Ed Miliband’s 1,000-page opus is big on aspiration but short on detail, say industry chiefs, and Labour’s low-carbon dreams will remain just that without investment.
Ed Miliband, the former Cabinet Office minister and confidant of Gordon Brown, was given one of the hardest jobs in government. Chosen to head the new Department for Energy and Climate Change, he was tasked with charting a path to revolution.
New Labour has long spoken of a future in which Britain would be ringed by thousands of windmills, turning in the breeze to create pure, pollution-free power.
Dirty old coal-fired power stations would bury their harmful exhaust deep underground; underwater turbines would draw energy from the tides. Our homes would be kitted out with smart meters to give us by-the-minute updates on our energy use and carbon footprint.
The vision was there. What was missing was the detail, and it was up to Miliband and his team at the cutting-edge energy department to provide it.
Last week, he revealed the fruits of that labour. The documents comprising the latest iteration of the government’s plan for a green future weighed in at more than 1,000 pages.
They contained a few firsts. The government finally admitted in stark terms that energy bills will have to rise – by 17% for business and 8% for households – to decarbonise the economy.
It broadly laid out how the £150 billion investment required over the next 20 years will be distributed (offshore wind looks like the biggest winner).
Every government department was given a carbon budget. More than 400,000 “green jobs” are expected to be created and no fewer than half a dozen quangos will be set up to oversee the transition to deliver an 18% cut in carbon emissions from present levels by 2020.
Industry, however, was sceptical. It has seen targets come and go before. This is Labour’s fourth energy white paper since Creating a Low Carbon Economy was published in 2003. It is by far the most comprehensive but many of the hardest questions remain unanswered.
Solar at micro level, payments to homeowners to feed power into the grid could stimulate investment in solar photovoltaic (PV) The current scheme is not nearly generous enough. “It might stimulate the market but it’s not going to push it toward the explosive growth rates seen in countries like Germany,” said Leggett.
With solar PV, the UK could be generating 5% of its electricity needs by 2020. The EU intends to generate 12% of all its electricity from PV by 2020. The government’s Renewable Energy Strategy, by contrast, assumes that solar PV will contribute only about 2% of the UK’s renewable electricity by that date.
Recognising the size of the task, the government has relaxed a previously recommended timeline for achieving the transformation. The independent advisory Committee on Climate Change said this year that the power sector should remove virtually all emissions by 2030. This has now been pushed to 2050.
What is certain is that it is all going to be very expensive – and we will be footing a big chunk of the bill, either through public subsidies or higher energy bills. The government predicts an 8% rise in household energy bills, and 17% for industry.
Source - The Telegraph
Showing posts with label labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labour. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Thursday, 4 June 2009
The UK fails to meet it’s renewable energy obligations
The UK is failing to green its economy, according to reports from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
The internal forecasts show that by 2020 the UK will be sourcing only 5% of its energy from renewables, far short of the 15% target we signed up to with the European Commission.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, will be highly embarrassing for Gordon Brown. The prime minister signed up to the legally-binding target and, if Britain fails to meet it, the government will be liable for substantial fines from Brussels.
Greg Clarke, the shadow energy minister, said the figures revealed the “fundamental failure” of Labour’s climate-change policies. “This amounts to an admission that the government is going to fail not just marginally but abjectly. For the past 10 years we have lacked a credible and comprehensive energy policy. Labour’s piecemeal approach is clearly not working.”
Today Britain is one of the worst performers in Europe in terms of renewable energy, sourcing only 2% of its needs from non-fossil-fuel sources such as wind and landfill gas.
The prime minister has called for a “green revolution” and in the budget last month Alistair Darling put the sector at the centre of his plans to revitalise the economy.
The chancellor introduced subsidies for biomass and wind generation but fears persist in industry that many projects are uneconomic. The DECC’s own forecast, based on present policies and subsidies, seems to support that view.
A DECC spokeswoman said the department would soon announce proposals to help bridge the gap. She said: “We are not relying on existing policies. We consulted last summer on measures to take us to our binding 15% renewable-energy target and will be publishing our strategy this summer. This will set out how we intend to meet our share of the 2020 target.”
The largest portion of renewables is expected to come from wind followed by hydro power, biomass and sewage processing.
The Tories advocate greater use of micro-generation and building a bio-gas network, but it is unclear how the party would deal with planning restrictions that make it hard to get such projects off the ground. It opposes a Labour-created commission that would take away the power of local councils to assess large infrastructure projects but has not yet announced any alternative.
Source - The times
The internal forecasts show that by 2020 the UK will be sourcing only 5% of its energy from renewables, far short of the 15% target we signed up to with the European Commission.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, will be highly embarrassing for Gordon Brown. The prime minister signed up to the legally-binding target and, if Britain fails to meet it, the government will be liable for substantial fines from Brussels.
Greg Clarke, the shadow energy minister, said the figures revealed the “fundamental failure” of Labour’s climate-change policies. “This amounts to an admission that the government is going to fail not just marginally but abjectly. For the past 10 years we have lacked a credible and comprehensive energy policy. Labour’s piecemeal approach is clearly not working.”
Today Britain is one of the worst performers in Europe in terms of renewable energy, sourcing only 2% of its needs from non-fossil-fuel sources such as wind and landfill gas.
The prime minister has called for a “green revolution” and in the budget last month Alistair Darling put the sector at the centre of his plans to revitalise the economy.
The chancellor introduced subsidies for biomass and wind generation but fears persist in industry that many projects are uneconomic. The DECC’s own forecast, based on present policies and subsidies, seems to support that view.
A DECC spokeswoman said the department would soon announce proposals to help bridge the gap. She said: “We are not relying on existing policies. We consulted last summer on measures to take us to our binding 15% renewable-energy target and will be publishing our strategy this summer. This will set out how we intend to meet our share of the 2020 target.”
The largest portion of renewables is expected to come from wind followed by hydro power, biomass and sewage processing.
The Tories advocate greater use of micro-generation and building a bio-gas network, but it is unclear how the party would deal with planning restrictions that make it hard to get such projects off the ground. It opposes a Labour-created commission that would take away the power of local councils to assess large infrastructure projects but has not yet announced any alternative.
Source - The times
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