Moving towards a brave new world
The UK has put in place some of the boldest energy and climate change policies in the world as it moves towards a low-carbon economy. Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, explains how an economy based around energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies offers considerable opportunity for investment
We are facing unprecedented challenges
to our environment, our economy, and
the future security of our energy supplies.
The decisions we make now will affect
the planet and our way of life for
generations to come and it is into this
environment that the UK’s Department of
Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has
been born.
The creation of the new Department reflects the fact that climate change and energy policies are inextricably linked – two-thirds of our emissions come from the energy we use – and as we move towards a low-carbon economy, each and every sector of our society must reduce its carbon footprint on our environment.
DECC has three key priorities: ensuring our energy is secure, affordable and efficient; bringing about the transition to a low-carbon Britain; and achieving an international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009. Despite the current economic difficulties, now is not the time to row back on our ambitions: the Stern report makes clear that the costs of ignoring climate change will, in the long term, far outweigh the costs of acting now.
In fact, an economy based around energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies offers considerable opportunity for investment, jobs and financial savings. And we will work to empower people who want to act on CO2 and play their part in combating climate change, saving energy and money. We are building the right conditions to help the UK pioneer and promote green energy industries; industries that will improve our energy security and reduce our dependence on polluting fuels. We are now the world leader in offshore wind, the second most attractive market in the world for investment in nuclear power and we will be one of the first countries to demonstrate carbon capture and storage on a full-scale plant.
In fact, we are committed to sourcing 15% of our energy – up to a third of our electricity and large increases in our heat and power – from renewable sources by 2020. This all creates great investment potential. Investment that can help us not only secure our future energy supplies, but do so in a way that is good for the planet too. The Department aims to be a catalyst for change. Imagine somebody telling you that 20 years from now almost everything you do in your life you will do differently. That is how fundamental the transition to a lowcarbon economy in the UK will be.
The UK has some of the boldest energy and climate change policies in the world. We are enshrining in law the most far-sighted and ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets on the planet – 80% on 1990 levels by 2050. Britain wants to play a leading role in securing climate deals in Europe, and globally; in Copenhagen in 2009, DECC will be at the forefront of these efforts. And by the middle of this century, all the UK’s goods and services will need to be produced using one tenth of the carbon they do today. We have changed the law to speed up the adoption of energy generated by wind, solar and tidal power, to encourage the development of low-carbon vehicles and to put a price on carbon emissions.
The shift to low-carbon in the UK, and around the world, is now largely inevitable, and businesses both within and outside the UK, have the opportunity to benefit from this transition, in both the short and long term. The benefits to businesses in the transition to a low-carbon economy are potentially huge, both in terms of money saved through a quick shift to energy efficiency, and through building companies capable of competing in the huge global market for low-carbon goods and services, now worth £3tn a year and growing fast.
In the UK, new research shows that more than a million people in the UK could be employed in the low-carbon sector by the middle of the next decade in everything from manufacturing and construction to environmental consultancy and low-carbon venture capital.
In developing a low-carbon industrial strategy in the UK, we will specifically focus on four fundamental issues – each of which reflects an area where the UK now needs to make a step change. First, we know energy efficiency is key for businesses; it helps save money and reduce carbon emissions. However, in a downturn and with credit conditions tight, it’s understandable that making changes or investing in energy efficiency measures can be a difficult decision to make, even if the costs of change are quickly covered by the savings. We will be working together with business, to make the shift quicker and more easily.
Second, the UK, like the US, must now begin to shift its energy generation infrastructure on to more sustainable sources, and create an electricity grid that is both energy efficient and adaptable to new forms of power. Our commitment to new nuclear power has made the UK the second most attractive market in the world for nuclear investment; we’ve put measures in place for a massive expansion of renewable electricity and we are determined to drive forward demonstrations for carbon capture and storage to clean up how we use coal.
Third, we have created a £350m package to help Britain make the
shift to low-carbon vehicles. In tandem, we aim to make the UK the
best place in the world to demonstrate, develop or manufacture
low-carbon vehicles or their components. This is a huge global
market, in which the UK has the potential to be a leader.
Finally, and fundamentally, to really capture the benefits of the global shift to low-carbon, the UK hopes to be the best place in the world to locate or build a low-carbon business. That means policies that make research and development here easy and productive, infrastructure that meets the needs of low-carbon innovators and a training system that helps British workers get the skills they will need to handle new technologies and ways of doing things.
The shift to low-carbon is vital to creating the jobs and growth that will help countries fight out of the downturn. But this approach is more than a green job creation scheme, or “greening” the recovery. This is about looking beyond the short term, to Britain’s industrial future. Low-carbon is not a sector of our economy: it is, or will be, our whole economy, and a global market.
For more information, visit: www. decc.gov.uk
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