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Abolish £66billion EU Renewable Target, says Policy Exchange
A new report from leading think tank Policy Exchange says Britain should renegotiate its commitment to the European Union’s 2020 renewable energy target.
The study says the renewable target is unnecessarily expensive and damages the prospects for reducing carbon emissions over the coming decades by wasting money that could be better used to fund research and demonstration of a wide range of new, low carbon technologies.
The report – 2020 Hindsight: Does The Renewable Energy Target Help The UK Decarbonise? – examines 16 different plans for achieving the UK target of an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050.
None of the models showed that the UK’s commitment to producing 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 was needed to reach its carbon target.
The report says that if the UK is to set a leading example to other countries around the world in tackling climate change, then policies need to be both effective in cutting carbon and economically affordable.
