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Friends of the Earth anger at Government change on direction on renewable energy

Oct 23 2007

Friends of the Earth reacted with anger today to a leaked Government document revealing that the Government is planning to effectively abolish its EU commitments to the expansion of renewable energy.

In March of this year, Tony Blair signed up to a European target to source 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020, but since then the UK Government, despite its rhetoric on climate change, has been actively lobbying to water down the target.

Britain has the best wind and marine energy resources of any country in Europe, yet hugely lags behind other European countries in the development of renewable power. Having been persuaded that the UK must instead build new nuclear power stations, the Government is now not prepared to invest in renewable energy. This leak also shows that, perversely, the Government fears that achieving significant growth in renewable power could become too successful and undermine other market-based instruments.

Senior Campaigner on Energy and Climate Robin Webster said

The Government lacks ambition or any sort of vision when it comes to renewable energy. The 20% target is undoubtedly ambitious, but it also presents an opportunity for the UK energy industry to take a lead in developing the renewable technologies that will be required all over the world in tackling climate change. This leaked document clearly shows, that the Government are wedded to an expansion of nuclear and blind to the potential of what clean and green energy could mean for the UK.

Friends of the Earth is calling for the following urgent actions:

• Gordon Brown must personally commit to the EU 20 per cent target his predecessor agreed to.
• Invest 1 billion a year to help homeowners insulate their homes and install micro-renewables.
• Pursue the rapid development of a marine renewables industry, one of the few remaining undeveloped sectors which the UK has a natural advantage, for example by speeding development of new technologies from the research and development stage through use of capital grants, and championing new technologies such as tidal lagoons which alone could deliver 10% of UK electricity.
• Offshore wind could provide UK electricity demand several times over. Turn the North Sea into an offshore powerhouse by championing finance and regulatory support for a massive European electricity grid which could harness this power.
• Introduce a strong climate change bill to provide business certainty that the UK will reduce its emissions year on year.

Friends of the Earth and WWF's joint response to the leaked UK Government's draft "Options Paper" on the EU's 2020 20% renewable energy targets: www.foe.co.uk/resource/media_briefing/renewables_target_response.pdf (PDF†)

†To view PDF files you will need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. Visually impaired users can get extra help with these documents from access.adobe.com.

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