Manufacturers urge overhaul of low carbon energy policy

Publishing the report ahead of the announcement by Lord Turner next Monday of the UK’s first low carbon budgets, the manufacturers’ organisation EEF is urging the newly formed Department for Energy & Climate Change (DECC) to take the opportunity to take a more strategic approach to developing energy policy. The report makes a number of recommendations that EEF says will provide better value for money for the taxpayer and energy consumers and help the UK take advantage of business opportunities. EEF chief economist, Steve Radley, said the significant cost of transforming the UK’s energy supply system was becoming increasingly apparent. “Continuing the current approach to low-carbon energy policy will result in unnecessary costs being incurred and could ultimately undermine support for addressing climate change,” Radley went on. EEF says estimates of the cost of meeting its share of the proposed 2020 EU renewable energy target, to which the Government has publicly committed the UK, varied between £4.4 billion and £24.9 billion of additional expenditure a year by 2020. The report’s recommendations include: · avoiding an excessive focus on renewables and creating barriers to the deployment of clean coal technology · Limit the tendency to overcompensate renewable generators · Focus subsidies on the most cost effective technologies · Identify and back up priority technologies through public procurement and think creatively about how the public sector can be a consumer of low-carbon energy (the report says the US Navy’s trialling of wave power, and plan to roll out the technology across its bases worldwide if the demonstration is successful, is a good example) · Increase funding for energy related R&D.