In your welcome leader on the Tories’ environment chaos (13 October), you say that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, is “right to point out that carbon-intensive imports are just as damaging to the atmosphere as UK-based industries”. There are two policy solutions to address this problem and ensure a level playing field between carbon released through the production of imported and domestic goods and services, while bringing much-needed economic and social benefits.
The first is to introduce a variable carbon tax on all goods and services consumed in the UK, rated against carbon intensity. A carbon tax is widely accepted by economists across the political spectrum as a market mechanism designed to correct a market failure. Revenues from this can be easily hypothecated (ie re-spent) as grants or tax reliefs on the purchase and installation of low-carbon technologies, such as solar roofs and energy efficiency measures, by households and businesses. This will reduce energy bills and boost an investment-driven, job-stimulating, low-carbon economy. The reliefs can be targeted to help those most in need (eg, poor households and struggling small- and medium-sized businesses) and so avoid any regressive social impacts.
The second is for parliament to pass the climate and ecology bill, promoted by a coalition of scientists, businesses and organisations coordinated by the Zero Hour campaign group. This bill, which sets a statutory framework for reducing carbon emissions on all goods and services consumed in the UK, as well as protecting critical ecosystems and species populations, is currently supported by 123 MPs (but only two Tory MPs), 32 peers (only two Tory peers) and 198 councils. Hopefully, all your readers will petition their local MPs and councillors to back these measures if they do not already do so, and congratulate those who have.
Charles Secrett
Brighton
• I’m not surprised by the conversion of Jacob Rees-Mogg to the green energy cause (I’m maligned as a ‘green energy sceptic’. I’m not. Dear Guardian reader, here’s what I think, 13 October). We have seen this with previous Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) ministers who come into post having expressed climate scepticism and doubts about the efficiency and cost of renewable energy – views that have been fostered by a lack of understanding about the energy system and the drip-drip of erroneous information widely shared by the Tory right.
However, I imagine that after a few weeks of re-education with BEIS officials, ministers realise that achieving net zero is entirely consistent with the UK’s energy security and economic growth objectives, renewable energy works and, in fact, the green economy is probably the most tangible and immediate area of growth available.
It does make me smile to hear Rees-Mogg lauding the success of contracts for difference (CfD). We have been arguing that the CfD scheme should be expanded and accelerated for years, but Conservative governments have dragged their heels, partly because of Treasury reluctance to underwrite the scheme and also because of their previous hatred of onshore wind. This delay is now costing consumers billions. By our calculation, if the wind and solar projects that won CfD contracts at the last CfD allocation had been built at the start of the energy crisis, rather than in three or four years’ time, they would have saved consumers more than £3.2bn in 2021/22. That’s a direct cost of Tory “green crap” thinking.
Johnny Gowdy
Director, Regen
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