June must mark the start of a new offensive - or the revolution is over

David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday 21 March 2009

It was always going to be a big ask for Britain to meet its European target of generating 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. And despite official optimism, government insiders privately admit that the task is hopeless.
Britain's initial response to the proposed European targets, after all, was repeated attempts in Brussels to water them down. Civil servants from three government departments briefed journalists the day before the plan was announced with little enthusiasm. The government's own clean-energy advisers have warned that Britain could spend £100bn over the next decade and still not hit the target.
Not so, say ministers. Britain will lead a green energy revolution, Gordon Brown promised last year when he unveiled the government's proposals to meet the target, which will be confirmed in a new strategy to be announced in June.
Thousands of state-of-the-art windmills miles from shore would send back clean electricity, planning objections would be swept aside to crush "nimby" opposition to wind farms on land, and sustainable biofuels would eat into the carbon emissions of the nation's cars and heaters. With the right incentives and a following wind, Britain "might just possibly" hit the 15% target, the government said.
The recession has made the task harder but experts say the financial crisis is merely peeling back the curtain and revealing Britain's renewables ambitions to be punier than advertised.
The problems begin with the wide scope of the target, which encompasses all forms of energy, with heat and transport included alongside electricity. Heat and transport, officials immediately said, were too difficult, which meant the bulk of the green revolution must be borne by the electricity sector. And for Britain, that means building windmills.
Blessed with some of the best wind resource in the world, Britain is also home to a web of planning restrictions and an ageing infrastructure designed to channel power from its industrial heartland to the remote fringes, not the other way around. Offshore wind turbines are easier on the eye, but harder on the pocket. And there is nothing to plug them into.
Ministers have promised to sweep away these problems with a triple whammy of revisions aimed at the planning system, the national grid and financial incentives for renewables all in the pipeline. Campaigners praised last year's proposals, and the June strategy will promise much.
The question is whether it can be delivered. And the likely answer is starting to worry many in the industry. The credit crunch slowed the already slow rate of renewables deployment to a crawl. With financing and debt harder to come by, expensive offshore wind farms such as the London Array look less attractive to the big utilities, while smaller firms that do much of the ground work are finding themselves shunned by risk-averse investors.
Concern is growing that the latest round of offshore wind development has stalled, and that Britain is increasingly seen as an unfavourable investment for foreign wind energy companies.