A leading environmental action body, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), has warned that the UK is falling behind its total potential to slash damaging greenhouse emissions - and all because of ongoing government inaction.

The CCC published its annual report that flagged up the positive aspects of strong policies that had already lessened electricity generation emissions but said that this key area of achievement was masking a broader failure to implement change in other areas.

Lord Deben, the group's chairman, said that the government must act rapidly to commit to the decarbonisation agenda, adding that climate change would not draw to a halt because remedial options were being considered.

Key Areas for Development

In the report, the CCC recommended that government support should focus on green energy infrastructure for the longer term, including floating wind farm developments offshore, carbon storage and capture and heat pump installation within domestic and business properties.

A Singular Achievement - But Masking Other Failures

The report's authors said that the decarbonisation efforts of electricity generation were the last decade's outstanding achievement. They cautioned that other sectors had shown a marked failure to decarbonise, especially in the past five years, with damaging greenhouse gas emissions reductions now having stalled.

Richard Black, the director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said in the report that the government's existing policies would be insufficient to allow the UK to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The Government Reminded

He reminded the government that ministers had said in January that they would need to act to close the climate policy gap by the end of this current year, and yet the government was still failing to act on implementing any new low-carbon measures over half way through 2018.