Author:Patrick Heren
Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm: The Climate Change Act subsidises offshore wind power at three times the market price of electricity (photo: Statkraft, via Flickr)The new British government should not just rethink the Human Rights Act: it should also repeal the Climate Change Act (CCA) 2008, the brainchild of Ed Miliband and possibly his most baleful legacy. The CCA commits the UK to legally-binding carbon dioxide reduction targets which are expensive and increasingly detached from global economic reality. Its implementation is predicated on extravagant assumptions about energy (especially oil) prices and is vested in unaccountable institutions designed to give preordained advice and analysis. Above all, the CCA sets in political concrete an anti-free-market philosophy that places a particular view of the environment ahead of the needs of people.