Extracts from NATTA's journal
Renew, issue 144 July- Aug 2003

3. Green Party Alternative Energy Review

In April the Green Party launched what it called an ‘antidote’ to the Governments White Paper on Energy- the latter being seen as ‘green wash’, strong on spin but weak on substance. The Green Party emphasise energy efficiency as the most important aspect of a green policy and argue that more funds need to be allocated to Local Authorities to help them take a lead.

Their Alternative Energy Review says that ‘large scale energy efficiency cannot possibly be achieved when public sector bodies at a lower level than central government have practically no resources to employ the significant numbers of staff needed to implement a meaningful programme’. For example, they claim that they could not find a single Local Authority that had ‘made a detailed and comprehensive measurement of how much energy is being used by the housing stock in their area’. To improve matters, they insist, ‘the number of people who know about energy efficiency must be dramatically expanded and their contribution to building and equipment planning and procurement must be routine at all levels’.

The Review clearly see a major role being played by government and by Local Councils. It insists that the government is wrong to say that only 5% of the UK energy economy can be directly influenced by government procurement policies covering building and equipment. In fact, the Review claims, ‘at least 26% of the energy economy (by carbon dioxide emissions) can be directly influenced by extremely cheap (usually money saving) measures taken by public sector institutions’. They go on to propose measures which they say could lead to real cuts in carbon emissions of 11% by 2020 (15.7mTC) in these sectors. The proposed savings are made mainly by improvement in the energy efficiency of buildings, through improved designs, superinsulation and energy using equipment, but they add that the saving figures will increase ‘when use of combined heat and power (CHP) in new housing developments is taken into account’.

There are also proposals for improving efficiency in the transport sector, with the emphasis, for now, being on more fuel efficient hybrid designs, using petrol-alcohol and diesel-vegetable oil blends, paving the way for cars powered by renewably produced hydrogen. They also call for the adoption of more efficient electronic equipment.

On the supply side, they welcome the White Papers generally negative conclusions on the prospects for new nuclear power plants, although they see this as hardly surprising, given the clearly uneconomic nature of the technology.

On renewables, they argue that the governments obsession with market competition continues to shackle expansion, and that it has been further constrained, in the case of wind, by the intransigent attitude of the MOD, which has opposed 50% of wind projects proposed so far. Instead the Green Party want more support for locally owned projects and a switch over to guaranteed minimum prices, with long terms contracts, for electricity from renewables, as in Germany.

Overall, the criticisms seem sharp enough and the positive proposals are mostly good- with some sensible ideas for how to go about them in practice. And its good to keep pressing for more ambitious targets. But there is still a feeling of a ‘wish list’ about some of the policy proposals. Maybe that is inevitable given that it seems likely to be some time before the Green Party will be able to exercise significant political power at national level. But at local level they can test out ideas. For example, the Review notes that the Green party advocates ‘the inclusion of solar panels as mandatory in all new buildings’, and reports that ‘Green Party Councillors are pressing for this to be implemented through the planning machinery with developers having the options either of solar photovoltaic or solar thermal systems’.

* The Alternative Energy Review was written by Dave Toke and David Olivier and can be obtained from the Green Party of England and Wales, at 1a Waterlow Rd, London N19 5NJ