Renew On Line (UK) 39

Extracts from the Sept-Oct 2002 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

7. White paper on Energy - the lobbying builds up

With the government response to the PIU report in the form of a White paper due early next year, and a consultation paper out seeking comments, pressure for a raft of decisions has emerged from a range of interest groups, not least the nuclear industry, who are hoping for special treatment. That even seems to extended to Fusion. In parliament on May 2nd Boris Johnson MP got a commitment from Patricia Hewit that the government will ‘consider sustaining fusion power research as part of the future of our science research programmes’.

More credibly, the renewables lobby wants the PIU’s proposal of a 20% by 2020 renewable target confirmed- or extended. And, as noted on the next page, the energy efficiency lobby is putting its views about the viability of the PIU’s proposals for a 20% cut in domestic sector energy use by 2010 and a further cut of 20% by 2020.

In June MP’s debated the issues once again, with the pro and anti nuclear battle dominating, as in the previous debate in March (see our Reviews). We’ll be reporting in detail in Renew 140.

Meanwhile, one of the recommendations in the PIU report seems to have been at least partly acted on. The PIU called for a new Sustainable Energy Policy Unit to link up work across the various government departments. It may not exactly be the full scale Agency they wanted, but Energy Minister Brain Wilson has set up a new body, the Renewables Advisory Board, to advise him on the development of renewables in the UK. "The Renewables Advisory Board will bring together key players from industry, the unions and government. It will be based on the highly successful PILOT initiative - the oil and industry task force - and will drive forward our R&D and capital grants programmes, as well as other crucial issues such as the development of a supply chain and the infrastructure constraints."

However, the consultation paper did promise to look at the idea of a Sustainable Energy Policy Unit, so something more substantial may yet emerge.

The consultation exercise is now just about to finish, and it seems to have generated a lot of submissions, including one from the OU Energy and Environment Research Unit, calling on the government to intervene more directly so as the force the pace of renewable development- a line also taken by SERA in its submission. See Forum.