A Greener, Cleaner but Not so Pleasant Land
It’s been described as a "green revolution" and "the most dramatic change in energy policy since the advent of nuclear power". So what will Britain be like in just over a decade’s time?
Well, a lot cleaner and greener if the Government gets its way. But possibly, some might say, a lot uglier, with massive wind farms off shore and turbines erected on land too.
The Government’s proposals for a radical pounds100 billion shake- up of the way we generate energy, announced last Thursday, will not only provide a massive boost to the renewables industry but will change the face of the UK for ever.
The consultation document laid out a vision of how Britain can reach its target of generating 15 per cent of its energy from renewable technologies by 2020.
In this vision, Britain will have 7,000 new wind turbines, 3,000 of them off shore, with the North Sea "the equivalent, for wind power of what the Gulf of Arabia is for oil", according to Gordon Brown.
Our homes will look different, too, having sprouted millions more solar panels and domestic wind turbines than at present. We’ll be generating power for our own use and sending what we don’t need into the national grid.
We’ll also be a whole lot more frugal with the energy we use. We’ll be required to insulate our homes better, install low-energy light bulbs, and use low-energy consumer goods.
There will be many more electric- or hydrogen-fuelled cars on the road and our trains and ships will use biofuels – but only ones that come from non-food sources and meet strict sustainability criteria.
Councils will create biogas from the food waste they collect from people’s homes, as will sewage works and farms, and this will then be used either to heat homes or fuel transport.
All of this will come about if the proposals in the Government’s consultation document are accepted. The consultation, which runs to September 26, will help shape the UK Renewable Energy Strategy to be published next spring.
Gordon Brown described it as "a green revolution in the making" and said: "It will be a tenfold increase on our current deployment of renewables, and a 300 per cent increase on our existing plans – the most dramatic change in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power."
Green groups welcomed the proposals – Greenpeace described them as "visionary" – but said the Government had to deliver on its promises.
Greenpeace’s executive director John Sauven said: "If the Government actually means it this time then Britain will become a better, safer and more prosperous country.
"We could create jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and use less gas, and in the long run our power bills will come down. But it won’t happen without real government action."
Ruth Davis, head of climate change policy at the RSPB, said the Government should accept that reducing energy use was the cheapest and most effective way of cutting emissions.
"Government support for research and development, and for new green businesses must be drastically increased," she said.
"Renewables industries are thriving in Germany where thousands of jobs have been created. The UK has no choice but to follow this lead."
The strategy will certainly create more jobs here – 160,000 of them, according to Business Secretary John Hutton – as well as generating pounds2 billion a year from offshore wind alone by 2020. It will also help make Britain a world class centre of energy expertise, he said.
So what are the downsides of the proposals?
Well, there’s no doubt they’ll change the way Britain looks, as Mr Hutton admitted on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme when he acknowledged that wind turbines would have an impact on the landscape.
They clearly take up more land, he said, adding: "There is a cost in going green, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
"But it will cost us if we don’t, because we have to factor in the climate change cost."
The Government hopes that new research, showing that four out of five people favour wind power and two thirds would be happy to live within three miles of a wind farm, will take some of the sting out of objections to building more wind farms.
But whether the Government can actually achieve its own targets is another matter. It has set itself a massive challenge, as is clear when you consider how little energy we get from renewables today. For example, it wants 32 per cent of electricity to come from renewables by 2020 yet right now it is under five per cent.
It also wants 10 per cent of transport energy to come from renewables and 14 per cent of heat (both currently below one per cent).
The Government may also have problems building its offshore wind farms because there aren’t enough manufacturers making the turbines.
Issues such as these prompted the Renewables Advisory Board to warn: "Strong political leadership will be required to implement the necessary policy changes within a very demanding timescale."
However, none of these proposals will work unless we are all prepared to make drastic changes in our lifestyle.
"Saving energy is crucial – the less energy we use, the lower the cost," said Mr Hutton. "Using every unit of energy as efficiently as possible has to be our ultimate ambition."
There is also a financial cost to the proposals. The Government admits that the change to green energy means electricity bills may rise by 13 per cent, and gas by 37 per cent, by 2020.
Those figures depend on a low oil price of 70 dollars – less than half the current price. However, the more energy we take from renewables, the less demand there will be for fossil fuels, which could help prevent hikes in oil prices.
Ultimately Britain has little choice, said Mr Hutton. "Unless we are prepared to make this big shift in the way we generate energy, we are going to stack up bigger costs, inflict greater environmental damage in Britain and the rest of the world.
"This is one of those things where we have little real choice. The option of making no change, I’m afraid, is simply not available to us."
(c) 2008 Western Daily Press (Bristol UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.