Leading article: A black week for green energy (in Britain)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-black-week-for-green-energy-6261448.html

Leading article: A black week for green energy

Sunday 13 November 2011

The boast that the coalition would be "the greenest government ever" came to a sad end last month. Its death can be dated precisely to the declaration by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Conservative annual conference that Britain would cut carbon emissions "no slower but also no faster" than other European countries. "The greenest government ever" thus becomes "as green a government as the others but no greener". David Cameron's promise, made when he spoke to civil servants at the Department of Energy and Climate Change three days after becoming Prime Minister, lasted less than 18 months.

The decision to pull the plug on solar power is part of that retreat from green ambition. As we report today, that decision has provoked a reaction from an unusual alliance, including the Confederation of British Industry and housing associations. The breadth of this revolt suggests that Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, should think again.

That means thinking again about the tension between Mr Cameron's desire to show leadership and Mr Osborne's determination that the Government should not become carried away with expensive gestures. This newspaper had hoped, in the dying days of Tony Blair's premiership, that Britain had opted for the role of green leadership. It was David Miliband's idea, when he was Mr Huhne's predecessor, that this country should set a green example to the world. Mr Miliband made a powerful case that this combined the national economic interest with green principle. Britain should aspire, he argued, to be a leading supplier of green technology, one of the guaranteed global growth markets.

Mr Cameron, to his credit, seemed not only to accept this argument but to insist that it was not weakened by hard times in the world economy – on the contrary, it was all the more important that Britain should seize first-mover advantage in leading the way to low-carbon technologies. And Mr Huhne, to his credit, has been an effective minister in negotiating the balance between green idealism and the compromises required of any democratic government, especially at a time of high fuel prices.

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