'Big missed opportunity' :Energy boss Dale Vince on government's climate strategy

The UK government is facing the prospect of more legal action over its net zero target.

Author: Ashton KirbyPublished 30th Mar 2023

Founder of Ecotricity and Forest Green Rovers owner, Dale Vince, labels the UK government's climate announcement as a "big missed opportunity".

Adding, "...the greenest thing about what we have seen today is the recycling at the heart of it, because all of the numbers of money that have been mentioned have already been announced at least once before."

Earlier, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps announced the UK government's new plans to reach net zero by 2050.

It follows last year's High Court ruling that their old strategy was breaching obligations under the Climate Change Act.

Within the government's announcement, they say after "Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine" they want to end "decades of reliance on importing expensive foreign fossil fuels."

To do this, amongst other measures, they're committing to Carbon Capture, offshore wind and investing into their Great British Nuclear project.

Chancellor Jeremey Hunt has invested £20 billion pounds into carbon capture. This stops carbon entering or takes it out of our atmosphere, with the aim of storing CO2 under the North Sea.

"It's completely nonsense"

In response to their carbon capture spending, Energy boss Dale Vince says, " it is a mythical technology, it exists nowhere in the world and our government is going to spend billions of pounds on trying to make it work.

"This is in the vain hope that we can keep burning fossil fuels and capture the carbon from them, its completely nonsense."

To make sure all of the UK's electricity is from clean sources by 2035, the government is reemphasising their plans for Great British Nuclear, which Dale Vince says, "doesn't make any sense.

"It takes 10 years to plan a nuclear power station and another ten years to build it, we don't have 20 years.

"It's the most expensive form of energy and the slowest to build, it makes no sense to keep talking about nuclear."

Activists Friends of the Earth, who initially brought the government to the high court over their original net zero plans, have already called today's announcement "lacklustre" and are "poised to act" if the strategy fails to meet legal obligations.

Putting the UK government as risk of further legal action over its climate policies.