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UK govt urged to GENUINELY promote renewable energy through Feed-In tariffs

The government proposals are inspired by e.on and EDF to benefit nuclear power, which will crowd out renewable energy. This flies in the face of all independent opinion polls which show that the public wants its electricity payments to be reserved for renewable energy, not nuclear power.

Wrong policy on renewable energy The Guardian, Monday 27 December 2010 We urge support for real feed-in tariffs for renewable energy and not nuclear power. British policymakers are poised yet again to ignore the dominant and most effective mechanism for promoting renewable energy across the world (feed-in tariffs) in favour of an auction system (Huhne promises ‘seismic shift’ to greener power, 17 December). This will replace the renewables obligation. The obligation is expensive, but allows good opportunities for onshore and offshore wind developers to set up schemes. The auction approach is tried and tested across the world (including the UK in the 1990s) and shown to consistently fail to deliver large capacities of renewable energy.

We need a German-style system which offers open-ended opportunities to developers to take up contracts to supply renewable energy at good, guaranteed rates for 20 years, with rates tailored for different renewable technologies. Instead, in its electricity markets reform proposals, the government is proposing a thinly disguised design for channelling money from electricity consumer receipts away from renewable energy, especially wind power, and towards nuclear power. The government proposals are inspired by e.on and EDF to benefit nuclear power, which will crowd out renewable energy. This flies in the face of all independent opinion polls which show that the public wants its electricity payments to be reserved for renewable energy, not nuclear power.

Dr David Toke Senior Lecturer in Energy Policy, Department of Political

Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

meritus professor David Elliott Professor of Technology, Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Design, Open University

Professor Bryan Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University

Professor John Twidell, AMSET Centre Leicestershire

Professor Andrew Dobson, Professor of Politics, School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment, Keele University,

Professor Keith Barnham, Physics Department, Imperial College London

Dr Paul Dorfman, Warwick Business School University of Warwick

Colin Challen

Herbert Eppel

Dr Richard Cowell

Dr Peter Connor, University of Exeter

Dr Candida Spillard

Dr Ian Fairlie

Paul Brown

Antony Froggatt Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House

Dr Xavier Lemaire

Letters: Wrong policy on renewable energy | Environment | The Guardian

December 29, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK