Energy security at risk as UK set to miss 2035 green electricity target

Ministers have not provided 'strategic leadership' and have no plan, government committee says

The sun rises behind an electricity transmission tower in the UK. Bloomberg

The UK is risking its environmental plans and long-term energy security as it is on track to fail to meet its targets to generate all electricity without burning gas by the middle of the next decade, MPs have warned.

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee said in a report released on Friday that ministers have not provided “strategic leadership” and that there is no coherent, overarching plan.

The way that windfall taxes on energy generators and oil companies were structured favoured the latter group, the cross-party group, which includes Conservative MPs, the committee said.

It also said that the government was not tackling the cost of developing new wind and solar farms, among other things.

Costs have soared in recent months as supply chains were put under pressure.

“Ministers think that publishing strategies and releasing social media videos will deliver the energy infrastructure the country needs. It’s failed before and it keeps failing,” committee chairman Darren Jones said.

“The UK is now competing with the US and Europe for investment. Government must urgently make us an attractive investment proposition again and ensure that the pool of capital and labour available for building low-carbon energy projects is not lost.”

Green energy sources — in pictures

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is located about 50 kilometres south of Dubai. AP

Masdar, the Abu Dhabi clean energy company, owns a one-fifth stake in London Array, the offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary. Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg News

A hydro plant in Himachal Pradesh, India. Photo: Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA)

The Geothermal Pilot Project drills 4km beneath Masdar City in search of boiling temperatures to generate electricity and fuel the city's cooling system. Nicole Hill /The National

A hydroelectric motor at a tidal farm in the harbour of Brest, in western France. AFP

The warning comes two days after Lord Hill of Oareford, who led a review into the UK’s public listing programme, warned that US President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was attracting money that could otherwise have been invested in the UK

“It’s like a dirty great Hoover is on full suction mode,” he told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee.

“The way that is re-enforcing a mentality that the US is sort of where you want to be for business is clearly a factor.

“I don’t see how one can begin to compete with the scale of the subsidy that the Americans are pumping into it, which is massive.”

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee's report is the latest in a series of warnings that the UK is set to miss its 2035 electricity targets.

Last month, both the National Audit Office and the Climate Change Committee — the official government advisers — warned that the country risked missing the target.

These warnings come less than a year after centre-right think tank Onward said the same, while Danish wind company Orsted warned that the 2030 target to build 50 gigawatts of offshore wind is likely to fail.

The MPs on Friday said that the attractiveness of investing in low-carbon technologies in the UK has deteriorated, putting the funding for renewable projects under threat.

They also called on energy regulator Ofgem to audit the claims that Drax — which burns wood to produce electricity — used to get government subsidies for green power projects.

Drax says that because the carbon that is released by the trees it burns — which it calls biomass — was recently absorbed by those same trees, it is not adding to the levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

But its critics say that this works only if Drax uses highly sustainable wood, and a BBC Panorama programme last year claimed that the company was importing high-grade wood from virgin forests to burn in the UK.

It is estimated that Drax will get £11 billion ($14 billion) in subsidies between 2011 and 2027.

“It’ll be hard enough to meet the challenge of cutting carbon emissions in energy without the prospect of any operators taking advantage of the subsidy regime,” Mr Jones said.

“If any firm is found to be abusing the public purse by falsely inflating their renewable credentials, they should face consequences.

“We are not against bioenergy, but oppose it when it’s based on unsustainable sources.”