A report (summary, full report) on the Carbon Trust by the UK’s top spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, said only 12 percent of large UK businesses had worked with the group to lower their emissions, the Times Online reports. And only 40 percent of the possible savings identified by the trust between 2003 and 2006 had been implemented.
The NAO said the low level of implementation was due to competing investment priorities at large businesses and public sector bodies, as well as a lack of commitment to the proposed changes from top-level management.
Carbon Trust, set up by the government to help businesses reduce their carbon emissions, has had only a limited impact and must do far more to meet the scale of the challenge, according to the report.
“At an annual cost of 103 million pounds of taxpayers’ money, their achievements are worryingly small and symptomatic of the Government’s persistently disjointed and misguided approach to tackling climate change,” said Alex Lambie, head of greenhelpline. com, about Carbon Trust.