Rishi Sunak confirms u-turn on UK Government's net zero climate change policies
dailyrecord.co.ukRishi Sunak has confirmed the weakening of the UK Government's green policies.The Prime Minister said the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars would be pushed back five years to 2035.He also said the Government will delay the time at which people need to replace gas boilers with heat pumps to 2035.Sunak was speaking in Downing Street on Wednesday afternoon after the rolling back on his key environmental pledges had been leaked.The speech was previously planned for later in the week but had to be brought forward.Sunak said: "I'm announcing today that we're going to ease the transition to electric vehicles."You'll still be able to buy petrol and diesel cars and vans until 2035.
Even after that, they'll still be able to buy and sell separately."We're aligning our approach with countries like Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada, Sweden, and US states such as California, New York and Massachusetts, and still ahead of the rest of America, and other countries like New Zealand."Now to get to net zero, we also need a fairer, better approach to decarbonizing how we heat our homes."We're making huge advances in the technologies that we need to do that, like heat pumps, but we need a balance between incentivizing businesses to innovate.
So heat pumps become even cheaper, more effective and more attractive."But without imposing costs on hard-pressed families at a time when technology is often still expensive, and won't work in all homes."He added: "I’m announcing today that we will give people far more time to make the necessary transition to heat pumps."We will never force anyone to rip out their existing boiler and replace it with a heat pump.
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