‘Alarming collapse’ in renewable energy investment

Ministers have been accused of complacency about falling rates of investment in renewable energy by the chair of the House of Commons environmental audit committee.

Mary Creagh MP has expressed her alarm after the government submitted its response yesterday (30 July) to her committee’s recently published report on green finance.

The committee highlights its concern that the government response makes no commitment to address the 57 per cent collapse in the UK’s renewable energy investment which has occurred since 2016, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

It also raises worries about the lack of commitment to publish a delivery plan to achieve the UK’s fourth and fifth carbon budgets, both of which the government had admitted it is not on track to meet with the policies in the Clean Growth Strategy.

The government also says in its response that the committee’s proposal to extend a carbon tax across the whole economy would raise “significant practical challenges” because it would involve putting such a price on new areas like agriculture, heating and transport.

The response also concedes that further evidence is needed to support the government’s proposed policy of “green mortgages” and claims the UK should be prepared for the possible loss of access to European Investment Bank funding, which has helped to bankroll renewable energy projects in recent years.

Creagh said “The government is coasting on climate change. It is currently relying on past successes to scrape by on its carbon budgets and is not even on track to meet them in full.

“We have made progress in clean energy over the last decade, but there has been an alarming collapse in investment in the last year. Meanwhile, little is being done to channel clean investment into areas like transport, industry and heating where emissions need to be cut in the coming years.”

Commenting on the government response, James Court, head of policy and external affairs at the Renewable Energy Association said: “The conversation around transitioning to a subsidy-free environment for many renewable technologies was inevitable and shows how far the sector has come, but the way it has been handled by government has resulted in precipitous changes that have undermined our achievements in solar, onshore wind, renewable fuels, and beyond.

“The industry is now keen to engage with government on how the cheapest forms of new power generation – wind and solar – could be deployed in this new policy landscape. Supporting small scale renewable power after the looming closure of the feed-in tariff, and discussing the decarbonisation of heat once the programme to support new renewable heat deployment closes in 2021, are also core industry priorities.”