Thursday 5 July 2012

LOOK! GROWTH!!

Renewable energy generation in the UK has soared to new record levels.  During the first quarter of this year, more than 11% of our electricity was wind, solar and hydro-electric.

Over the past two years, onshore wind energy generation has climbed by 51% (offshore, 50%).  Overall, renewable energy output increased by 33% last year.

This all helped the "green" economy in the UK achieve a growth in real terms of 2.3% in 2010/11, reaching some £122 billion, or about 8% of GDP.

Hang on a minute - what's that?  Growth?  In the UK economy?  GROWTH?  GREEN GROWTH??

You do have too ask yourself what kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer makes anti-green speeches on behalf of his more lunatic backbenchers, claiming that "green" policies and economic growth are incompatible.  After all, the "green" economy is one of the few sectors that actually is growing, bringing money into the economy, boosting GDP, while everything else this government is doing is slowing the economy down and costing us squillions.

Business leaders are calling on the government to get its act together where renewables and sustainability are concerned.  Too many prejudices among the Telegraph readers in the Tory Party (and their Daily Mail reading wives) are seeking to wreck this one growth area.  The rest of the world is pressing ahead with renewables; we're sit around squabbling about them.  Blame Delingpole, and his fellow delusionists.  But the fault really lies with Cameron and Osborne and their insane pandering to the insane right-wing fringe.

It's just like the moronic claims that renewables are the cause of rocketing domestic energy bills.  Check out this graphic.  The thin green line at the bottom represents the Renewables Obligation Certificates - the levy charged to electricity providers to help create a level playing field for renewables.  Not subsidies (only idiots call them government subsidies - an idiot like George Osborne).  And wind power accounts for only a fraction of the full ROC payments, and so only about a third of that thin green line is actually windfarms.  The rise in household bills is entirely - as you can see below - the cause of wholesale gas prices:

Now, do you still think that windfarms are the cause of increases in your annual household energy bill?  If so, you're probably a supporter of the Conservative Party and you're foursquare behind the Chancellor's attack on the only part of the UK's economy that is really growing while giving us an abundance of clean, green, remarkably inexpensive electricity.

And you're a traitor to your country, a betrayer of your own grandchildren, and the enemy of everything that's good and just and true.