MPs criticise government clean energy policies

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

Heavy criticism has been levelled at UK government energy policies by two separate parliamentary committees.

The Environmental Audit Committee says ill-thought out policies caused a dive in clean energy investment, which fell 10% in 2016, and 56% last year.

And the Public Accounts Committee says a government scheme to encourage clean heat is a failure that often produces dirty heat.

The government says it is determined to meet its climate change targets.

Investment in clean energy in the UK has slumped following a fusillade of changes to government policy.

These include:

A ban on new onshore wind farms

Withdrawing subsidies from solar

Taxing renewables

Selling the Green Investment Bank;

Dumping the Zero Carbon Homes policy;

Cancelling the £1bn Carbon Capture & Storage competition.

Annual clean energy investment in the UK is now the lowest it has been since 2008 and the rate of installation for new renewables capacity is slowing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44129679

Once again, we see the lie that “onshore wind farms have been banned”. As I have repeatedly pointed out, this is simply not true. All that has happened is that new wind farms have had subsidies withdrawn and been made subject to local planning approvals. (Note – the Environmental Audit Committee report makes no mention of “banning”. This is merely Harrabin’s interpretation)

But Harrabin misses the wider picture, that wind and solar power are only viable with generous subsidies.

Interestingly he goes on to quote the PAC report:

Meanwhile the Public Accounts Committee has been examining the government’s renewable heat incentive – designed to reduce dependency on fossil fuel for heating by using wood-fuel boilers instead.

MPs say the government’s forecasts for the scheme were "wildly optimistic".

The boilers are too big for the average home and they cost too much for the average family. The result is that the amount of renewable heat produced is only a third of the level forecast, and carbon cuts are 50% of the anticipated level.

The committee complains that some boilers create local air pollution – but it says that the government hasn’t properly monitored that.

Many of us have been highlighting the nonsense that is the RHI scheme. Perhaps, if Harrabin had been doing his job, he would have been making the same arguments years ago.

FOOTNOTE

If anybody had any doubt at all about the left wing bias of the BBC, take a look at the comments, which apart from one or two are almost wholly anti-conservative and pro-renewable.