Election Special: Energy Policies

Confused by the Parties’ green policies? Finding it hard to tell your green from your red, blue and yellow? We’ve previously examined the transport policies of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, but what of their wider policies on environmental issues? Here, in the second of our election special features, again with the help of Norton Rose, we summarise the parties’ policies on energy.

Renewable Energy
Whilst there is now general consensus that burning fossil fuels is both damaging to the environment and ultimately uses a finite resource, and a switch must be made to renewable energy sources, the parties differ in their approach on how to make the shift. Labour set up the Renewables Obligation Certificates scheme in 2002, obliging energy suppliers to provide a certain proportion of their energy from renewable sources. They intend to extend this until 2037, with modifications to reflect cost differences between different technologies involved. Labour also envisages expanding onshore wind technology and targets developing offshore wind farms with a capacity of up to 25 gigawatts by 2020. On top of this, they intend to increase investment up to £60 million into the development of wave and tidal power generation, in addition to the Severn Tidal Power Feasibility Study, which is already under way. This is to reach a goal of “around 40 per cent low carbon electricity by 2020.”

The Conservatives propose to replace the Renewables Obligation scheme with a ‘feed-in tarriff’ (this works by guaranteeing a long-term premium payment for electricity generated from low carbon sources and fed into the grid. The Government fixes the level of the tariff to be paid for each renewable technology and sets the length of contract), which it sees as more stable and straightforward. With wind power, they intend to resolve ongoing contention over farms and their siting by “promoting community ownership of appropriately sited wind farms,” and they have indicated their intentions to develop marine park facilities alongside an offshore grid to accelerate the development and deployment of wave and tidal power systems.

The Liberal Democrats state that they seek changes to the Renewables Obligation scheme, and have pledged to invest in upgrading disused shipyards into wind turbine production centres, thereby creating jobs whilst developing wind power, and they also state that they “will use [Britain’s] lasting natural resources like wind and wave power.” The Greens favour feed-in tariffs to encourage renewable energy generation, and go further than the mainstream parties with respects to wind and marine energy sources. They state that “there should be a presumption that wind energy schemes, whether small or large, and whether onshore or offshore, should go ahead unless there are overriding and substantial dangers to public health or safety or to wildlife, or it is in a nationally designated scenic area.” They have signalled their intention to introduce wind, and other, renewable energy projects, immediately, and wish to use tidal energy from estuaries such as the Severn, “subject to satisfactory sustainability and environmental impact assessments … but reject any proposal for a single continuous barrage across the Severn estuary.”

See Page 2 for policies on Nuclear Power, Waste Energy and Carbon Capture