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Ed Miliband: No retreat from green agenda despite recession
Patrick Wintour and Allegra Stratton, The Guardian
New energy and climate change secretary tells Patrick Wintour and Allegra Stratton the battle to stop climate change must continue
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The new energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, insisted today that there must be no retreat from the government’s climate change agenda in the face of the coming recession, as he prepared to accept proposals from Lord Turner’s climate change committee tomorrow to increase Britain’s statutory target to cut carbon emissions from 60% to 80% by 2050.
In his first interview since he was appointed secretary of state at the new Department for Energy and Climate Change, he claims many of the new jobs of the future will be green jobs, adding that the cost to taxpayers of failing to fix the environment will only be higher if it is not tackled now.
“The central argument of the Stern report is that the costs of not acting are worse than the costs of acting, and the longer you leave it, the worse it gets in terms of the costs. So I don’t think there is an option not to act,” Miliband told the Guardian.
(15 October 2008)
EU climate change push in disarray as Italy joins Iron Curtain revolt
David Charter and Rory Watson, The Times
Europe’s commitment to ambitious green goals became the latest victim of the global financial crisis yesterday when a growing number of EU countries rebelled, claiming that the plans were now too expensive.
Plans for binding European legislation by December were dropped as the EU watered down the carbon dioxide blueprint that it had announced with a fanfare 18 months ago.
The revolt by eight countries, led by Italy and Poland, left the EU’s self-proclaimed mission to shape a global, postKyoto agreement on greenhouse gases in disarray.
President Sarkozy of France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, led the way in appealing to all 27 countries to stick to their targets…
(17 October 2008)
Gulf state rescues £3bn wind farm in the Thames Estuary
Robin Pagnamenta, The Times
The Government of Abu Dhabi has stepped in to help to fund the world’s biggest offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary after the withdrawal of Royal Dutch Shell from the project.
Masdar, a $15 billion (£9 billion) clean-energy investment fund controlled by the Gulf state, said yesterday that it would buy a 20 per cent stake in the London Array project from E.ON, the German energy giant.
The scheme to build up to 271 wind turbines 12 miles off the Kent and Essex coasts is expected to cost £3 billion. Once complete, it will generate up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 750,000 homes.
The Government said last year that it planned to generate 33 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind power by 2020, an initiative that would require 7,000 turbines and be sufficient to power all of Britain’s homes…
(17 October 2008)
