[In this highly readable piece, the UK's Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform is taken to task for undermining the country's green energy goals by falling behind on grants and not implementing policies like Feed-in tariffs. This is an EXCERPT: read the whole article here. -Ed.]

Government apathy sabotages Britain's shift to a low-carbon economy

by Ashley Seager

"[M]any branches of government are fed up with the situation and are putting pressure on BERR [the UK's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform] to get real with its policies, particularly regarding the feed-in tariff (FIT) behind Germany's renewables revolution that has been copied in so many other countries.

"This works by rewarding those who produce power from wind or solar power with an above-market payment guaranteed for 20 years. The additional cost is spread across all power users, since the saving in carbon is shared by all. It is a market-supporting mechanism since the FIT is reduced slightly each year for new projects as increasing scale reduces the cost of the equipment (a solar PV system in Germany, for example, now costs half the UK level)."

"There is a growing fear among academics and many in the oil industry, that oil may be running out quicker than we thought.

"I used to write about the oil industry 15 years ago and more and back then the conventional wisdom was that 'peak oil' theories had been right about US oil production but were fantasy for the world as a whole. As soon as the oil price rose, went the argument, producers would spend more on getting oil out of the ground."

"I don't want to get into an argument about whether peak oil is upon us but you have to admit that it could be. After all, UK oil production peaked at 3.2m bpd in 1999 and has since halved. Dirty tar sands in Alberta could perhaps produce 3m bpd (Canadian estimates, not mine), but that's not going to be enough. Not that it ever should be dug out - it's filthy stuff that requires huge amounts of energy to produce."

[The potential panic that might be caused by a government agency preparing for peak oil] "would be nothing compared to the panic if oil starts to run short. If I were BERR I would be having a dash for renewables. They plan to subsidise nuclear power for decades to come so why not bung some money at proper green energy that won't need subsidy for very long?"

Photo credit: Niv