Whitelee Wind Farm – a large on-shore installation by Siemens. But the Government’s known to be anti-on-shore…so what will happen next?
Siemens
Following the Conservative Party’s unexpected election win, the new government has been urged to act quickly to secure clean energy supplies and be very serious about the environment:
The most important signal that the new Government could send to show that it genuinely means business over ‘greening’ the ways in which the UK generates electricity, would be to set a clear 2030 decarbonisation target to provide long term certainty for sustainable energy suppliers.
So say a number of organisations in the sustainability sector, as well as animal and environmental charity WWF and Friends of the Earth.
At the same time, the Liberal Democrat MP, Ed Davey, who had done an excellent job as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but who lost his Kingston and Surbiton seat at the General Election, has been replaced by Conservative Amber Rudd MP, who has indicated she would back the continued expansion of household solar PV panels, which are heavily subsidised by consumers through levies on energy bills.
Even so, environmental organisations and campaigners are worried, not least because there has been talk of solar PV subsidies being withdrawn and it is known that the Tories don’t like on-shore wind. WWF believes that the Government needs to be greener and this, it says, “needs to be led from the top” and both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor should be vocal champions of green growth.
WWF chief executive, David Nussbaum commented: “The Conservative manifesto contained some strong proposals to protect our natural resources and put Britain on course for more sustainable growth, including the promise of leadership on climate change and a 25 year plan for nature’s recovery.
“The new administration”, he said, “must demonstrate that these pledges were more than ink on paper and that they will be taken forward quickly.”
He wasn’t the only one to comment, as RenewableUK’s chief executive, Maria McCaffery, said: “We hope that one of the new Government’s priorities will be to act quickly to secure our home-grown energy supplies based on clean sources including wind, wave and tidal power.
She pointed out that the Tories should remember the importance of onshore wind, which is cost-effective and could be one of the cheapest power sources by 2020.
