UK Announces Plan for 40% Low-carbon Energy by 2020
Related subjects: Building the Green Economy, Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Energy Supply, Environment & Ecology, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Sustainable Development, United Kingdom, Zero-combustion Paradigm Comments (0)
The Labour party government of the United Kingdom has announced plans to establish an aggressive overhaul of national energy markets, shifting to 40% low-carbon energy sourcing, across all industries, by 2020. The energy secretary, Ed Milliband, will be given control of allocation of electricity across the energy grid, in an effort to speed the green-energy revolution to allow the UK to meet its legally-binding agreed emissions cuts of 34% by 2020.
The government seized control of key levers in the energy sector today in an attempt to kickstart a stalling “green energy” revolution and head off the threats of global warming and a rundown in North Sea oil.
Such a commitment from one of the world’s major economies means emissions-reductions efforts around the world will be made more credible. The scope of the British energy overhaul will also likely spur vital innovations in technology and in business practices. Consumers may be asked to contribute with more comprehensive energy conservation efforts, while industries will be required to move their energy sourcing toward zero-combustion technologies.
The UK government’s plan is expected to require an estimated £100 billion in costs on energy bills, and consumers might see higher energy bills. But Milliband projected that energy saving measures would keep costs constant through at least 2015, in order to ease the transition for consumer markets and protect “the most vulnerable”, who might have to make tough choices if energy bills increase significantly.
According to the Guardian’s reporting, the plan would “ significantly strengthen government control of the planning and infrastructure of the energy markets in a bid to increase renewable power sixfold”. Such expanded control would cut into market liberalizations brought in under the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher.
Lord Mandelson, the UK business secretary, said the energy reforms would seek to combine the “dynamism of the private sector” with the wisdom of effecting a speedy transition to clean energy. Concerns about government intervention in the private sector have been a complicated issue in motivating the transition to green energy, undermining political will and, ultimately, in the view of many, contributing to the need for intervention.
The Renewable Energy Association’s Gaynor Hartnell has commented that “The renewables industry has had a tough time in the UK for many years and it has missed out on technologies where it should have led the world”, noting that the proposed reforms would recognize the need to optimize market contributions to the development of those technologies.
Power companies expressed some optimism, and appear to be positioning themselves to benefit from potential subsidies for new nuclear and renewable energy plants. The use of subsidies has been instrumental in directing and maintaining the carbon-fuel and nuclear-energy sectors, and economists and environmentalists argue subsidies should shifted to achieve the desired shift to cleaner, low-carbon energy sources.
The US House of Representatives has just passed a measure that would require power companies to derive at least 15% of all energy produced from clean energy sources by the year 2020. That legislation will likely spur fierce opposition from the energy sector, though it is far less ambitious than the plan laid out by the UK government.
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