The author of a yet-to-be-published independent report that claims the UK could save £34 billion by slashing wind power and making up the shortfall through the building of new nuclear and gas-fired power stations, has defended the document on the grounds that it is putting forward the "pure economics" case, not policy.
'
Thinking About Affordable’, a joint report by
KPMG and
A F Consult, is set to be published later this week. But yesterday it was slammed by the
wind energy industry as "flawed", after headline figures from the report were published in the
Sunday Times and used in a
Panorama programme. The report’s author Mark Powell, today defended the report saying that its sole purpose was to present the economics of "keeping the lights on" at the lowest cost possible to consumers, while still meeting the UK’s 2020 carbon reduction targets.
"We are presenting the pure economics," he said. "It is increasingly clear that in the current financial situation, cost is an issue whatever we decide to do. Hitting our carbon target and
renewables target – delivering these two things – should be done at the lowest cost possible."
Misleading
But trade association, RenewableUK, yesterday said the report was incorrect and misleading. The trade body said the report wrongly assumed that renewables were the cause of rising energy prices, rather than imported gas, and failed to calculate the full cost of nuclear or the speed at which next-generation plants could be deployed.
"The KPMG report focuses solely on the upfront costs of building new power plants, ignoring other lifecycle costs, such as fuel and decommissioning," the trade body said.
RenewableUK, meanwhile, pointed to research by energy regulator Ofgem that has warned electricity bills could be pushed up by 52 per cent because of the volatility of fossil fuel prices if Britain failed to invest in renewable energy.
While acknowledging that the report focused only on "current costs" up to the end of the decade, Powell said questions marks remained over whether renewables, such as offshore wind, could be deployed any quicker and that it was important to take a look at the underlying economics of deploying different energy technologies.
"We are not saying that we should dump anything, but we should double check," he said.
Green retreat
The publication of the KPMG report comes amidst growing fears in the renewables industry that the Government is retreating on its green agenda. While energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne gave a
robust defence of renewables, saying turning our back on them would not "save our economy", Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is understood to have a different view. In September,
Osborne publicly stated the UK should not cut its carbon emissions faster than the rest of Europe.
RenewableUK recently launched a campaign, 'Action for Renewables', to counter the rising tide of criticism against renewables.
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