Amber Rudd has acknowledged the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) will have to introduce new measures during this parliament to ensure the UK meets legally binding emissions and renewables targets. Speaking during energy and climate change questions in the House of Commons this morning, Rudd said she did “accept this government needs to put in place more policies to meet our carbon budgets”. Responding to a series of questions from Labour and SNP MPs on the government’s recent admission the UK was currently on track to miss its EU renewable energy target for 2020 and its fourth carbon budget target for the mid-2020s, Rudd said she did not accept “depressing” suggestions the targets would be missed. She reiterated the government’s desire to meet all its legally binding targets, but failed to respond to calls from Labour’s Barry Gardiner to provide details on how the government plans to meet its goals. She added that there have been concerns about meeting the fourth carbon budget for several years and promised measures for meeting it would be announced in the future.
Business Green 7th Jan 2016 read more »
Opposition MPs have accused the government of double standards in its energy policy, particularly in relation to differing levels of support offered to solar and nuclear power. The suggestions were put to secretary of state Amber Rudd during this morning’s oral questions session which gave parliament the first opportunity for it to scrutinise the government’s new feed-in tariff regime since it was unveiled on 17 December 2015. The secretary of state was quizzed over a number of topics relating to the solar industry and was forced to defend the cuts under a tough line of questioning by Labour MP and Shadow DECC minister Clive Lewis, who asked for a new year’s message for the 18,000 solar industry employees who stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts. Rudd replied that the regime would still support circa 23,000 jobs and enable as many as 220,000 installations to be made. She also said it would be “unfair” for subsidies – paid for through levies added onto energy bills – to be used to support jobs in the industry. It was followed by an equally tough question from Green Party MP Caroline Lucas who accused the government of double standards in its energy policy. While solar subsidies have been cut, nuclear subsidies have been increased and energy minister Andrea Leadsom remarked during the session of the need to support nuclear and jobs within that industry with subsidies.
Solar Portal 7th Jan 2016 read more »
There’s a problem – whether new gas can come onto the system in time to cover for coal’s removal. Right now –and here the capacity auctions shamble onto the stage – there is not much evidence that they will. As I’ve previously outlined, the capacity auctions were confidently expected to establish a chain of new build through competitively priced 15 year capacity deals: but nothing much emerged from the first auction to suggest that such deals would emerge. One deal only was struck – which now seems bogged down in investor uncertainty, and won’t be on line by 2018. This year NO new large capacity cleared inside the final price: one new power station, Carrington, got a one year deal, but is largely built anyway. The new capacity that did get longer term deals largely consisted of small diesel sets, widely estimated to produce emissions, if used at all extensively, round about those of coal. My fear right now is that staying within ‘market signals’ will have only one outcome as the wreckage of the Capacity Market is reviewed. This is that it will be decided that, well, sorry and all that, it worked to put Britain in a good place as far as the Paris talks were concerned, but in the end we can’t get coal off the system by 2025 after all, because you know, we’ve got to stick with the market and keep the lights on.
Alan Whitehead 7th Jan 2016 read more »