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UK faces job losses as businesses threaten to flee abroad to escape green energy levies
June 12, 2011 by Robert Mendick, Edward Malnick and Andrew Cave in Sunday Telegraph
June 12, 2011 by Robert Mendick, Edward Malnick and Andrew Cave in Sunday Telegraph
"Not every country in the world has the same commitment to climate change [as the UK] and therefore you may feel commercially disadvantaged," Sir Roger says, adding: "That gives you cause for thought as to where you want to invest." ...Dr Constable said last week: "The consumer interest is being sacrificed in efforts to meet arbitrary targets, apparently at any price. This is not a sustainable policy."
Also filed under [
Energy Policy]
Britain is banking on a big expansion of relatively expensive offshore wind power over the next decade to help meet its 2020 renewable energy targets set by the European Union and the consumer will have to pay for it through subsidies to encourage new green technologies.
But, contrary to expectations that costs would fall as offshore technology develops, prices have soared because of a lack of competition.
The extra investment cost of building power plants such as offshore wind farms is equivalent to nearly 10 percent of overall British business investment in the next 10 years, Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh said in his study "The Myth of Green Jobs."
"It is clear that the public and its political representatives have never signed up to the proposition that the UK should sacrifice a minimum of 4-5 percent of GDP annually in order to meet climate change targets," Hughes said.