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Climate Change (Political Response)

I do not believe that it is impossible for the Government to achieve that 10 per cent. reduction. One of the ways in which they could deliver on it is by not only accelerating the introduction of the feed-in tariff regime that they propose, but changing the framework from one that works back from a minimalist, fairly measly assumption that we can deliver only 2 per cent. of our energy by 2020 from renewable tariffs to one with a target of 10 per cent., 15 per cent. or even almost 20 per cent. For those who say that that is too much, let me refer to a conversation that I had with colleagues in Germany this morning about their proposals for delivering 100 per cent. of renewable energy for their economy by 2050. I said, "Look, isn’t that a bit ambitious?" One of them said, "Well it might be, but let me ask if you are aware that last weekend 90 per cent. of Germany’s energy came from wind and solar?" It presented a bit of a problem on Monday when the rest of the energy-generating systems had to kick back in, but that is an interfacing issue about a transformation into a very different future. The difficulty for the UK is that we have set a threshold of ambition that will deliver the failure that it is designed to deliver. All we lack is the ambition to drive the transformation. We can start to achieve it by signing up to the 10:10 commitment and raising the level of feed-in tariffs to make a meaningful difference, and then we will save the generations who follow us.