Environment



In 2010, as a result of an EU Climate Change Act all five main parties included renewable obligations in their manifesto. This act was a formalisation of country targets across the EU states.

As can be seen from Figure 1, the government have been successful in increasing the use of renewable energy up until 2018. However in recent times they have walked away from renewable policy and the graph has levelled off.

The process of increasing renewable power generation had started in 2002 with the Renewables Obligation (2005 in Northern Ireland) requiring electricity suppliers to supply a proportion of their electricity from renewable sources. This was set at 3% in 2002, increasing to 10.4% by 2010-12 and increasing to 15.4% by 2015-16. The Labour party announced an additional target of 20% by 2020-21. The long term target was to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 80% by 2050 based on 1990 emissions. The government has had success in meetings its targets up until now, although in many ways the first 20% is the easiest. It is once you reach the 30% to 40% mark that you have to be more driven to hit your targets as further reductions become much more harder to find. In the face of this the government have started to backtrack on their efforts, scrapping subsidies and promoting fracking

One of the key drivers to improve electricity companies renewable energy usage was the feed-in tariff regime where consumers installing solar panels received a tariff for feeding into the electricity network. This scheme has now been scrapped. See Home Solar Panels for more details of the scheme and the impact of scrapping it.

In 2015 Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary said she was halting subsidies to a number of green policies on the grounds that the technology should stand on its own feet and save bill payers money.

Subsidies were ended for the following:
 * Subsidies were ended for on Shore Wind Farms in 2015
 * The writing had been on the wall for onshore wind farms since February 2012 when 101 backbench Conservative party MPs wrote to David Cameron demanding “dramatic cuts” in subsidies.
 * onshore wind can be the most cost-efficient way of producing low carbon energy
 * solar installations of less than five megawatts – enough to power 2,500 homes had their subsidies ended in 2016
 * The government also confirmed in 2016 that it was removing the guaranteed level of subsidy for coal or other fossil fuelled-power stations which are converting to wood or another biomass fuel
 * In 2015, the government killed off the green deal, its “transformational” way of helping homeowners bring down their energy bills through installing insulation, and fitting new boilers and draught-proofing. There is no energy efficiency policy for homes, which account for around a third of UK carbon emissions.
 * The Green Investment Bank (GIB) was launched in 2012
 * In 2015 the government sold of 70% of the bank
 * In 2017 the remaining 30% of GIB was sold off
 * See the section Green Investment Bank for more details
 * The incentive to buy a greener car was undermined in 2017
 * Anyone who buying a new car paid a different rate for excise duty for the first year based on how polluting the car, a system which continues every year thereafter.
 * The excise duty ranged from free for electric cars to £505 for the dirtiest.
 * In 2017 the excise duty on purchase was changed to £140 regardless of how polluting the car is
 * Friends of the Earth says a greener car will now cost £1,000 more over seven years.
 * Giving up on zero carbon homes
 * A decade-long plan to force all new homes to be ‘zero carbon’ from 2016 was binned by the Treasury in 2015
 * Major housing developers said the decision was “extremely disappointing”, a view that was echoed by planners, green groups and the designer of a new ‘carbon positive’ house that just opened in Wales
 * Fracking in Britain’s most important nature sites
 * Rudd said in January 2015 that fracking wouldn’t be allowed in sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs)
 * In July 2015 she changed her mind, opening the door to fracking in thousands of SSSIs in England, Wales and Scotland, if the shale companies can get past planners
 * Green tax target scrapped
 * A target set during the last government to keep increasing the proportion of revenue from environmental taxes was dropped in Osborne’s 2015 emergency budget
 * Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay rejected - see section Tidal Barrages for more details

In the case of nuclear power the government – like its predecessors of all political stripes seem mesmerised by atomic power and are willing to provide extremely generous financial support and other help to kickstart a renaissance. Britain’s first planned new nuclear plant for over 25 years at Hinkley Point in Somerset is backed by government but faces all sorts of other hurdles such as uncertain equity investors, legal challenges and ever-increasing costs and delays, which could scupper it yet.

Offshore wind, much more expensive than onshore farms, has so far escaped the axe although there are plenty of Tory critics willing to decry the cost and claim it is a blot on the seascape.

The Green Investment Bank (GIB) was established to help green projects with an initial injection of £3.8bn of public money.In reality it was never a bank but rather an investment vehicle. It could not lend or borrow and was reliant on seed money from the government to make investments. It was first put forward by the Labour government in 2008 and was included in the manifesto of all 5 main parties.

Launched in 2012, with cross party support, to help green projects with an initial injection of £3.8bn of public money, the green investment bank is probably the example cited most often by George Osborne and David Cameron in their defence of the government’s environmental record. But in 2015 the business secretary, Sajid Javid, sold off 70% of the bank. In 2017 the remaining 30% of GIB was sold.

The GIB was government seeded because it had been difficult to persuade other investment venicles to invest in the green industry, the idea being to provide the necessary funding to kickstart the green economy. It was set up as a private concern, but was in reality 100% government owned and funded. It's role was very much to part fund green projects and attract private investors. It was reasonably successful with a ratio of 2.5 to 1.0 of private investors to GIB funding.

One of the key failings of the GIB was that it didn't establish a sustainable UK industry to further green objectives, but rather acted as a grant provider to realise large projects. For example its investment spread was 46% of capital to offshore wind and 34% to waste and bioenergy. Because GIB never established itself as an investment bank it remained reliant of government funding. In 2015 the goverment decided that it could no longer afford to fund the GIB and decided to sell it off. Although the bids for the sale of GIB were below expectation, the government were keen to get it off their books and sold to Macquarie.

The Tories funded the GIB to the tune of £3.8bn, with the GIB seeing a 10% return on investment. The bank had gained a good level of respectability by the time it was sold. However at the sale launch, only 16% of the equity portfolio was operational and generating income for GIB. The remaining assets were expected to become operational by March 2018. It was sold for only £

Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay