The UK government has refused to provide access to the Net Zero Strategy spreadsheet that shows how much CO2 the strategy aims to cut.
The government’s Net Zero Strategy was published officially on October 19th, 2021, and was a key moment just ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.
It lays out the country’s plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 with steps for the years ahead.
However, one thing that this most recent UK Net Zero climate strategy has failed to spell out for the public is the estimates for how much individual policies will be able to reduce CO2 emissions.
That is quite different compared to two previous climate plans released in 2017 and 2020.
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This fact raised concerns about transparency and, according to observers, ‘hampered scrutiny’.
Now, government officials have admitted that such data does exist, but they have refused to release it. New Scientist officially applied for permission to publish the spreadsheet, however, was denied such by the the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
As grounds for the refusal, the BEIS stated ‘the disclosure of internal communications’.
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