RENTERS and drivers will face more costs due to Tory delays to decarbonising buildings and transport, government climate change advisers warn today.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided last month to push back a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.

He also announced that a fifth of households would be exempt from having to replace their gas boilers with a low-carbon alternatives by 2035 and scrapped a plan to make landlords improve the energy efficiency of their properties.

But the Climate Change Committee says, in a report published today, that the former will load costs onto drivers in the long term as it is cheaper to run an electric vehicle over the car’s lifetime.

The exemption means there will be “residual emissions” bleeding across the 2050 net-zero target, the committee said, adding that it was unclear which households would receive the exemption.

While grants to replace boilers rose from £5,000 to £7,500, the overall budget has not changed, so they will be available to fewer houses, said the committee.

Scrapping the energy-efficiency scheme would also see a typical household lose out on as much as £325 a year at today’s energy prices, according to the committee’s analysis. 

It warned that renters would have to pay more for gas and electricity in their less energy-efficient houses.

Committee chairman Professor Piers Forster said: “We remain concerned about the likelihood of achieving the UK’s future targets, especially the substantial policy gap to the UK’s 2030 goal.

“Around a fifth of the required emissions reductions to 2030 are covered by plans that we assess as insufficient.”

The government said that Britain remained a global leader on combating climate change and is cutting emissions faster than any other G7 country.