Britain as an island off the mainland of Europe potentially has greater capacity for production of renewable energy than almost the whole of the rest of Europe put together, mainly from onshore and offshore wind, wave and tidal power, and Scottish hydropower. Yet UK electricity production from renewable energy, though it has increased in the last decade, is still very low and indeed still one of the lowest in the EU. Continue reading
Tagged with Wind energy
Is Cameron mad, or the cat’s paw of wacky backbenchers?
If one wanted a clear example (out of many) where ideology trumps common-sense in Cameron’s Tory party, you couldn’t do better than energy policy. And specifically, the government’s latest knee-jerk reaction against onshore wind turbines. They are a significant and fast-growing source of electricity in the UK and by far the cheapest source available to provide the low-carbon energy to meet Britain’s mandatory target of 15 per cent of all energy consumption to come from renewables by 2015.
Cameron appears to be floating the idea of including in the 2015 Tory manifesto either a cap on onshore turbines’ output or lower subsidies to make it harder or even impossible to operate them or tighter planning restrictions to prevent them being built. This is crackers. To meet the legally binding target it would then be necessary to build more offshore windfarms or more nuclear power stations, both of which are far more expensive. Continue reading
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Breakdown in Government energy policy as windfarm axed
The decision by RWE/nPower, the big German energy company, to drop the £4bn Atlantic Array windfarm project in the Bristol Channel sends out alarm bells in all directions. First, it shows the unreliability of depending on foreign suppliers of energy who, when in economic difficulties, will cut back on commitments abroad in order to maintain their focus on domestic customers unscathed. Continue reading
