It’s a busy time at the Department for Energy and Climate Change, and understandably so.
Ten clean energy support frameworks have landed on the chopping board, and drawing up replacement policies is obviously such an arduous and time-consuming task that the department has yet to finish them, much to the ire of Committee on Climate Change chairman Lord Deben and the industry alike.
The department is so overworked that it’s spending in excess of £500,000 each month on temporary agency staff – if June’s figures are anything to go by, £524,832 precisely – just to cover the gaps. Just how many of those temps have found themselves manning the post room, what with all the consultation responses, fan mail and open letters DECC’s receiving at the moment, is perhaps a matter for a freedom of information request.
Indeed, it’s so busy at 3 Whitehall Place that energy and climate change secretary Amber Rudd simply cannot find the time to give evidence before the ECC select committee on the substantial policy reset the government undertook this summer. Select committee chair Angus MacNeil wrote to Rudd a fortnight ago requesting her presence, only to be informed that this could not happen before parliament breaks for the conference season recess in early October.
So imagine MacNeil’s surprise when Rudd popped up in Beijing this weekend extolling the benefits of nuclear power and attempting to drum up investment interest for Hinkley Point C. The £2 billion George Osborne has committed to the project will serve as yet another act which will stick in the craw of the solar industry, conjuring all kinds of images of a beleaguered Rudd shovelling money from a pot marked ‘Levy Control Framework’ to one marked ‘China Friendship Fund’.
But this was no whistle-stop tour. After Beijing was India, where Rudd has been meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his minister of state for personnel, public grievances, pensions, atomic energy and space Jitendra Singh to discuss all things energy.
“[Rudd] also dwelt [sic] on overall strategy of the British government in relation to energy including renewable energy and solar energy as well as climate change policy,” read a statement issued by India’s Press Information Bureau today. For the sake of India’s nascent solar industry, let’s hope Modi took Rudd’s sentiments with a pinch of salt.
It has indeed been a busy time at DECC since the election, and the LCF overspend did indeed require urgent action, but the lack of clarification regarding certain policies has only served to confuse and frustrate the market and investors. Even Al Gore, former US vice president and world-renowned environmentalist, cannot make head nor tail of the UK’s current renewables support framework.
If Rudd thinks the status quo will be enough for the UK to be regarded as a leader at this year’s COP 21 summit – now less than three months away – then she has another think coming.