Responding to Ed Miliband's speech at the Energy UK conference
, CEO of pro-growth campaign
group Britain Remade, said:
“Since the General Election Labour has taken important steps in
transforming election promises into action to get Britain
building again.
“Our sclerotic planning system means it can take up to 13 years
to build a new offshore wind farm, despite actual construction of
the turbines only taking two years. Anything that can slash the
time it takes to build more offshore wind farms is welcome
news.
“But the government has more to do. Work needs to be done to
streamline environmental impact assessments and tackling baseless
judicial reviews. It is things like these that add a huge amount
of time and cost to building any kind of infrastructure in
Britain.”
Commenting on speech given today by Energy Secretary at the Energy UK Annual Conference Jess Ralston,
Head of Energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence
Unit (ECIU) said: "Anyone who has paid an
energy bill over the past few years knows the price of relying on
gas for the majority of our home heating and a significant
proportion of electricity generation. Decarbonising the grid
means switching away from volatile gas, which will increasingly
come from abroad as the North Sea continues its decline, and
towards British wind and solar power. Transitioning from gas
boilers to electric heat pumps means household heating bills are
less exposed to the unstable international markets if another gas
crisis comes along, which history tells us is very
possible.
"Reducing our gas demand is the most sensible step we can take
after being the country worst hit in Western Europe from the
crisis and moving to clean power is more of a no-brainer now than
it has ever been before. Households have paid the price for
inefficient, leaky homes for decades but especially over the
course of the crisis. Surely it's obvious to the new government
that we need to get on with insulating them if we want to shield
families from higher bills."
