Amber Rudd admits the UK doesn’t have the right policies to meet the UK’s renewable energy targets (Rudd criticised after leak reveals renewables failure, 10 November), but she is clutching at straws to try to transfer the burden on to transport and renewable heat, while sacrificing a popular grassroots movement that could bring about a real transition to a low-carbon economy, under the guise of protecting taxpayers. Hundreds of small volunteer groups that engage communities in combating the causes of climate change by creating their own sustainable energy social enterprises are threatened. If heat is to replicate the success story of solar power, this sector needs more support rather than less.
In defending the support given to EDF and its Chinese backers, Ms Rudd may be saving a few pounds of taxpayers’ money now, but she is leaving a legacy of huge increases in electricity bills over the next 45 years. Soaring electricity bills will add urgency to developments in battery technology, already incentivised by the electrifying of road transport, which are key to making the variable output of renewable energy systems viable as an alternative to expensive nuclear power. As storage-based renewable technologies become more competitive we will see communities developing their own micro-grid solutions and going off-grid, rather than paying the high cost of nuclear power. Ms Rudd needs a strategy, not political rhetoric.
James Tod
Skipton, North Yorkshire
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Source: Guardian Environment