‘Abolish Britain’s EU renewable target’ - Policy Exchang ...

‘Abolish Britain’s EU renewable target’ - Policy Exchange
A new report from the right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange says that Britain should renegotiate its commitment to the European Union’s 2020 renewable energy
target. The study says the renewable target is unnecessarily expensive and damages
the prospects for reducing carbon emissions over the coming decades by wasting money that could be better used to fund research and demonstration of a wide range of new, low carbon technologies.
The report: 2020 Hindsight: Does the renewable energy target help the UK decarbonise? examines 16 different plans for achieving the UK target of an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. None of the models showed that the UK’s commitment to producing 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 was needed to reach its carbon target. The report says that, if the UK is to set a leading example to other countries around the world in tackling climate change, then policies need to be both effective in cutting carbon and economically affordable.
The report’s author, Simon Moore, said: ‘The 2020 EU renewable energy target is hugely and unnecessarily expensive. The target diverts current and future resources away from measures that could save the same amount of carbon at a lower cost, such as energy efficiency, nuclear and carbon capture and storage.’
Policy Exchange says that the UK should:
reform planning rules to facilitate more cost-effective onshore wind and energy-from-waste by compensating local communities;
make it easier to burn larger amounts of biomass like renewably-sourced wood pellets in conventional power stations;
make a greater commitment to energy efficiency, which costs less, saves more carbon and reduces the amount of renewable generation; and
trade with other European countries which are able to produce renewable energy more cheaply than the UK.
The suggestion to abolish the target was not popular with the renewables industry and the Renewable Energy Association complained that Policy Exchange refused to reveal who funded the report.
Meanwhile, the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) has published an information note on the performance of the UK renewables sector in 2010, based on analysis of new DECC and Ofgem data, that shows that the 2010 target for renewable electricity was missed by a large margin. The REF says the analysis confirms longstanding doubts as to the feasibility of this target, and the still more ambitious target for 2020. Key findings of the REF work are:
The UK failed to reach its 10%renewable electricity target for 2010, producing only 6.5% of electricity from renewable sources, in spite of a subsidy to renewable generators amounting to approximately £5bn in the period 2002 to 2010, and £1.1bn in
2010.
Onshore wind load factor in 2010 fell to 21%, compared to 27% in 2009, while offshore fared better, declining from 30% in 2009 to 29% in 2010.
Planning delays do not appear to have been responsible for the missed target, with large capacities of wind farms, both onshore and offshore, consented but unbuilt.