Renewables = Jobs for the future
1 July 2010
According to the Telegraph's Environmental Correspondent Geoffrey Lean, the future's looking decidedly greener. He writes
Nuclear power, coal and airport expansion look like being the big losers under the new government, with energy-saving, renewables and greener transport the big winners. Or so a reading of the 20 points on the environment – nearly twice as many as in any other area – in the agreements reached by the coalition partners would suggest, as blue and yellow combine to make green.
Coal fired power stations are also unlikely to go ahead in the short term. Only a couple of years ago the then Energy Secretary, John Hutton, came within days of giving the go-ahead to one at Kingsnorth, Kent – which would have emitted as much carbon dioxide each year as the whole of Rwanda – as the first of a series of six in Britain. After he was moved, his successor, Ed Miliband, ruled that all new coal power stations would have to employ remove a quarter of the carbon from their emissions. But now the coalition is likely to demand even more.
Nuclear, at first sight seems in less danger. The coalition is genuinely split on it, with the LibDems unremittingly hostile while the Tories support it, if less enthusiastically than the outgoing government. They have agreed to bring forward a national planning statement to make nuclear new build possible, and that LibDem MPs will merely abstain, rather than oppose it. They have also acceded to a key demand from the nuclear industry, a floor price for carbon. But this is likely to benefit renewables more than the atom and any further measures or subsidies for it will be ruled out. Nuclear power stations are unlikely to be built without them, and the new energy secretary, LibDem Chris Huhne, will not go out of his way to help them.
Instead the new government will increase Britain’s already daunting targets for increasing energy from renewables, promote wave and tidal power and energy from waste, give householders loans for installing energy efficiency measures (to be paid back from the savings they make), build high speed rail and set up a recharging network for electric cars. If it does all this, it will be well on its way to achieving its goal – common to both coalition partners – of building a low carbon economy.
Not only green, the future's looking rosy for those trained in renewables.
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