Carbon budgets welcome, but delivery details confusing says renewable energy industry

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The renewable energy industry welcomes the tighter emissions reduction budgets proposed by the Climate Change Committee in today’s report. But it questioned the wisdom of prescribing the delivery route in such detail.

“We support the Committee’s desire to set rigorous budgets,” said Philip Wolfe the Director General of the Renewable Energy Association, “and we agree it needs to satisfy itself that these are achievable. However this report includes a lot of analysis that duplicates the work already being done for the Renewable Energy Strategy.”

“It will be counterproductive for the government and for the UK’s renewable energy producers, if too many departments start publishing their own visions for the renewable energy future. Beyond its core remit of setting the carbon budgets, we would prefer the Climate Change Committee simply to state whether these can be met by the government’s existing policies, or failing that to highlight new initiatives which could.”

The Association believes some of the problems in the report may stem from its reliance on questionable or outdated analysis from other sources. “Comments on the competitive position of solar photovoltaics, for example, do not reflect this technology’s high growth in world markets and the rate of cost reductions,” said Philip Wolfe “and the focus on the intermittency of wind power is overstated.”

“Most serious is government’s habitual disregard of renewable heat – scarcely mentioned in the report’s executive summary. The good news is that this means the Committee probably understates the likely contribution of renewables. Even better would be for them to leave this analysis to the experts in future.”

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