Extracts from the Sept-October 2001 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

3. Fabians & Forum have a go

The Fabian Society has produced a very timely report ‘At the Energy Crossroads: Policies for a Low Carbon Economy’ by Gareth R Thomas MP and Stewart Boyle, as part of their ‘Second Term Thinking’ series. It argues that greatly expanded renewables and energy efficiency are the only way to meet the Kyoto targets and beyond- and calls for a £1bn support programme for renewables, backed up by a Renewables Tsar, to help get renewables to supply 25% of electricity by 2020. It also proposes a target of a 20% contribution from Combined Heat and Power (CHP) by 2020. It sees NETA as having failed miserably and calls for renewables and CHP to be given special status - their power to be bought in on a ‘priority dispatch’ basis. It’s very scathing about the prospects for a nuclear revival, quoting consultant Gordon Mckerron’s views on the Pebble Bed Modular reactor, one of BNFL’s great hopes for the future: ‘for any new reactor design of this type, you would need a few commercial (scale) plants up and running for at least 5 years or so before commercial vendors would even consider looking at it as an option. That counts it out as even a commercial choice for 10-15 years’.

Interestingly the new DTI paper on the RO (see above) mentions a £1bn figure for the intended ultimate level of support for renewables, so maybe the Fabian report was noticed!

In parallel, the Forum for the Future produced a report ‘The UK’s Transition to a Low Carbon Economy’, by Paul Ekins, from the Forum for the Future, presenting a model of enhanced public investment in renewable sources, compared to the ‘base case’ of existing policies. It concludes that the UK is unlikely to achieve the current ‘10% by 2010 renewables target unless policy changed, more like 5.4% at best. But if policies did change, along the lines the report proposes, then a 13% renewable contribution was possible by 20 10- and 30% by 2020, all at below 4.3p/kWh. Similarly for CHP- only 6.6 GW was likely on current trends, not the 10GW by 2010 hoped for by the government’.

We’ll review both reports in Renew 135.