The head of the Government's climate-change quango has been awarded a £50,000 bonus despite Britain's greenhouse gas emissions soaring for the third year running.
Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust, has been awarded the sum on top of his £138,000-a-year salary. The bonus is equivalent to a pay increase of 36 per cent. The Carbon Trust urges business to cut emissions and has recently been pressing companies to do more. It claimed in its annual report that it had had a "successful year" because it cut businesses' costs by £200 million by getting them to save 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2004/5.
However, there were claims yesterday that taxpayers' money was being wasted because overall figures on Britain's greenhouse gas emissions were getting worse not better. The Liberal Democrats described the bonuses as "excessive". Carbon dioxide emissions are expected to rise significantly in 2005 and reach the highest level since 1992, when Britain signed the Climate Change Convention at the Rio Earth Summit and pledged to combat global warming.
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Energy statistics released by the Department of Trade and Industry this month show that oil and coal burning have both risen in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2004. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions are expected to rise by more than two per cent this year, when they should be falling by at least one per cent a year to reach Labour's 20 per cent reduction target. In May's election manifesto the Government firmed up its pledge to cut carbon dioxide levels by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2010, despite the fact that ministers had conceded that with current measures Britain was not going to reach its targets. A review of policies due to be published in June is now expected later this year.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/14/ncarb14.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/14/ixhome.htmlMaybe Bush can find a place for this guy - he sounds like he'd fit right in. :eyes: