Lib Dem leader's green plans more than a moon shot

Nick Clegg has outlined his party's intention to make Britain self-sufficient in energy and carbon neutral by 2050. But are his plans realistic, asks David Adam?
David Adam
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday August 21 2008 15:35 BST

The Lib Dems compare the effort needed on green energy to the Apollo moon landings
"Dealing with climate change is the number one challenge facing the world today," said the Lib Dems last summer when they announced ambitious plans to make Britain zero carbon by 2050.
Climate change is still a challenge, but energy security is a sexier topic right now, and a new leader needs a new message. Hence, Nick Clegg's shift to focus on reducing Britain's "ever increasing dependence on vulnerable foreign energy supplies". Climate change and energy security are two sides of the same coin, after all, and measures to address one help with the other.
The measures may be a year old, but are they any good? They were certainly widely lauded last year, mainly because they called the Labour and Conservative bet to reduce carbon pollution 60% and 80% respectively, and went all-in with a pledge to eliminate them completely.A carbon neutral Britain in a little over four decades (perhaps as few as eight parliamentary terms) would be an astounding accomplishment, given that greenhouse gas emissions from almost all aspects of UK society are rising.
Companies and politicians promise, and sometimes deliver, cuts in emissions, but check the small print: often the reduction is only against "business as usual" – in other words, emissions have still gone up, just not by as much as they were expected to.
Britain is on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, but only because some major carbon sources (aviation and shipping most prominently) are left off the balance sheet. By any reasonable measure, Britain produces significantly more carbon dioxide pollution than in 1990.
The refined Lib Dem energy strategy certainly identifies the problem correctly. It focuses on our fossil-fuel dependent electricity generators and our woefully insulated houses. It wants a massive investment in renewable energy to address the first, and promises beefed up building regulations and insulation paid for by the utility companies on the second.
A ban on nuclear and coal would place a giant demand on new renewable sources, though the Lib Dem document fails to say how much renewable capacity it aims for. The short-fall will be made up by EU-sourced natural gas, with the carbon dioxide captured and stored. Again, no hard figures – and no technical guarantee it will work on the required scale either.
The Local Government Association reckons £500m a year would insulate the leakiest 12m houses and reduce household emissions by a fifth, though the utility companies will be in no mood to cough up from their weakened profits.
The move to install smart meters looks a good one (and one the present government is poised to announce) but we cannot be sure that the promised cuts in consumer electricity use will be sustained in the long term. But the pledge to make every new home built to a zero-carbon rating in a little over two years looks unrealistic, given the costs involved and the current problems in the building industry.
Ambitious targets can be a good thing, of course, and a reluctance to think big has certainly hampered Britain's attempts on renewables so far. Perhaps their sluggish deployment could be accelerated by a quango body similar to the Olympic Delivery Authority, as the Lib Dems suggest. But do even these ambitious promises go far enough?
Nick Clegg calls today for an "Apollo project" to make Britain energy independent by 2050. The government's renewables advisers say it will cost £100bn to boost our renewable energy provision to just 15% by 2020. The cost of the decade long Apollo programme in today's money? £70bn. Compared to fighting climate change (or tackling energy security), putting a man on the moon is small change.