The Environment Agency will install up to 80 turbines on its own land to help the UK switch to greener energy sources
by Michael Smith
Britain needs a 'Green New Deal' to stimulate investment in clean energy and move to a low carbon economy, the head of the Environment Agency has said.
Addressing the annual conference of the agency in London recently, its chairman Chris Smith called for Government to draw up a comprehensive, long term strategy to drive the changes.
The strategy, he said, would need to echo the fundamental changes made under President Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal policies in the 1930s to resurrect the economy following the Great Depression.
"I believe we do have a great potential for a Green New Deal approach in Britain which puts serious investment into a new low-carbon economy in areas where we already have a natural advantage - tidal and wind - or where there's a real social need, such as insulation for older people's homes," Lord Smith said.
"To deal with the financial crisis, Government has been bold. To deal with the energy and climate crises, we need the same boldness."
He outlined the key elements he envisages as part of a Green New Deal, including:
# Development of carbon capture and storage for coal-fired power stations
# More incentives for energy efficiency in homes and businesses
# Greater use of combined heat and power (CHP)
# Removal of disincentives to the development of anaerobic digestion
# Feed-in tariffs and grants to help householders use sustainable energy
# A major national program for power generation from renewable sources
# Continuing development of work to adapt to the effects of climate change
The Environment Agency will be making its own contribution to encouraging greener energy by generating its own renewable energy, chief executive Paul Leinster announced.
Up to 80 wind turbines could be built on Environment Agency-owned land across England and Wales - enough to power a city the size of York.
The turbines will generate up to £2.4m of revenue every year, which the agency said will be ploughed back into its work protecting and improving the environment, and adapting to climate change.
"We all need to take account rather than just talk about climate change," Dr Leinster said.
"In the Environment Agency, climate change adaptation and mitigation will be increasingly factored into everything we do."
Lord Smith said that the we need to have the same boldness as the government has shown with regards to the financial and economic crisis. We indeed must be bold as regards to the “Green New deal” but as to whether the government did the right thing in the way it has ploughed taxpayer's money into the banking system and the way it is borrowing in order to reduce a few percent of VAT in a false hope to revitalize the economy is still a question.
In my opinion, and I think I made that opinion rather plain in an other article, the gimmicks as regards the reduction in VAT, which, in fact, may be against EU rules even (at least so the German Finance Minister appears to basically suggest), are not going to achieve the intended “spend, spend, spend” rush of the public. Is anyone really going to rush out to buy this or that thing just because, due to the reduction in VAT, it has just gone down by two or three pounds or even a fiver? The answer is a firm and categorical NO! A reduction in income tax on the other hand, especially say for the lower earners, might have made quite a difference, but 2.5% on VAT will not.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling got the sums definitely wrong here and all it is going to do is lay up trouble for us in the near future. With for us I mean primarily the British taxpayers and here especially those in the low earnings bracket. It is not going to ease the economy's ails; not one bit.
We will end up not just, of that I am certain, in a recession. Worse is to come. The way it looks to me we are rushing headlong into a depression and no one seems to want to notice it.
© M Smith (Veshengro), January 2009
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The chief of the Environment Agency calls for 'Green New Deal'
