Tuesday, July 27, 2021

On Monday, Mr Justice David Holgate of the High Court of Justice for England and Wales dismissed an application for legal review by campaigners from the Transport Action Network (TAN) regarding the United Kingdom (UK) government’s Road Investment Strategy 2: 2020-2025 (RIS 2) plan, announced March 11 last year, for an assessment into the plan’s adherence to the Paris Agreement and Climate Change Act 2008.

The investment strategy of GBP27.4 billion over five years follows its predecessor, RIS 1, adopted December 1, 2014 for the period 2015-2020. RIS 2 consists of fifty schemes: 45 rolled-over from the previous plan which could not be completed in time, and five new schemes that would create or improve upon 40 miles (64 km) of England’s strategic roads network. RIS 1 was written prior to the UK making binding net zero commitments, according to The Guardian.

The plan has been accused by TAN as failing to meet criteria set out in the Infrastructure Act 2015, which stipulates “[a] strategic highway company must also, in exercising its functions, have regard to the effect of the exercise of those functions on [the] environment”, which was dismissed in the ruling as containing “nothing […] which remotely resembles environmental decision-making”.

TAN argued the government was legally obligated to undertake a “quantified assessment of the emissions in RIS 2 and to consider their impact on the ability of the UK to meet the net zero target in 2050 and the carbon budgets running to 2032”, which an organisational press release says “the UK is already set to miss by a mile.”

The Court ruled appropriate “numerical analysis” was undertaken by the government prior to the strategy’s announcement, and there was a “legally adequate precis of” it in a March 6 briefing, which failed to “assess how the predicted emissions related to the carbon budgets […] the likelihood that they would not be met, and cumulative emissions”, but “adequately summarised” the relation between the results of relevant analysis and the Climate Change Act 2008. Further analysis the next month by the Department for Transport (DfT) judged total impact as de minimis, that is, minuscule beyond ruling or legally insignificant, which the Court left undisputed. The Court also regarded a March 6 briefing note to the Secretary of State for Transport, which said in line with “a comprehensive programme of analysis” the plan was “consistent with a major carbon saving required to deliver net zero”.

In a press release, TAN said it is currently crowdfunding for an appeal to the ruling, which its director Chris Todd was quoted in that press release as “fail[ing] to grapple with the clear requirement created by Parliament that ministers must carefully consider environmental impacts”. The ruling says “the evidence is plain” the UK “government is taking a range of steps to tackle the need for urgency in addressing carbon production in the transport sector” at a level emphasised by TAN.

Although the call for legal inquiry was dismissed, a second suit with the government led it to withdraw its defence July 14 and begin an environmental review, to be completed no earlier than 2023, on the impact of its transport decarbonisation plan. It will remain effective until then.

RIS 2 would support 64 thousand jobs in the construction industry and has been defended by a former chief executive of Highways England Jim O’Sullivan as “mak[ing] journeys faster and more reliable for freight and road users.” A 2015 DfT analysis of RIS 1 found the scheme would increase the projected rise in emissions by 2040 by between 0.1 and 0.2%. An April 2020 analysis of RIS 2 found the five new schemes covered would amount to an estimated 0.016% of emissions of the 2028-2032 carbon budget.

Expert witness on behalf of TAN Professor Jillian Anable of the University of Leeds said the decision to heighten roadbuilding “can only be interpreted as either blatant dishonesty or failure to understand the science”, adding “all modelling shows that we need to cut traffic”. Professor Phil Goodwin of University College London and the University of the West of England, Bristol criticised forecasts for potential inaccuracy “if the current trajectory of global heating is continued, with all its disruption of economic and social life”, nor reversed, as doing so would “require traffic reduction”.

The government of Wales suspended all new roadbuilding projects June 22 for its own emissions review, according to the BBC.

[edit]