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| Mon, 24th Aug 2020 13:09:00 |
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Road planners accused of rigging carbon emissions rules |
Road planners in England have been accused of rigging accounting rules to disguise the climate impact of new roads.
Environmentalists say the Department for Transport has under-counted CO2 from its road improvement programme.
That's because the DfT measures emissions against national CO2 targets, whilst measuring benefits of a new road against the local economy.
A Treasury spokesperson said this was a reasonable approach.
But critics say the resulting calculation exaggerates the benefits of new roads, whilst downgrading the negatives in terms of carbon emissions.
Chris Todd, director of pressure group Transport Action Network, told the BBC it proved the government has one rule for its £27bn road-building programme, and another rule for everything else.
He said: “This is like someone who's morbidly obese insisting they can gorge on another cream cake, because no single cake will have a 'material impact' on their well-being.”
The Treasury strongly rejects the allegation.
A spokesperson said it made sense to measure the carbon emissions from new roads against the UK’s entire carbon budget, because climate change is a global problem, whereas smaller road schemes offer local benefits.
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