Department of Energy and Climate Change

UK Wind Energy: Business Leadership and Green Growth

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Fast forward to a vision of Britain in the year 2020: 30% of the UK’s electricity demand will produce zero carbon; utilities will be settling balance sheets to the satisfaction of shareholders; investors will be counting a decent return on investment; government ministers will be celebrating the success of their policies; consumers will be paying reasonable rates to power and light their homes and businesses.

If a week is a long time in politics, eight years is a very short cycle in the energy industry and without an acceleration of government action, the UK is at risk of failing on its target of sourcing 15% of its demand from renewable sources. Every aspect of the dream scenario described above could be reversed. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 17, 2012 at 11:30 AM

UK Energy Policy: When Will the Chancellor Listen to Consumers?

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David Cameron’s promise within his first month as UK prime minister to be “greenest government ever” looks at risk of derailment – by his own Chancellor, George Osborne.

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats appeared to carry over the political consensus on action on climate change and a switch to renewable energy. But what began as an ideological rift in the British Cabinet has become a very public clash between the Tory chief at the Treasury and the Lib-Dem boss at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 11, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Cleantech IT Revolution Sweeps Number 10 Downing Street

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Luke Nicholson takes a late and frugal lunch of soup and bread in the fourth-floor conference room of a former fabric warehouse in London’s East End. The walls are thinly-painted brick, the floors are bare wooden planks, and there’s a visible gap by a nearby window frame, letting air and light in through a place they shouldn’t go.

It’s an unlikely setting for Nicholson’s company Carbon Culture, a cutting-edge clean-tech startup that writes software to monitor energy consumption, expenditure and carbon emissions in eight U.K. government departments, and is about to roll its product out to the private sector. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM