Renewables must be central to Energy Bill
06 March 2008
Green Party Peer Lord Beaumont of Whitley will today urge the House of Lords to include further legislation that increases levels of renewable energy production in the Government's Energy Bill when it arrives for debate at the House of Lords. (1)
He will deliver a speech in the Lords highlighting the increasing cost of fossil fueled heating to British households, and will criticise the Government's lamentable record on renewable energy investment so far.
In his speech, Lord Beaumont will say
"Households are paying more than ever in energy bills. Reserves of gas and oil are increasingly concentrated in the small number of states as scarcity begins to take hold. One does not have to subscribe to any environmental ethic to realise that the economic and political integrity of the UK is threatened by the current conditions surrounding our primary energy supply.
"The challenge of Government has been the same for sometime now: that is, how to secure a stable and acceptably priced primary energy supply for the 21st Century?"
He will go on to attack the Government's current policies, accusing it of "trying to replicate the past" by returning to intensive coal use, saying
"We cannot return to an age of intensive coal use because the limits to nature to absorb the pollution from this have been reached. By subscribing to carbon dioxide targets, the Government accepts this on one hand. By increasing coal usage, the Government contradicts itself with the other hand.
"It is not the job of Government to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of economic gain. From this few will gain and many will suffer, at home and abroad.
Lord Beaumont, who has been a Green Party peer since 1999, will continue
"With their current policies on renewables and the results that these have produced, is the Government fulfilling its obligations to current and future generations?"
