Letters: Wrong policy on renewable energy
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
Emeritus 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
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