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UK’s “Renewable Energy Foundation” – a front for anti renewables lobby?

the charity is little more than a front for anti-wind lobbyists…….It would set an unwelcome precedent for a charitable organisation claiming to support renewable energy, to spend time campaigning against what is effectively the chief renewable technology in the UK. It raises issues about the organisation’s motives, as well as financial and reputational advantages of being a registered charity. There needs to be a much clearer sense of how REF fulfils its charitable purpose and lives up to its name…..The problem with the Renewable Energy Foundation is that their name is misleading. It suggests they are in favour of renewables when actually the opposite is true.

Will the real Renewable Energy Foundation please stand up? Guardian UK 20 May 11, The Renewable Energy Foundation says it is not against windfarms, but its critics disagree Will the real Renewable Energy Foundation please stand up? This is a question being asked with increasing intensity within the UK’s renewable energy sector.

The REF styles itself on its website as “a registered charity promoting sustainable development for the benefit of the public by means of energyconservation and the use of renewable energy”, but some prominent voices within the industry have long felt that the charity is little more than a front for anti-wind lobbyists. For example, newspapers that routinely run anti-windfarm stories, such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, often turn to REF for helpful statistics and quotes.

The REF’s critics believe its name is misleading and they want it to be open and transparent about its real “agenda”. The public face adopted by REF today does certainly seem very different to the one it nurtured when it launched in 2004. As this Guardian article shows, the tone used at the launch event was one that was openly hostile to the wind industry. Its then chairman, the broadcaster and vocal anti-wind campaigner Noel Edmonds, and chief executive Campbell Dunford spoke of the “grotesque political push” for a technology that was helping to cause the “industrialisation of the countryside”.

….. The question of who supports and/or funds REF is also intriguing. First, we have the former chairman Noel Edmonds, who became a high-profile anti-wind campaigner….. Then there is the link with David Burnside…. REF also boasts impressive links to City financiers and energy consultants, as its technical advisory group and list of trustees displays. (Quite what the right-wing historian Niall Ferguson brings to the mix is less clear, though.)…

…..  hasn’t appeased the critics, as this recent article published by BusinessGreen displays. Rather, they now wonder whether the moderating of REF’s tone might only be further disguising the organisation’s real motives.

A spokesman for RenewableUK – formerly known as the British Wind Energy Association – told me:

It would set an unwelcome precedent for a charitable organisation claiming to support renewable energy, to spend time campaigning against what is effectively the chief renewable technology in the UK. It raises issues about the organisation’s motives, as well as financial and reputational advantages of being a registered charity. There needs to be a much clearer sense of how REF fulfils its charitable purpose and lives up to its name.

Responding to the news that REF had recently launched a new database at the headquarters of Ernst & Young, Juliet Davenport, CEO of Good Energy, told me:

The problem with the Renewable Energy Foundation is that their name is misleading. It suggests they are in favour of renewables when actually the opposite is true. Although they claim to support small-scale renewable generation, their real agenda is trying to block larger scale windfarms. I’m very surprised that Ernst & Young is allowing itself to be associated with the REF, as Ernst & Young is a pioneer in the renewables sector and has been very supportive of windfarms and renewable energy in the UK……. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/may/18/renewable-energy-foundation-wind-farm

May 20, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK