This week’s budget from the UK government was very disappointing to green groups. There was no mention of any previous commitments to environmental measures – possibly because the chancellor believes we simply cannot afford them.
In the previous government’s last budget, Alistair Darling promised a green bank, intended to start investment in renewable energy and other moves to help the transition to a low-carbon economy which can keep business going and reduce emissions at the same time. Previous Labour budgets had similar measures.
Heating engineers are delighted to find that home insulation was backed by the budget, albeit in measures that won’t come into effect till 2012. Businesses who are gearing up to meet the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will have noted that nothing was said about the price of carbon quotas or anything of the sort.
IT managers in the public sector learned (as if they didn’t already know) that their budgets are going to be strapped, and will be sharing resources as well as moving to the cloud. The UK’s games industry lost some potential tax breaks too.
But , in a way, this could all have some benefits for the planet – albeit somewhat double-edged in terms of Britain’s position.
An austerity budget, even if it is one which tries to say it is boosting business, is one which will result in less activity.
The recession, it is said, did more to limit the world’s emission than any government programmes have done – and certainly more than the abortive Copenhagen UN summit – simply by reducing demand.
Following this budget, consumers who are hit with a VAT rise, and other measures, will buy fewer gadgets and waste less energy using them.
Public sector IT departments, likewise, are putting all contracts more than £1 million on hold, which potentially means a lot fewer servers using electricity and adding to emissions. Clever IT managers will manage to get the job done with reduced resources by using virtualisation and the cloud.
Even when you’ve got no money to spend, it’s still worth investigating green measures as a good way to save it. That’s why we’ll be at the Green Enterprise World Forum in London next week.
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The chancellor’s Budget was more than a little disappointing – particularly for those of us that were hoping for a ‘greener’ agenda. In a speech delivered earlier this month, Cameron outlined his commitment to driving the green economy, yet this failed to be reflected in the Budget.
It is clear that this Budget is a very naive one that fails to address the complexities of the situation Britain finds itself in today – there’s nothing innovative about cutting costs and raising taxes. True, a VAT rise may benefit the environment in the short term by slowing the consumption of new electrical equipment, but what about encouraging more sustainable practices in the long term?
The government should be jumping at this chance to make ‘greener’ habits the norm. One way of doing this would be to abolish the VAT on ICT repairs – this would encourage people to think twice before throwing out old equipment as well as stimulate the growth of the repair industry in the UK.