The Telegraph is reporting that David Cameron's government looks set to phase out subsidies by the end of the decade.
Within weeks, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Energy Secretary, will announce details of subsidies for renewable energy covering the period 2013-2017, following a consultation on whether they should be cut by more than the 10 per cent reductions already planned.The entire article can be read at The Telegraph website.
Mr Osborne is understood to be pressing Mr Davey for onshore subsidy cuts of around 25 per cent for that period.
However, the words from Mr Letwin, who is a key Conservative policy guru, go much further in strongly suggesting the entire subsidy regime will be history by 2020.
Sent last week to Terry Stewart, president of the Dorset branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Mr Letwin’s email states: “I anticipate that subsidies for both solar photovoltaic and onshore wind will come down to zero over the next few years and should have disappeared by 2020, since both of these forms of energy are gradually becoming economic without the need for subsidies.”
The claim that the need for subsidies in waning should be view very skeptical, as Robert Bradley Jr.'s latest article at the MasterResource blog demonstrates, in noting the American wind industry's arguments that the Production Tax Credit (PTC) should be extended until the industry is competitive has no merit.
“Wind Farms Canceled, Layoffs Starting” (government dependence is risky business)
What about the repeated claims that windpower is almost competitive? Back in 1986, a representative of the American Wind Energy Association told Congress:
The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted windpower will be that State’s lowest cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro. [1]
He added: “We are not quite there. We have hopes.”
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