Blair slips behind on cutting emissions by 20 per cent

Britain looks likely to miss a key target in the fight against global warming by a wide margin.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has disclosed that forthcoming cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide (C02), the main greenhouse gas, would fall well short of the amount promised by his party in opposition and in office.

By 2010, he said, Britain would achieve only a 14 per cent cut in emissions of CO2 from 1990 levels.

This compares with a planned reduction of 20 per cent set in 1994 by the Labour Party, which has since appeared in its election manifestos.

Britain is on course to meet its official, legally binding target under the Kyoto protocol, the international climate treaty, of cutting emissions of six greenhouse gases by 12.5 per cent by 2010, but the more ambitious target it set itself looks doubtful.

Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, said the Government had to make significant cuts in British C02 emissions if Mr Blair really wanted to lead the world on climate change.

"Replacing old, inefficient, coal-powered stations with cleaner alternatives, introducing economic incentives to encourage energy efficiency and encouraging less polluting transport options are desperately needed measures," he said.

Mr Blair insisted that urgent measures were being taken to try to make up lost ground, and he did not accept that the target could not be met.

He said the country should be "proud" to be one of the few in the world to meet its international climate change obligations under the Kyoto Treaty.

"We set a target of 20 per cent; we are on track to get to 14 per cent. We have years to go before we have to meet that target. We do not accept we won't meet it," he said.

Yesterday, a full-scale review of the British climate change programme, the measures first set out in 2000 to bring down greenhouse gas emissions, was initiated by the Government.

- INDEPENDENT