EU renewables growing strongly (outside the UK)

A Press Release (PDF download) today from EurObserv'ER, the EU body that measures progress on renewables, shows that renewables' share of final energy consumption in the EU grew from 11.5% in 2009 to 12.4% in 2010, against a target of 20% by 2020. 

Renewables' share of final energy consumption in the UK grew from 3.0% in 2009 to 3.3% in 2010, against a target of 15% by 2020. In other words, we are 22% towards meeting our targets.

This puts the UK still third from bottom of the league, above only Luxembourg and Malta. Given how much the UK's environmental energy policies cost on consumers' bills, it's extraordinary how ineffective and inefficient our governments manage to be.

To achieve our 2020 target, we would have to increase renewables' share by over 350%. At the current rate of increase, that would take 39 years.

Estonia, Sweden, Lithuania, Austria, Romania, Finland, Slovenia, Latvia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Portugal and Denmark are all over 75% towards their targets (in order of progress towards the targets), even though their targets are on average nearly twice as high as ours (29%). Spain and Germany, whose exorbitant, electricity-focused policies the UK government thinks we should copy, and whose targets are only a little higher than ours, are in the bottom half of the league, below all of these countries.

The main differentiating factor between the successful countries and the laggards is that the successful ones realised that heat and the domestic sector were the areas where the easiest and best-value displacement of fossil fuels could be achieved, whereas the UK, Germany, Spain and a few other ignorant governments listened to their head-in-the-clouds academics and empire-building civil servants, and focused policy on expensive, unreliable renewable electricity, such as offshore wind.

Most of the best-performing nations didn't even have to pick heat as a winner. They introduced carbon taxes that simply rewarded all options (electricity, heat and transport fuel) according to how efficiently they displaced fossil fuels, and heat (as the most efficient option) was the main beneficiary).

It takes wilful ignorance to target policy and funds as inefficiently as we do in the UK. The recently-announced changes to renewables policy, supposedly intended to get more bang-for-the-buck, was simply the latest demonstration of ignorance, as policy was tweaked to divert biomass towards inefficient combustion in giant power stations, wasting two-thirds of the energy up the chimneys, and diverting fuel that could be used more efficiently and to the benefit of many more people (rather than just the Big Six) as a heating fuel.

If you think your tax money could be better spent giving you the option to stop wasting fossil fuels on heating your buildings than subsidising the Big Six energy companies to build unaffordable and unreliable offshore windmills (etc), write to Chris Huhne, Secretary of State at the Department for Energy and Climate Change (3 Whitehall Place, London, SW1A 2AW or email chris.huhne@decc.gsi.gov.uk) and to your local MP, to let them know that you're sick of them subsidising their corporate pals at your expense.

EurObserv'ER will release preliminary figures for 2011 in January. We'll update you on how badly the UK is doing under current policy when that's released.