Will the Coalition fulfill its promise to be the ‘greenest Government in history’?

By Juliet Davenport, CEO 

When this Government came to power it was obvious that they had a rather large “to do list”. For me though, point number one has to be the critical importance of the next five years in dealing with the challenges we face regarding climate change and increasing issues of the security of energy supply.

I was pleased when Chris Huhne was appointed Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, largely because my first hand experience of the Lib Dems is that they understand the need for a strong energy policy to deal with climate change. I’d had the chance to meet Chris Huhne days before he was elected as he visited our local candidate (now MP) Duncan Hames. However, his lacklustre speech at the Lib Dem conference made me question if, now that they are in Government, the Party would be able to legislate as effectively as they had previously debated on the important issues of climate change and sustainability.

Whilst the Liberal Democrat conference reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to low carbon energy, emissions reduction, and the need for Britain to take the lead on environmental issues, and the Conservatives are expected to do the same this week; Good Energy, like so many others, remains less than reassured about the future. In particular, the continuing lack of announcements in areas like Renewable Heat Incentive and the future of Feed-in Tariffs mean that the renewable world is left in a flux as we wait for Government to make up its mind and allow us to get on with what we do best: the business of creating a low carbon future.

There are so many questions that must urgently be addressed if we are to see a significant change in energy use and production in the UK. 

Despite having one of the largest renewable resource potentials in the world -  the  strongest winds in Europe, and a long coastline -  we continue to produce less than 7% of our electricity from renewable energy and languish at third bottom in the European ranking on the proportion of energy from renewables. 

And, how is it that a planning regime which has been designed principally to consider housing development and garden sheds has been shoehorned into having to deliver decisions about projects that could contribute a significant amount to UK renewable electricity supply?

Then there is the issue of how to bring energy generation into the hands of the people rather than being centrally managed and owned; and how to encourage the development of new technologies such as wave and tidal that are, at the moment, in their infancy. 

The reality is that until the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) is published on the 20th October, no clear changes or commitments will be made.  So, although we welcome talk of the ‘renewable renaissance’ in the UK, we cannot move forward until the pre-election commitment in areas like the Renewable Heat Incentive are confirmed – only then will we be confident that the spark of radicalism in the Liberal Democrats has not been extinguished and, more importantly, that Chris Huhne and his ambition to lead the way on renewable and climate policy has the full support of the coalition Government.