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It’s time to stand up to the energy giants

It’s time to stand up to the energy giants Guardian UK, by John Sauven 13 July 2009 Renewable energy will never take off as long as the industry is dominated by European utilities Against the backdrop of the worldwide economic downturn, it is ironic that the area often said to have the least business certainty, the renewables sector, is one of the few success stories. Globally this industry is bucking the trends, creating millions of new green jobs, increasing countries’ energy independence and reducing climate-changing emissions…………………………Not so much the “voice of British business” as the voice of French and German energy monopolies, for too long E.ON, RWE and EDF have dictated the terms of the British energy debate. Today’s CBI report advocating that Britain scale back its renewable ambitions yet further is just the latest tactic by these utilities to shaft British business efforts in clean tech out of fear of new competition and the threat posed to their “business as usual” approach. EDF and E.ON admit they oppose ambition on renewables in case they undermine the economic case for the nuclear power stations they want to build. These arguments are now parroted verbatim by the CBI.
t is no coincidence that Germany and Spain, which have shut the door on new nuclear power, have invested most in renewables and seen their green industries rocket. Spain now generates as much as 40% of its electricity from wind power and studies show the investment in renewables has lowered wholesale electricity prices in Spain by more than the cost of the incentive they used to kickstart the industry. Germany has created almost a quarter of a million new green jobs in renewables as a whole and £8.5bn a year for its economy from wind industry sales alone.

While other countries got ahead of the UK in green tech, in a textbook case of the power of special interests operating in Whitehall, energy officials in Britain lobbied together with two German energy giants and the French state-owned atomic industry to systematically undermine and sabotage UK efforts on renewables…………………………….anti-wind nimby groups with links to giant PR firms were set up to whip up anti-renewable hysteria with little transparency and much suspicion about who was really behind them, especially given that national government polling shows that 80% of people support wind power. Plans were even announced to knock down a wind farm to make way for a nuclear plant.

It’s time to stand up to the energy giants | John Sauven | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

July 14, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, radioactive, uranium