Cop27: No, Rishi Sunak is not a champion of clean energy

How can I know this with such confidence? Let’s look at what he did as chancellor.   Surely the most glaring hole in any Sunak claim to environmental responsibility is his consistent failure to address surface transport emissions, the UK’s largest source of domestic greenhouse gases.Even though the Climate Change Committee is clear that, by 2050, every motor vehicle needs to be zero emission at the tailpipe and the number of miles driven needs to fall by around 17 per cent – some 58 billion miles on 2019 mileage – Sunak used the Treasury to take us in the opposite direction. By allocating £27billion to road-building, he effectively signed-off 4,000 miles of new roads. Sunak also continually delivered real-terms cuts in fuel duty, making it cheaper to drive in a country where almost 70 per cent of one- to five-mile journeys are driven but overwhelmingly could and should be…

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