Labour’s preference for market principles and big companies betrays its low-carbon rhetoric
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- The Guardian, Friday 27 February 2009
- Article history
The UK’s energy policy has to focus on lowering carbon emissions by a combination of renewable energy and reducing demand. This requires a system almost entirely different from that we have in place today: one that is conducive to innovation and change; and one that is flexible and resilient to all sorts of technological futures.
The current coal policy illuminates just how static and rigid – the opposite of innovative – Britain’s energy policy is. This lack of innovation has been fought for, and won, by the large companies and lobbies, so they can carry on doing as they wish – despite the urgency of climate change. The government has been complicit in this, and it is the people of Britain, and their children, who will have to pay for the consequences.
- Catherine Mitchell is professor of energy policy at the University of Exeter catherine.mitchell@exeter.ac.uk