UK Climate Change - the Countryside can Deliver Major Savings says CLA

The government's response to EU plans to tackle climate change fails to recognise what carbon savings the British countryside can actually deliver – according to the CLA, the rural economy experts.

CLA President, Henry Aubrey Fletcher, said that confusion and mixed messages had clouded the debate and while the EU target was set out in terms of energy and emissions, the UK government's sights remained largely fixed on electricity.

"We are currently chucking waste into landfill sites which could be readily converted into energy, we have effective power generation from anaerobic digestion and we have biomass technology which can provide combined heat and power – these are win – win technologies and are surely the areas we should be investing in now," he said.

Renewable heat is an issue the CLA has been pursuing with Government departments for many years. Biomass boilers, said the CLA President, are capable of delivering significant contributions savings towards the UK's 15% target.

"We cannot go on ignoring the contribution that renewable heat can make to addressing 47% of UK carbon emissions, whilst putting so much resource into renewable electricity, which accounts for only 25% of our emissions"

"We need long term, stable support for the concept of renewable heat and Combined Heat and Power. Only a long term obligation can provide the incentive to invest. We want the government to consider a Renewable Heat Obligation, along the lines of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation – that would at least encourage community schemes and businesses to adopt renewable heat, "he said.