Former energy secretary Ed Davey has hit back over claims that his regime was responsible for the purported overspend within the Levy Control Framework (LCF).
The now Conservative-led Department of Energy and Climate Change has repeatedly pointed towards a £1.5 billion LCF overspend under the Liberal Democract Davey's tenure at DECC to justify cuts to a raft of clean energy programmes, including the RO and the feed-in tariff.
But speaking to BBC Radio 4 this morning, Davey refuted the accusations and instead repeated claims that the overspend is a mistruth.
A speech leaked to the Telegraph at the weekend and set to be delivered by Davey’s successor Amber Rudd tomorrow attacks previous regimes and the way in which renewable energy subsidies were distributed in an un-competitive manner.
“Success was measured by how fast renewable energy could be installed, not by how cost-effective our carbon cuts were or what the impact on energy security would be,” Rudd is expected to say.
During the broadcast, Davey accused Rudd’s department of “misleading parliament, misleading the public” over the cost of renewables, and accused the Tories of lying over reductions in costs that have been recorded.
Davey also referenced the contents of emails leaked by The Ecologist last week, claiming that they were evidence that the Conservative government was willing to “break the law”.
However David Mackay, who served as DECC’s chief scientific advisor between 2010 and 2014, has recorded a programme for BBC Radio 4 – to be broadcast this afternoon at 3:30pm – during which he labels the European Union’s renewables targets as “scientifically illiterate”.
Excerpts of the programme were broadcast this morning, and Mackay has said that forcing countries to adopt other renewables programmes to meet set targets “pushes” countries into areas that aren’t good for public spending, particularly areas such as biomass which Davey claimed was only beneficial under particular circumstances.