Green Highlights of a Brown Budget

The 2008 Budget has already drawn criticism from the Green lobby who have billed it as a "Brown Budget". Set out below is a look at some of the environmental highlights and how they may affect different sectors. None of the announcements are particularly surprising - many of them have already been 'trailered' in the 2007 Pre Budget Report or are an obvious conclusion to the debate on environmental matters and more particularly climate change issues that has been ongoing over the last year.

Transport

Transport is one of the harder areas of carbon emissions for government policy to reach. Unlike large power stations or energy consumption in industrial buildings, it is the aggregate of emissions from millions of transport users that account for 28 per cent of the UK's emissions (road transport representing 20 per cent and aviation representing 6 per cent ). However, a growing awareness in the press