transform the way we get travel in our country – not just because of the environment but because of our economy. Gridlocked roads. Slow, packed and expensive trains. Our country is grinding to a halt – and we need big changes in our infrastructure.”
  • Heathrow – The Heathrow argument is not one where you have the economic case on one side and the environmental case on the other. There are now increasing grounds to believe that the economic case for a third runway is flawed, even without addressing the serious environmental concerns.