back to article Government promises low carbon future

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has outlined our bright, green future in the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan which aims to cut emissions by 34 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. Some 21 per cent has already been cut., and by 2020 Miliband reckons we'll have 1.2m in "green jobs", whatever they are. Some 1.5m households will be …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Eco politicians

    "approval of a biomass plant in Teeside"

    Sensible way to get rid of all the bullshit this government is peddling.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How much...

    ...of the drop in emissions is down to the Conservatives closing coal mines and switching to gas-fired electricity production? (Policies I think the likes of Gordon Brown opposed in Opposition)

    Because I'm buggered if I can think of anything this government's done to reduce emissions. Well apart from screwing up the whole economy so spectacularly that there won't be a factory left in the country and we'll all be too poor to fill up the car. Taking us back to the Dark Ages will have a nice effect on CO2.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Pinpricks

    I hope a number of those 'millions' should be 'billions', otherwise they are pointless blips. Government needs to front load a good £20k per house for serious energy efficiency, and a sizeable percentage of that will have to be grant.

    Basically, call it £200bn over a decade.

    Maybe they should tax the bankers for all the money they stole.

  4. Tom Taylor-Duxbury
    Alert

    Simples!

    How's about this for a simple idea; I know govt's don't like those as there are no foundations for ivory towers. How's about a rising scale of price for power usage? At present the more you use the less you pay, your first kWh costs plenty, your 100th a bunch less. Big (domestic) users get power at a lower cost than a granny with a fridge & a TV.

    Billing is not complex, no need to change a thing. "polluter pays"

    As far as electric cars, windmills, biomass, barrages, tidal, solar, carbon taxes - all bollocks I'm afraid unless we live in caves and animal skins. Bad science driven by equally poor data collection and interpretation and not forgetting the lovely grants and irrational fear.

  5. RichardSmith
    Linux

    Re Mike: Taking us back to the Dark Ages.

    The myth that any reduction to our carbon wastes will destroy the economy has long been exploded. Plenty of ways to reduce carbon will save money and help the economy. If the intention were to go completely solar/wind/tidal then the crack about going back to the dark ages might have some validity. (Read Bruce Sterlings essay in "Fusion" by Baen books for example.)

    But the report says that 40% of the energy will be created by renewables, nuclear and "clean coal". Geothermal is great if you have a location that can use it.

    Nuclear can certainly sustain a high technology society. But I have severe doubts about "clean coal".

    A single clean coal plant does not exist on the planet. No one has shown that high pressure CO2 pumped underground won't leak out again which would invalidate the whole concept in a instant. More telling, a "clean coal" power plant would use up 60% of its energy output (167% more expensive) trapping the CO2, compressing the gas and pumping it underground. (And if we add 1.67% to the price of "clean coals" electric price it fails in the market place which is WHY there is not a single "clean coal" power plant on the planet.)

    Anyway I've read about energy plans that would take us back to the dark ages but I do not see how what is discussed in this article can fit in that category.

    Warm regards, Rick.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    "£6m for a smart grid"

    Would that be those dodgy insecure meters which send unencrypted data and can be hacked easily?

    Those smart meters?

  7. spam 1
    FAIL

    bright, green future

    What bollocks, the future will be miserable.

    1.2 million green jobs? 1.2 million people employed doing what we already do but in a much more expensive way - who is going to pay them especially with 1.2 million less people doing something useful.

    Some stupid bint on TV today said yes electricity prices will rise but efficiency improvements in the home will mean savings and our bills could actually be reduced - yeah right,

    And the Severn Barrage? FFS buy one nuke from the French (cos we don't know how to make them anymore) it will generate more electricity than the Severn Barrage at a small fraction of the financial and environmental costs.

  8. Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
    Grenade

    owl magnets?

    I notice this time around Milliband Minor has learned from Milliband Major's mistakes and gone for a PDF file, rather than a Wiki.

    Damn shame, if you ask me.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/05/defra_wiki_abuse/

  9. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    FAIL

    Can someone explain

    How generating 30% of our electrickery from wind is going to be anything other than a colossal cockup when the damned things dont generate power for 30% of the time?

    And we're going to have a nice Severn barrage..... bet that get all the eco-warriors in the south wales/somerset areas all fired up

    I cant see that being built without the amount of protests usually reserved for nuclear power stations.

    Which brings me neatly to my final point, If the french can generate 80% of their power from non CO2 producing nuclear power, why cant we do it?

    Or is it a case of the french refusing to pay enough cash to the government for them to support it........

    Fail... because it will... and none of the current shower in charge will have to clean up the mess

  10. Charles Manning

    re:bright, green future

    Well you might first consider that most jobs are complete bullshit anyway and do absolutely nothing productive. Greening the way these people work only gets you half the saving. It would be better to get rid of these jobs and services completely.

    A lot of emissions reduction is just creative accounting. Should you consider emissions at the point of generation or point of consumption? If you want to think globally then it has to be at the point of consumption. Politicians often prefer point of production since if a factory is shut down then they can claim a reduction even if the citizens are still consuming the same products made elsewhere.

  11. Eddie 3
    Flame

    Waste of time & money

    With China's & India's economies growing at 8-10%, it wouldn't make a crap of difference if the UK cut it's CO2 to zero or doubled it's output.

    This £250 a year tax we're all going to paying should be to embrace & deal with climate change, not Canute-like try and stop it. I'm sure the JET laboratory could use the £100bn better than subsidising bloody windmills. We could be world leaders in fusion power - we can't even keep the one windmill factory open on the IoW - now have to import them from China!

    The 1.2m jobs are to be civil servants - one department collecting carbon taxes, another handing out carbon credits - just like the existing big government bloat we have now.

  12. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    The Severn barrarge revisited

    Proposed in the 1960s and onward IIRC.

    Yes it would bring potentially massive chages to the estuary. But being essentially a very large lump of concrete its life expectancy is in centuries, not decades.

    Its ability to generate several % of the whole UK eletricity demand on a *predictable* basis (tides are powered by the moon) suggest it could be a good anchor generator at certain times of every day. This can be extended by gating the flow.

    Water flowing down hill (or more subtly in the form of tidal or ocean currents) might not be very glamourous but can supply substantial dollops of power in a relatively small volume, which seems to be what big generators like.

    Of course we still seem to have the worst housing insulation standards in Northern Europe.

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