Responding to the Government’s ‘Clean Growth Strategy’, Lib Dem leader Vince Cable said: 

“This strategy is a year late and is a damp squib. It is an inadequate response to tackling climate change, one of the greatest threats to our economy and our planet. We need a far more radical plan. Britain is on course to miss our climate change targets in the Paris Agreement and this does not change that.

“While additional funding for renewables is welcome, we need to see far more investment in cutting-edge technologies such as tidal power and a wide-scale plan for insulating people’s leaky homes.

“One of the most important aspects of this strategy is investment in carbon capture and storage. This is vital for our low carbon future. Yet the Government has replaced the £1 billion programme they scrapped two years ago with a much smaller and inadequate £100 million programme.

“If the Government was serious about tackling climate change they would be creating a far more radical plan, such as introducing a diesel scrappage scheme, allowing new onshore wind farms and giving the immediate go-ahead to Britain’s first ever tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay.

“Brexit will make the achievement of this strategy far more difficult, by closing off markets to potential UK exports and reducing the availability of government revenue to support all these plans.”