Budget 2020: Key points for the Energy & Infrastructure sector

11/03/2020

Ben Sheppard, Partner in the Energy & Infrastructure Group at Walker Morris summarises some key points for the Energy & Infrastructure Sector from the 2020 Budget.

Taxes on pollution

• From April 2022, the climate change the levy is to be frozen on electricity and increased on gas
• Support for the most energy-intensive industries to transition to net zero, by extending the climate change agreements scheme for a further two years
• A new plastics packaging tax from April 2022: manufacturers and importers will be charged £200 per tonne on packaging made of less than 30% recycled plastic

Natural habitats

• £640m for a new nature for climate fund to protect, restore and expand natural habitats like woodlands and peat bogs – also capturing carbon
• Over the next five years, to plant around 30,000 hectares of trees – a forest larger than Birmingham – and restore 35,000 hectares of peatland

Flood defences

• £120m available immediately to repair defences damaged in the winter floods
• £200m of funding directly to local communities to build flood resilience
• Doubling investment in flood defences over the next six years to £5.2bn

Low carbon transport

• Promise to spend £500m to support the rollout of new rapid charging hubs for electric cars
• Invest £300m in tackling nitrogen dioxide emissions in towns and cities
• A package of tax and spend reforms to make it cheaper to buy zero or low emission cars, vans, motorbikes and taxis

Carbon capture and storage

• £800m to be invested to create two more carbon capture clusters

Infrastructure

• Announcement to build broadband, railway, roads
• £5bn to get gigabit-capable broadband into the hardest to reach places
• £510m of new investment into the shared rural mobile phone network
• £2.5bn to repair 50 million potholes

Housing

• Extension of the Affordable Homes Programme with a new, multi-year settlement of £12bn
• Cutting interest rates on lending for social housing by one percentage point to support local authorities to invest in their communities
• More than £1bn of discounted loans available for local infrastructure
• Nearly £1.1bn of allocations from the Housing Infrastructure Fund to build nearly 70,000 new homes in high demand areas across the country