Appendix 2—Letter from Sir Michael
Pitt, Chair of the Infrastructure Planning Commission
Carbon Budgets
There has been a great deal of interest in this important
issue and I thought it might be helpful if I wrote to you setting
out the IPC's position on it.
Consideration of climate change impacts is likely
to form an important part of the IPC's examination of proposed
Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs).
The draft National Policy Statements make clear (EN-1
paragraph 2.1.5) that the Government policies that underlie NPSs
have been set in accordance with the UK Low Carbon Transition
Plan and carbon budgets, and the IPC does not need to assess individual
applications in terms of carbon emissions against the carbon budgets.
Nevertheless, applicants must provide information in their environmental
statements, in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment
Directive, about the likely significant effects of the project,
including the direct effects and any indirect, secondary, cumulative,
short, medium and long-term, permanent and temporary, positive
and negative effects. Similar information must be provided even
where an environmental statement is not required under the Directive.
The IPC cannot, in my judgment, have the function
of assessing the cumulative impact of development proposals submitted
to it on carbon budgets, in part because the infrastructure planning
system itself is only one part of the wider picture, and in part
because not all infrastructure proposals fall within the IPC's
remit to consider.
I note the Committee's recommendation that the Government
should put in place an alternative mechanism to ensure that the
sum of the decisions taken by the IPC is consistent with the carbon
budgets. This is a matter for Government. From the IPC's perspective,
we would expect that parties to the examination of NSIP applications
will wish to submit evidence relating to carbon emissions, and
all that evidence will be considered and weighed in our decision
making. The Committee on Climate Change may wish to provide evidence
of this nature and we would have a duty to consider it.
Sir Michael Pitt
Chair of the Infrastructure Planning Commission
| 
