The Government’s multi-billion pound strategy to energise industrial growth with a low-carbon energy drive falls short of the UK’s legally-binding climate change targets, according to its official advisers.

The clean growth strategy was delayed by over a year and without a detailed plan to back up the ambition to cut carbon emissions from the transport, heat and industrial sectors.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) warned that without “urgent” action within the next year the plan leaves a “significant” looming gap between expected emissions and legislated carbon targets from the 2020s.

Adrian Gault, the head of the CCC, said new policies need to emerge later this year, and be in place by 2020, to avoid a climate policy cliff edge. The Government also needs to beware of the risk that part of its low carbon, including the Hinkley Point C new nuclear plant, may not be delivered on time.

The damning indictment directly contradicts data from the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy which claims it will meet its so-called "carbon budgets" which limit the UK’s emissions over five year periods.