KEY climate schemes – including tree planting – trumpeted as part of the government’s net-zero strategy are likely to fail, ministers were reportedly told before last week’s “green day” announcements.

A leaked document by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reveals that officials told ministers they were not confident that key policies announced on Thursday — which also included peat restoration — were realistic.

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The ten-page advisory document — marked “not public facing” — was produced on February 20 for Grant Shapps, the energy security and net zero secretary. It assessed the “delivery risk” and “delivery confidence” of each of the net zero measures proposed by Defra, which is run by Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary. Each was assessed with a traffic-light scale of green, amber and red.

According to The Times, of 44 policies, 21 were marked red or red/amber, indicating they will be hard to achieve. These policies encompass about 85 per cent of Defra’s proposed emissions savings, indicating officials expect to fall well short of what they claim.

A further 18 policies were marked as amber or amber/green, and only five were marked green, two of which disappeared from the final “carbon budget delivery plan” document published on Thursday.

England has long struggled to hit its tree-planting targets. In the 12 months prior to the end of March 2022, just 2,260 hectares of new woodland were created, well short of the 7,000 ha annual goal. The real net gain is likely to be much lower when losses from recent winter storms are taken into account. 

Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent climate advisory body, said his team was assessing the plans but that the agricultural policies looked weak.

“Defra is on the naughty step,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that. I’ve been in this job since 2018 and every year when we report on progress, we’ve said that Defra needs to come forward with a plan for decarbonising farming and for changing land use and we haven’t got that.”

The proposed policies include plans such as feeding cows supplements containing seaweed, which reduces the methane they emit.

But they also include well-established goals such as increasing tree planting — a Conservative election manifesto commitment — hedgerow planting, the responsible management of peatlands and the elimination of biodegradable waste from landfill. Each of these are judged unlikely to be attained, according to the leaked document.

A Defra spokesman declined to comment on leaked documents.