David Cameron speaking at today's launch of the Conservative's green energy policy © Greenpeace/Daniel Beltra
We're used to having some unusual people descending on our offices, but today's visit by David Cameron and several other members of the shadow cabinet is the most leftfield (or should that be rightfield?) visitation for some time. But they were here to launch a new policy that uses many of our own demands for renewable energy, a vital component in the struggle to limit the impacts of climate change.
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David Cameron today announced a new policy that would see householders receive a guaranteed premium price for any renewable electricity they generate.
A new Conservative paper looks to adopt Greenpeace proposals designed to kick-start a local energy revolution by making the costs of installing technologies such as domestic solar power much more affordable, while ensuring householders who generate clean energy get a higher price for the electricity they feed into the grid.
Introducing David Cameron at the launch was John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK.
David Cameron will today visit the Greenpeace direct action warehouse to announce a new policy that would see householders receive a guaranteed premium price for any renewable electricity they generate.
A new Conservative paper - released today - looks to adopt Greenpeace proposals designed to kick-start a local energy revolution by making the costs of installing technologies such as domestic solar power much more affordable, while ensuring householders who generate clean energy get a higher price for the electricity they feed into the grid.
Greenpeace has led the campaign for the adoption of a 'decentralised energy' system where energy is generated cleanly and close to where it's used, drastically slashing emissions by cutting out waste. Several Greenpeace reports, including one entitled 'Decentralising Power: An Energy Revolution For The 21st Century' called for many of the proposals unveiled today. Now the Tory leader is visiting the organisation's warehouse, where many of Greenpeace's most famous protests were planned, to release a report entitled 'Power to the people - the decentralised energy revolution'. New Conservative polices include:
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK said: "We've been pushing this climate change solution for many years so it's very exciting to have a major political party take our ideas and adopt them as policy. But we really want to see this as a government priority, no matter who's in Number Ten. Ken Livingstone has been aggressively pushing decentralised energy for London, now Cameron gets it too. The question is, where's Brown? Guaranteed higher prices for clean electricity have kick-started the green energy revolution in Europe. It's high time Britain joined in."
The new policy will be announced by David Cameron at 2pm today (Thursday) in the Greenpeace direct action warehouse, where many of the organisation's most famous protests were planned. The building is powered by solar panels - just the kind of technology supported in the new Conservative report.
David Cameron is likely to be lobbied by energy dinosaurs to drop these plans. Greenpeace today urged him to stand his ground and develop his plan to include:
Massive improvements in energy efficiency to reduce demand - the quickest, cheapest way to cut emissions.
Ambitious decentralised energy programmes - like the one proposed today - that will cut waste from the energy system and slash emissions.
Massive uptake of large scale renewable energy including wind power (onshore and offshore), wave power, tidal power, solar and sustainably sourced biomass.
Greenpeace has written to Gordon Brown urging his government to embrace the ideas in the organisation's climate change solutions reports and has invited ministers to see decentralised energy in action. Today we are again urging the Prime Minister to adopt this simple climate solution and adopt energy efficiency, decentralised energy and large-scale renewable energy
ENDS
Photo and video available - Greenpeace 0207 865 8255
Decentralising power: an energy revolution for the 21st Century
The Convenient Solution: a short film about the real solution to climate change
Notes:
Guaranteed prices for electricity from renewable generation have been operating in Germany since 2001. The feed-in tariff has led to a massive expansion in the German renewable energy sector. Germany now has 300 times the installed solar capacity of the UK, and has also led to the installation of ten times as much wind power capacity, despite the UK having the best wind resources in Europe. Estimates suggest that the German economy has generated over 250,000 'green collar jobs' under the scheme.
This price would be guaranteed for a number of years, meaning that renewable energy installers would be able to offer packages to UK households which would be far more competitive than had previously been possible. The current grant scheme, known as the 'Low Carbon Buildings Programme' lacks the required resources and is often criticised for its complexity.
Under an EU scheme the UK is expected to provide around 15 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020. The energy sector encompasses heat, transport and electricity, so experts have predicted that in order to hit this target, the UK must produce as much as 40-45 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources.
Currently, the UK is lagging far behind its European competitors when it comes to renewable energy. Only the small island state of Malta produces a smaller percentage of its energy from renewables.
Three conferences in three weeks is hard work! Although I am fond of Blackpool, the toll of endless meetings and snatched conversations takes it toll after a while. I am writing this from a web café with a much needed cup of tea before going to talk to the Social Market Foundation about transport policy.
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The Climate Clinic has rolled into Blackpool for the Conservative Party conference. It is the last event of conference season and usually has the worst weather. I have been to conferences here when the wind blows so hard you can barely stand up: but not this week. Instead of rain and sleet we've got white clouds, a gentle breeze and even some sunshine. Not bad for October 1st.
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Part of the Climate Clinic blog
So, having lambasted the leader of the opposition for being all talk, perhaps in fairness I should talk a bit more about what he talked about. It's mostly good stuff. Blair may have said that climate change is our biggest threat and challenge, but he clearly hasn't put it at the top of his to-do list (although as Bush seems to have editorial control that's not really surprising). Cameron stands in marked contrast for having given the issue as much time as Tony's apocalyptic pronouncements imply that it deserves, so firstly that should be acknowleged - every time Cameron has spoken about the climate, he was sacrificing the opportunity to talk about law and order or some other issue which might have given him a political benefit. Talk may be cheap, but it isn't free.
Part of the Climate Clinic blog
Last night I was privileged to experience the combined force of the two politicians who've done most to get climate change in the UK media, Cameron and Gore. First was An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's block-busting documentary about climate change. If you haven't already seen it then do try to catch it. He refined it over a period of decades, and it's a great primer on climate science and far more entertaining than you'd expect.
Part of the Climate Clinic blog
BAA spin doctors (seated) look shifty when probed about how more runways mean less aviation emissions ...
I was so excited by my discovery of environmentally aware conservatism that I may have missed out some of the detail. The bloke from BAA wants inreased capacity (bigger airports) whilst dealing with emissions via efficiency gains and the European Emissions Trading Scheme - ie air travel will continue more or less unchecked, but the aviation industry would have to buy carbon credits from industries which had managed to cut back. I'm not aware of anyone outside the industry who thinks that this might work unassisted - certainly Gummer was quite clear that it wouldn't, and my understanding is that were we to follow this track every scrap of industry or society outside of aviation would have to get down to zero emissions by 2030.
Part of the Climate Clinic blog
That's what Cameron didn't enter politics to become. Allegedly. But as with all questions on the Cameroonian revolution, the real trick is filtering out change of direction from change in presentation. A recently leaked internal email from the Tories expressed concern emanating from the constituency parties concerning Dave's wholesale adoption of 'the Greenpeace agenda'. So I'm here in Bournemouth at the Tory Party conference to try to find out which is further from the truth - mouthpiece for big business, or mouthpiece for Greenpeace?
