UK: Green subsidies slashed

2 November, 2011 by

Fake green jobs

You see? Julia and Greg are right – the rest of the world is “rushing ahead” and Australia will be left behind [sarc off].

So just as Australia is careering headlong into a pointless carbon taxation regime, the government of the UK is waking up to the grim reality of the non-existent “green economy” and cutting solar subsidies. “25,000 green jobs cut” they shriek, but it probably means three times that many real jobs saved:

Hundreds of solar companies are likely to go bust by Christmas after the Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed it is looking to halve subsidies for new panels.

Greg Barker, minister for climate change, said the “feed-in tariff” subsidies are currently too generous, because the cost of installing solar panels has fallen.

The proposed cuts, due to come into force from December, will see the amount earned from each panel fall from 43.3p per kilowatt hour of solar power to 21p. This will save energy customers around £23 a year – or £700m in total – because the subsidies are funded through electricity bills. (source)

More at WUWT.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Gillard wants more renewables to tackle climate change

28 June, 2010 by

Pushing renewables

Which means more money wasted on subsidising solar panels and wind farms, both hopeless for baseload electricity generation. But at least she talks vague sense on an ETS and acknowledges that there isn’t a consensus for a price on carbon… yet.

Labor sources have confirmed the focus of her pitch for the environment vote will be on renewables — boosting the use of solar and wind power to help meet the government’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

But arguing that community consensus is “not there yet” on an ETS, Ms Gillard yesterday backed the need to put a price on carbon to encourage businesses to change their practices; she offered no timetable on delivering one.

The newly-installed Prime Minister said yesterday she accepted “my fair share” of the responsibility for the decision to delay the introduction of an ETS, a policy backflip that coincided with a collapse in Kevin Rudd’s polling.

Asked if it were true she had argued for the ETS to be dumped as part of the Rudd government’s powerful kitchen cabinet, Ms Gillard confirmed she had.

“I was concerned that if you were going to do something as big to your economy as put a price on carbon, with the economic transformation that implies, with changing the way in which we live, you need a lasting and deep community consensus to do it,” she told the Nine Network.

“And I don’t believe we have that lasting and deep community consensus now.

“Now, I believe we should have a price on carbon, and I will be prepared to argue for a price on carbon . . . so that we get to that lasting and deep community consensus, but we are not there yet.”

Ms Gillard pledged that she would soon be making further statements on new policy measures to “address the challenge of climate change”.

“I am not a denier — I am not a denier, but I’m someone who believes that you have got to take the community with you when you make lasting and deep changes,” she said.

All I can say is that it’s extraordinary to hear Gillard use the word “denier” in the context of her own beliefs, especially after her post-ETS vote down speech (see here).

Read it here.

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