Ministers ‘distracted from net zero goals by lockdown parties row’

Managing the fallout from allegations of parties at Number 10 has distracted the government from moving faster in achieving its net zero goals, ministers have been told.

Cundall合伙人、环境事务负责人西蒙•怀亚特(Simon Wyatt)表示，由于媒体对“党门”丑闻进行了数月的关注，各国部长尚未拿出一项计划，将去年11月在COP26气候大会上达成的承诺付诸行动。

英国高级公务员苏•格雷(Sue Gray)周一发布的一份经过编辑的报告发现，在封锁期间，唐宁街至少举行了16次社交聚会，其中12次目前正在接受伦敦警察厅的调查。

Wyatt’s comments come as backbench Conservative MP Duncan Baker prepares to propose a bill to parliament this afternoon which would amend building regulations to include mandatory assessments and limits on embodied carbon in projects.

根据贝克的说法，《隐含碳法案》将要求建筑公司最早于明年“测量、报告并减少隐含碳的相关目标”。

But Wyatt told Building Design the proposals should have been made by ministers at the time of the COP26 conference rather than being left to a backbench MP to take up the cause more than two months after the Glasgow summit.

He said: “It should have come before COP26 or if not before, immediately after, championed by the government with a raft of other measures.

“But they don’t seem to have done anything after COP26 and that’s probably because they’re distracted by what’s going on in the media at the moment.”

He added: “It’s encouraging that this has been brought forward [by Baker] but it would be better if it was coming from someone like [business secretary] Kwasi Kwarteng and someone with a bit more profile.”

Addressing embodied carbon, which is emitted by the production and use of materials, is also only “one part of the solution”, according to Mace chief of staff Hannah Vickers.

She said: “While this will start the debate on [embodied carbon], what happens with operational carbon? You’d need similar legislation on that through the planning process.

“Helpful as it is to have backbench MPs tabling specific motions you need the whole system to work because it starts to stifle development if you don’t have that designed as a system rather than specific interventions.”

But Baker, who is the MP for North Norfolk and sits on the cross-party Environmental Audit Select Committee, said that embodied carbon is an issue which politicians “still don’t talk about enough”.

He said the government is “missing a trick” to reduce a significant share of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by limiting embodied carbon in construction, which totals between 40 and 50 million tonnes each year - more than aviation and shipping combined.

他补充说，他“确信”该行业已经做好了迎接监管的准备，并“告诉政府，他们希望这样做”。

在今天的首相问答之后，该法案将在下议院宣读。该法案是基于五名建筑行业专家起草的一套限制隐含碳的提案，该提案以净零为基础。

Known asPart Z, the initiative is being backed by more than 100 industry heavyweights such as Cundall, Laing O’Rourke, Arcadis and Arup, as well as architects including Wilkinson Eyre, Hopkins, Haworth Tompkins, Waugh Thistleton and Allies & Morrison.

It is proposing mandatory reporting of whole-life carbon on non-residential projects by January next year and on residential projects by January 2025.

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios’ net zero lead Tim den Dekker, one of the proposal’s five authors, said the dates were chosen because “we feel that that’s where the industry is in its readiness”.

He added: “We’ve picked a strategy that we think is sensible given how ready industry is and in terms of government’s speed in enacting legislation. We try to be realistic.”

但是den Dekker承认，尽管在COP26的筹备过程中关注的焦点是净零，但作者们仍然没有被邀请与政府官员或部长会面。“他们知道我们是来和他们谈判的，我们准备给他们建议。我们很乐意，”他说。

Vickers said that while she was not “overly concerned at this stage” that ministers were losing focus on the net zero agenda, she said the industry needed “clarity” on which interventions the government intended to make.

“We do now need to see the regulations being drafted and for the government’s plans to start moving forward,” she said.

“You can appreciate the government’s attention has been focused very much on covid the last few months. I’m sure that’s not how they had anticipated the winter going but coming out of that now I think it is very timely to have this debate because I’m hoping this will kickstart the government into actioning some of the stuff that they’ve set out plans for.”

>> Anna Beckett:What’s stopping us from measuring embodied carbon?

Vickers added that ministers could row back on the amount of funding earmarked for reducing carbon emissions in construction “given the state of the government finances”.

More than £400bn has been spent on the furlough scheme during the pandemic, with much of the government’s spending priorities now focused on social care and fixing the NHS backlog.

Baker’s proposal comes a week after COP26 president and former business secretary Alok Sharma said the agreements reached at the climate summit were “just words on a page” and would “wither on the vine” unless governments around the world put them into action.