Brown forced to reaffirm EU energy commitment
Gordon Brown was pressured today to reaffirm the government’s commitment to meeting renewable energy targets over the next decade.
It was Tony Blair who originally committed to the target, which demands the UK generate 20 per cent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020.
However, following developments yesterday, key Labour ministers appeared to be showing signs of reneging on the target.
A leaked document from business minister John Hutton to Gordon Brown attempted to alert the prime minister to the “practical difficulties” in reaching the environmental promise.
There was suggestion of backing out, although Mr Hutton admitted this would be “very hard to negotiate.and very controversial”.
At prime minister’s question time today, acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable questioned whether these private signals meant “Brown is less green than Blair?”
But Mr Brown fiercely defended the government stance, saying Labour were “absolutely committed” to the European target.
The prime minister said: “We are committed to the targets agreed in the European Union. The European Union will now publish what it believes that each country is able to do, and we will engage in a consultation.”
Vince Cable asked why energy minister Malcolm Wicks had spoken publicly of reducing the figure to ten per cent and suggested that Mr Wicks was acting under pressure from the nuclear lobby.
The prime minister rebuffed these claims saying the government was even looking at the possibility that its target of a 60 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2050 was “not ambitious enough”.
The debate comes in the middle of Energy Saving Week, a campaign run by the Energy Saving Trust aimed at reducing the population’s carbon footprint through simple changes in the home.
