Reading the news, it’s hard to know what to make of the UK’s low carbon progress. On Christmas Day we were running on 40 per cent renewable power, and earlier last year we switched all our coal fired power stations off for the first time in 130 years. Read more
This week, the New Climate Economy (NCE) project published its report spelling out the compelling economic logic behind moving to a low carbon world. In contrast to the earlier Stern Review, there has been a focus on large and fast growing developing countries, which are expected to generate the largest growth in CO2 emissions in the coming decades.
But, here at the home of Stern’s original report, is the UK – and in particular the Treasury – still heeding its advice? The latest scaling down of ambition for the deployment of renewable energy in the Treasury’s Infrastructure Pipeline will inevitably raise doubts. Read more
While people were digesting the announcement of the latest strike prices for renewable energy, the Treasury was also releasing its latest update of the infrastructure pipeline. This reported substantially lower spending on investment in offshore wind energy up to 2020, partly compensated by higher expected investment in onshore wind. Seen against the background of the substantial cut in the pipeline of offshore wind projects, the decision to provide relatively more support for this form of renewable energy makes sense.
George Osborne will have my sympathy when he sets out his response to the latest projections in his Autumn Statement. Like his predecessors, he will be painfully aware of the inherent unreliability of these forecasts. A year ago there was talk of a triple dip recession, but now we have had a few quarters of decent growth. Yet, despite the recent positive statistics, there remains a huge gulf in perception between the optimists, who see the emergence of a robust recovery, and the pessimists who see a lack of firm foundations for anything beyond a short lived pick up. Read more
