Bad energy: inefficient centralised energy generation is a major contributor to global warming
Over the next decade, Britain needs to invest tens of billions on renewing its dilapidated energy infrastructure. Many of our current nuclear, coal and gas power stations will close, and the electricity transmission and distribution grids themselves will need replacement.
Which provides us with a once-in-a-generation chance for the government to redesign our energy market. We have the perfect opportunity to go for maximum environmental efficiency, whilst ensuring energy security and reliability of supply. The test for Gordon Brown is to seize this chance and resolve the confusion which exists in our current fragmented and failing energy strategy.
When Tony Blair said last March that he'd successfully negotiated a Europe-wide strategy which would see 20 per cent of the EU's energy produced from renewable sources by 2020, it was hard not to be impressed. 20 per cent of energy - including cars, heating and industry - is a lot more ambitious that 20 per cent of electricity which previous debates in the UK had focused on. If enacted this proposal would indicate a genuinely radical new direction - finally giving the renewables industry the green light to install the kind of capacity that is possible here in our windy, exposed islands.
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But five months later, it's looking increasingly like more greenwash. Although new energy minister Malcolm Wickes has confirmed his commitment to the plan, when pressed he admitted that Britain's contribution could be a lot less than 20 per cent. And recent publication of a leaked memo from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DERR) shows that his civil servants have no idea how it can be achieved.
This is just embarrassing. Even conservative estimates make Britain the most-favoured nation in Europe when it comes to renewable potential - we have far more capacity than any of our neigbours. And it gets worse - displaying a level of duplicity that Enron would be proud of, instead of trying to hit the 20 per cent figure they've been exploring, the memo states that "what options there are for statistical interpretations of the target that would make it easier to achieve". Moving the goal posts, in other words.
The rumour within Whitehall is that our mandarins are suggesting a 9 per cent contribution from UK renewables may be possible by 2020, but no more. Our short fall would be made up by over-production in other EU-states - for example, Germany is planning to generate 27 per cent of its energy from renewables by that time. Malcolm Wickes may insist that "there is no truth to suggestions that Britain is trying to "cover up" or "wriggle out" of the target", but investment levels are low: only £1 billion a year is planned to be spent on developing wind, wave and tidal power by 2010 - nothing like the amount required.
The fact is that the 20 per cent target is achievable - but only if we make genuine changes to our energy infra-structure that Whitehall apparently finds inconceivable. Jeremy Legget, a former member of the government's renewables advisory board, insists that within Whitehall there is an institutional distrust of renewable energy; a suspicion that only the "big kit" of nuclear, coal or other forms of centralised electricity generation can really cut the mustard for British industry.
When will the reality kick in? Which is that we don't have time to hide behind the old excuses anymore - climate change is upon us, and we need our civil servants to come up with solutions based on the expert recommendations of the world's top scientists, and we need them to do it now. We're at a fork in the road: one path leads to more coal, nuclear and gas fired power stations; and the other to decentralised energy, renewables and energy efficiency.
Over the last 20 years renewable technologies have received only a fraction of the investment lavished on nuclear power. Unless the government makes it clear that this policy has changed, and that a secure energy future requires major investment in renewables, nuclear will continue to starve the renewables industry of the finance and attention it needs.
But no such change of direction is indicated in its current Energy White Paper. Instead, at a time when countries all over the world are implementing tariffs to make renewable energy more appealing, driving down the costs of production and supporting cottage industries to innovate new equipment, our civil servants are suggesting ways to avoid taking the blame when it comes to the crunch.
How very British.
