Out of the long list of detractors of the recent annihilation of UK green government policies announced by the Conservative ministers, it was Professor Catherine Mitchell of Exeter University who I though put the reactions rather well: “Government support for ideological ‘blue crap’ over rationality …. puts in jeopardy Britain’s ability to derive social, economic, security and environmental benefits ….. This simply does not add up to a credible energy policy”.
Indeed, the number of green polices cancelled or weakened over the last three months has reached the count of ten; this according to the heads of some of the main UK campaign and pressure groups when writing a joint letter to the prime minister. Here they pointed out the complete turn-around of previous ministerial pledges such as to “accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy”. With the previous administration’s green policies now so brutally savaged, it is evident these were hollow words with no subsequent substance. They have not even provided a set of replacement policies; just leaving us with uncertainty and confusion after so many diligently followed previous government direction.
Amber Rudd MP was appointed to DECC July 2014
The ability of the Conservative ministers to at first give sweeping platitudes only thereafter to set policy details in the polar opposite direction is becoming contagious. There can be few business leaders that will put any faith in future energy announcements least of all those vying to build arguably the most expensive power station in the world, Hinckley C nuclear. No wonder the build costs are so astronomical, now at £ 24 billion; after all why would any bidder risk going in on a low tender ! The National Audi Office now intends to investigate the effect of the sizeable Sizewell C on the public purse.
As it stands, the solar industry now faces cliff-face dropping cuts in feed-in tariff support from January, the government having ignored the industry’s existing calls for a slow taper. Cue a stampede of winter installation activity of those who can just get a grid connection and funding in time. This ‘gold-rush’ activity is incompatible with any sensible capacity-building of an industry that is likely to lose 20,000 workers according to government’s own source data. The London Mayor Boris Johnson added “it would be wrong if the cut in the Feed in Tariff actually stops people from investing in solar”.
It’s not often a USA politician would comment on UK polices, but the former vice-president Al Gore also expressed puzzlement on the green policy slaughter saying he could “… not understand the rationale for such measures, while climate change presents a clear danger to the UK and the rest of the world.” Even the Catholic Pope is talking about greenhouse gases saying the problem could “no longer be left to a future generation“. Alongside President Barack Obama said “that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet“. This all rapidly followed by the recent Lambeth Declaration of over thirty UK faith leaders pressing the need to make the transition to a low carbon economy.
It’s a witheringly long list of high ranking personalities and organisations that have expressed astonishment on what the Conservative government has just done. Just how the current Energy minister Amber Rudd will square off this confusion of spin-versus-action at the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris will be a side-show in itself.
Rudd’s stated position is that policy is to be based on “keeping bills as low as possible for ‘hard working families and businesses.” Yet the former deputy mayor of London the Green Party’s first life peer in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones, revealed that the 2014 renewable subsidies were responsible for just £45 of the average annual household dual fuel bill. The reality of the previous increases came from the £650 increase in fuel bills associated with wholesale energy costs – quite unrelated to the so called ‘green crap’.
Why then is the government so shy when it comes to the hidden subsidies for fossil fuels estimated at about £400 for each person per annum, this not even including the current nuclear decommissioning costs of £7.9 billion in 2013/14. If such brazen ignorance of the statistics go unpunished by our ministers, then as a nation we will be forever more doomed to follow tabloid headline policy changes at a whim, pushing industry’s and government’s costs up at every twist and turn.
Perhaps Rudd and her colleagues are indeed closet climate contrarians as some suspect. Perhaps they have read that the US government scientist’s 2014 report found that despite record ocean warming and sea-level rises in line with earlier findings of the hottest year on record that these rates would continue for centuries to come even if there were immediate efforts to cut the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing these changes ? Perhaps the UK Conservative ministers really believe that despite NASA recently confirming that they’ve just had hottest five months of any year ever recorded, that human greenhouse gas mitigation is a hopeless task and that we may as well burn up any mainland gas that can be found and squeezed out by fracking ? If there was ever any green crap, is has surely now turned blue.
First published by: http://gbezine.greenbuilding.co.uk/
Chris Laughton 
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