Talk, talk, talk
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under Small is Beautiful
The government has launched yet another energy policy consultation and Ashley Seager hit the nail on the head: why more talk? I’ve lost track of the number of energy consultations and white papers since Labour came to power but I’m pretty sure I’d need both hands and feet to count them.
Of course there’s a time and place for consultation but as Philip Wolfe said today, perhaps now isn’t it. If the UK is to meet its EU renewables targets, and its climate change ambitions, it needs to act fast.
But for me, this episode is really just another frustrating example of what happens when politicians aim higher than they are prepared to support. If the government had said, “We will put in some general support for renewables but we’ve no firm goals” then I think people might disagree but at least they’d know where they’d stand. But the more typical situation is what happened with PV. In the late 90’s the government said they wanted an industry to compete with Germany and Japan, with 100,000 PV roofs and all the rest. But they weren’t willing to provide significant grant funding or a feed-in tariff and as a result the UK has a fraction of the capacity in other countries. Germany installed 130,000 PV systems last year; the UK? – 270.
It’s a theme you see over and over again, especially with governments that can’t actually do much (like the GLA). But it’s so infuriating and I wish politicians would just be a little more frank about assessing their own capabilities, setting their sights lower or having the courage to act to ensure that the policy reality at least comes close to the lofty goals of their rhetoric.
Comments
Leave a Reply