The Treasury Committee is relaunching an inquiry to see whether the UK’s response to Covid-19 should take the government’s net zero carbon emissions by 2050 target into account.
The Treasury Committee launched an inquiry into the decarbonisation of the UK economy and green finance on 5 June 2019.
The committee is seeking additional written evidence to address whether the Treasury’s support packages to business should distinguish between companies based on how much they pollute and whether the department should be directly funding green infrastructure as part of its coronavirus spending package.
The inquiry will also explore what policies the Treasury should change due to the coronavirus to facilitate the transition to meeting net zero.
Treasury Committee chair Mel Stride said: “The committee has received a great deal of evidence since launching this inquiry over a year ago. But with the impact on the economy of coronavirus, clearly much has changed.
“The Climate Assembly’s report published last month said that post-lockdown steps to aid economic recovery should drive progress to achieve net zero.
“So now is the time to ask whether the Government can seize the opportunity presented by the crisis to further green the economy to achieve net zero by 2050.
“Whether the level of [treasury] support should depend on how much companies pollute, or if it should directly fund green infrastructure, are some of the issues that we would like evidence on.”
As part of the inquiry so far, the committee has three evidence sessions, focussing on the economic opportunity of decarbonisation, the Treasury’s strategy to achieve net zero, including the role of the Spending Review, and the role that financial services firms are playing in financing the transition.
Research and campaign group Positive Money said it welcomed the Treasury Committee’s plans to relaunch its inquiry.
Positive Money executive director Fran Boait said: “It is vital that the Treasury and Bank of England are held to account on the unprecedented public support offered to companies over the past few months, in order to ensure that our response to the Covid crisis does not harm our response to the climate crisis.
“Currently it appears that much of the financial support offered to the biggest companies, such as the billions which have gone to high-carbon corporations through the Bank of England’s bailout scheme, not only fail pledges to ‘build back better’, but also the government’s own climate goals.
“Without green conditions to financial assistance, public money will be propping up business models which are completely incompatible with efforts to decarbonise by 2050.”