The Energy Bill: decarbonising power by 2030
19 December 2012
A joint briefing from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, RSPB, WWF and the Association for the Conservation of Energy
The Energy Bill will shape the energy sources used to power Britain for the next forty years. Over £100 billion investment is now needed over the next decade as a fifth of our older power plants face closure and neglected infrastructure is upgraded. What they are replaced with will have long-standing consequences for the future competitiveness of the economy, energy prices and consumer bills.
These decisions will also have a major impact on our carbon emissions, at a time when recent reports from the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, UNEP and PwC have warned that the world needs a significant and urgent shift in investment patterns towards energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies if we are to keep global warming below the 2⁰C limit that all countries have agreed is a safe threshold.
There is now an overwhelming consensus that the best way to position the UK as a modern, efficient economy attracting investment and creating jobs, while cutting carbon emissions and controlling energy bills, is to use the Energy Bill to decarbonise our electricity supply by 2030.
