UK Energy bill published – reaction to live reaction from the Guardian

The Guardian has breaking analysis of the freshly introduced, and much anticipated, UK energy bill.

I'd expect a bill that locked a government into high renewables targets would also lock the country into much higher emissions intensities than necessary (as demonstrated in France ... and Ontario).  

As a bonus, it comes with the added cost of a capacity market to ensure fossil plants remain available

-bold emphasis added'-

Energy bill published – live reaction | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

Tom Burke, the environmental consultant and former director of the Green Alliance, has written a comment piece for the Guardian today arguing that, despite common thinking, the energy bill is actually a victory for Davey and the Liberal Democrats, as opposed to George Osbourne and the Treasury:

The government is now explicitly committed to meeting its obligations under the renewables directive. And it has provided the money to do so through increased cap in the levy control framework. That means that by 2020 just over 30% of our electricity will come from renewable sources.

This is a significant defeat for the Treasury, which has long sought a way to avoid meeting this commitment. It means that by 2020 a lot of relatively cheap renewable electricity will have been contracted for an as-yet unspecified period, but which is likely to extend beyond 2030. John Hayes, the wind-sceptic energy minister, may think he has killed onshore wind, but he will now discover that money talks louder than ministers.

...

Guy Shrubsole, an energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, has emailed to say he's spotted something interesting:

Trawling through the energy bill’s small print, it looks like the government is trying to dilute still further its already weak commitments on cleaning up the power sector. Up until now, DECC have said they were looking at the power sector decarbonising to 100g of carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour by 2030. But today, DECC have snuck out documents saying they will be ‘updating their analysis’ to anticipate emissions being up to 200g/kWh by 2030.

They’d already moved the goalposts - now they’re moving them again. It’s a total cop-out that will hurt the climate and tie us into an expensive dash for gas.”

The relevant doc is here

Of course, the Committee on Climate Change - which was set up to advise government on setting carbon budgets - recommends (pdf) a target of 50g CO2e/kWh by 2030.