Britain will go to the Paris climate talks with the biggest gap between current renewable energy usage and 2020 targets of any EU country, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Challenging David Cameron on the government’s renewables record during prime minister’s question time on Wednesday, Corbyn asked: “You used to tell us yours was the greenest government ever. Do you remember those days? Do you agree with the energy secretary Britain is likely to miss its target of getting 15% of its energy from renewables by 2020?”
The prime minister responded by saying he still thought the government could “rightly claim that record” and that the last parliament saw “a trebling in the installation of renewable electricity” compared with the one before.
The binding target, adopted in 2009, requires the EU as a whole to source 20% of its energy from renewables such as wind, solar and biomass by 2020.
The Labour leader challenged Cameron to ask Conservative councils to match a commitment by 55 Labour authorities to run entirely on green energy by 2050. Cameron said he commended councils of all political leanings for promoting green energy.
“The gap between Britain’s 2020 target and current share of renewable energy is the biggest in the European Union,” said Corbyn.
“Some of the decisions you have made recently such as cutting support for solar panels on home and industrial projects, scrapping the green deal, cutting support for wind turbines, putting a new tax on renewable energy, increasing subsidy for diesel generators, is it any wonder the chief scientist of the United Nations environment programme has criticised Britain for going backwards on renewable energy?”
Cameron insisted “the facts paint a different picture” and said the energy secretary, Amber Rudd, was striking the right balance between promoting affordable energy and meeting green targets.
“It is right we go on supporting industry but we should do it recognising the cost of manufacturing solar panels has plummeted,” said Cameron. “The subsidy should be what is necessary to deliver solar power, not what is necessary to pump up the bills of hardworking families.”
Corbyn responded that 1,000 jobs had been lost in the solar industry in recent weeks due to cuts to solar subsidies. “That’s not much help to those who are losing their jobs in the solar industry at the present time,” he said.
Earlier this month, the World Energy Council downgraded Britain to an AAB rating, from AAA, in its annual “energy trilemma index”, which ranks countries’ energy and climate policies based on the issues of energy security, equity and sustainability.
The decision came after the government scrapped subsidies for onshore windfarms, closed support for small-scale solar projects and changed the way other renewable energy projects qualify for payments, saying they were becoming too costly for taxpayers.
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