Liz Gyekye / PackagingNews

CPI: Carbon goals could damage industry

Britain’s plans for cutting carbon emissions risk damaging the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries, according to the Confederation of Paper Industries.

In a briefing to MPs, CPI director general David Workman claims that industry is becoming increasingly alarmed by the prospect of further punitive measures being imposed by government both here in the UK and in Brussels.

He added: “It is the cumulative effects and the unforeseen consequences of these measures that have the potential to seriously damage the competitiveness of not only the paper industry, but all energy-intensive industries.”


Osborne

The issue of carbon targets has climbed up the political agenda in recent weeks. George Osborne hinted at easing the burden of UK carbon targets, at the recent Conservative Party Conference.

He said: “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.”

In his wide ranging briefing Workman covers a number of topics, including Phase III of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the UK’s carbon floor price mechanism and the cost associated with achieving the UK’s Renewables Obligation targets.

He then goes on to outline specific measures that he believes that government must consider. Some of these include:

． An exemption from the additional costs of the carbon floor price – to apply to all industries officially recognised as being “at risk of carbon leakage”
 ．Exemption from the “pass through” costs of renewable energy generation – as in Germany
．Continuation of free allocation of EUETS allowances for on-site CHP electricity generation
．Simplification of the CRC scheme
．A resource efficiency strategy for waste that ensures that paper and board is recovered for recycling and not for energy-from-waste


‘Create jobs’

Workman said that with these measures, “we may pull out of the current financial and economic crisis with a paper industry (and EIIs) in a fit state to invest for the future, to create jobs and wealth and to help reverse the trend of recent years which has seen manufacturing decline as a percentage of GDP”.

He adds: “If government does not heed these warnings, there are one million direct and indirect energy-intensive industry jobs in the UK which must seriously be considered at being ‘at risk’, as would any prospect of economic growth from the manufacturing sector.