EEF calls for coherence in environmental policy

The EEF has published a report which examines the current state of environmental legislation and its impact on the UK's manufacturing sector. In particular, it draws attention to the fact the manufacturers potentially have to report their carbon emisisons under four different schemes (EU ETS, CRC, CCAs, and GHG reporting) incurring four sets of administrative costs.

Overall I feel that the report is generally pretty sensible. We do need to consider least cost approaches to meeting our environmental objectives and it makes no sense to do things at higher cost than we need to (as I suspect we are with energy policy).

Of particular interest for me though, were some of the figures tucked away in annex 2 (focus on waste) on page 14. Here we find survey results that tell us that almost half of UK manufacturers have applied lean manufacturing processes and a further quarter intend to do so in the next year. On top of that, we find that over 40% of companies surveyed claim to have redesigned products to better manage materials and reduce waste.

This tells me that there is a lot of resource efficiency going on in the UK economy. As I noted previously, the material requirement of the UK economy (including from imported materials) is falling. This EEF survey gives us further evidence that markets, prices and competition will drive resource efficiency far more effectively than government intervention.