Progress towards green cheap energy targets 'too slow' - 30/11/2010

Labour leader Ed Miliband's green cheap energy targets are unlikely to be met unless the Department of Energy and Climate Change adopts a "greater sense of urgency and purpose".

This is the conclusion of the Public Accounts Committee, which noted that Mr Miliband's renewables targets, set during his former role as energy secretary, will not be met until "unacceptably slow" progress speeds up, the Telegraph reports.

The UK signed up to an EU target to derive 15 per cent of the country's energy from renewable sources by 2020, but the proportion of cheap electricity from renewables stood at 6.7 per cent last year - "well short" of the ten per cent target set for this year.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour chair of the parliamentary committee, commented: ''We are concerned that the department agreed to the legally binding EU target to supply 15 per cent of the UK's energy from renewable sources by 2020 without clear plans, targets for each renewable energy technology, estimates of funding required or understanding how the rate at which planning applications for onshore wind turbines were being rejected might affect progress."

She noted that the longer-term target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 has not yet been given a timescale.

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