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Welcome to the fantasy world of UK’s Energy Secretary Amber Rudd

Rudd, Amber UKNu Clear News Dec 15 The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, is living in a “fantasy world” where nuclear is affordable and fracking produces useful amounts of gas, according to Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. “Aiming to close down coal power stations is commendable but planning to replace them with a new fleet of gas-fired power stations will automatically lock us into a high-carbon power system, guaranteeing we won’t meet UK climate targets,” he added. (1)

In her “Energy Policy Re-Set” speech on 18th November, Rudd announced that the UK will close all coal-fired power plants by 2025 but they will be replaced largely with new gas and nuclear plants rather than renewables. Rudd acknowledged that gas and nuclear power generation would in effect need a government subsidy for building power plants, but insisted they were the most secure energy sources. (2) Meanwhile she is stopping support for renewable energy and energy efficiency even though (or perhaps precisely because) they are being delivered in substantial volumes.
Rudd compounded the fantasy by failing to provide any realistic policies for delivering her objectives, said reader in Energy Policy at Aberdeen University, Dr Dave Toke. (3)
The re-set speech exposed Rudd’s total failure to assemble a coherent energy strategy said Oliver Tickell writing in The Ecologist. It reveals the increasingly certain failure to meet EU renewable energy targets, proposes a new tax on wind and solar generation, and leaves the country facing the real prospect of lights going out in the next decade.
What she presented was a rag bag of missed opportunities, worn out ideas, wishful thinking, disconnected themes and downright bad news – like the prospect of a new tax on wind and solar – that only increase the chances of the ‘lights going out’. Even her headline announcement of ‘an end to coal’ was – while a clever way to confuse environmentalists – not all it seems. Coal power stations still have ten years to run under her proposals. And they would almost all have to close down within that time anyway in order to comply with EU pollution regulations.
Here at the key points from the speech and the subsequent reactions – everything you need to know. ……..http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo80.pdf

December 4, 2015 - Posted by | politics, UK

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