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Getting really real about renewable energy
Peter Hain
Labour has achieved a tremendous amount to accelerate renewable energy . But, despite spending constraints, we will have to do much better in future.
As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2005-07, I introduced radical measures like changing building regulations which from next month will require all new developments to have micro generation designed in. Extended across Britain that would create a vibrant new market for small scale renewables, create many jobs, cut energy bills and reduce emissions.
I also created a substantial new fund of grants to have green technologies installed at peoples’ homes including free solar panels for pensioners in social housing . At £60 million for a population of 1.7 million it is the equivalent of £2 billion for the UK as a whole.
The Government needs to do and spend more like this. But strong leadership is also needed to overcome obstacles from officialdom and some environmentalists and politicians who parade their green credentials but oppose practical projects. We need a can do culture to replace the can’t or won’t do culture amongst civil servants and other public officials to renewable energy.
A classic example in Northern Ireland was the planned Marine Current Turbine in Strangford Loch which has a fast and furious tidal flow. Against considerable resistance from environmental officials, I insisted on proceeding. It is hugely exciting – the first of its kind in the UK which should be a prototype for many other coastal locations.
It is excellent that the Government is moving forward with a feasibility study into a Barrage across the Severn Estuary which would generate fully 5 per cent of UK electricity needs, the biggest renewable energy project by some distance on our island.
But it too has meet with resistance from the Environment Agency Liberal Democrats and Friends of the Earth who favour tidal lagoons that will generate barely half the energy.
Similarly, David Cameron poses his green credentials, hugging huskies in the artic and so on. But, come a serious practical project like the Gwyn-y-Mor windfarm ten miles off the North Wales coast, with 250 turbines capable of powering half a million homes, he denounced it as a ‘giant bird blender’.
Virtually every project – especially wind – produces a nimby reaction, from local people, from MPs, from local councils. They all speak green but act otherwise.
Clearly government at all levels will have to raise its game. Decisions need to be taken more quickly and the planned streamlining of planning for energy projects is vital to overcome endemic nimbyism. This is certainly not about riding roughshod over local views. It is about grasping the nettle of what prioritising renewables actually means.
Britain has an almost unique abundance of natural resources, with a coast line and landscape that lends itself to a variety of off and on shore wind and other renewable energy developments, wave and tidal. To exploit these fully, it is time everyone got really real about renewables.
Peter Hain is MP for Neath and a former Labour Energy Minister
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