Page 4601 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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security and protecting the most vulnerable in society. By 2020 Britain aims to generate around 40 per cent of its electricity from low-carbon sources.
In another example of moving from discussion to action, the UK government’s low-carbon transition plan introduced five-yearly carbon budgets for all government agencies and authorities. The heads of these agencies must meet the specific targets in their carbon budget just as they must meet their financial budgets. I see significant merit in this idea and I have directed my department to develop policy options for its possible implementation.
The opportunities that I refer to as emerging from the challenge of moving to a low-carbon future for the ACT arise from the fact that such a crisis can propel policies, programs and community awareness toward creating a sustainable future. This has, among other benefits, real potential for sustainable economic growth. Wherever I went in the UK, Denmark and Germany I saw major efforts being put in by governments to capture this benefit. In London, for example, in my discussions with the London Development Agency and with the UK Environment Agency, I was advised that at a local and national level efforts to address climate change have gone hand in hand with economic growth. Between 1990 and 2005, the UK economy grew by more than 30 per cent while greenhouse gas emissions fell by more than 12 per cent.
Senior officials from the German government that I met in Berlin noted that Germany has developed its energy and climate policies since July 2007 to serve this end as well. Their government decided on an integrated energy and climate program which sets the following goals: a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020; at least 30 per cent share of renewables in electricity by 2020; doubling the renewables share in heat generation to 14 per cent by 2020; doubling energy productivity by 2020 compared to 1990 levels; and doubling combined heat and power generation, or CHP as it is known, to 25 per cent of electricity generation by 2020.
This has led to new laws or significant amendments to existing legislation; for example, the Renewable Energy Sources Act, the Renewable Energies Heat Act, the Biofuel Quota Act, the Combined Heat and Power Act and the Energy Savings Ordinance. A recent German study has investigated the economic effects of these policy approaches. It has shown that these policies are triggering and will continue to trigger investment which will result in at least 500,000 additional jobs being created, net, by 2020; annual avoided fossil energy imports will be worth approximately €22 billion; the national GDP will annually increase by around €20 billion a year; and in 2030 the national debt will be some €180 billion lower than without these measures. Clearly, a policy focusing on energy efficiency and renewables is therefore beneficial to both the economy and the climate. The Germans are blunt in their advice: this is true for any energy-importing industrial country.
The third insight I want to focus on is that consensus drives real change. It is clear that political consensus drives the most successful programs and policies. This was powerfully demonstrated by the administrations in the German town of Freiburg and in Denmark’s Copenhagen. In Copenhagen, I met with Mr Klaus Bondam, the mayor responsible for the city’s environment and engineering administrations. There are
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