Downing Street Says » Renewable Energy

» Thursday, June 26, 2008

Renewable Energy

Asked how the Government planned to meet the targets set out in the Prime Minister’s speech on a low carbon economy, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) told the assembled press that BERR were better placed to answer the detailed questions but as the Prime Minister and John Hutton had been saying, of course this was a challenging and ambitious agenda, but it was the right thing to do. We had to take action now in order to reduce our dependency on oil.

Put that John Hutton had said in the Times this morning that Britain could look forward to a number of years of increases in home energy bills and was the Prime Minister concerned about this prospect, the PMS replied that consumers were facing rising energy bills at the moment, because the price of oil had gone up by so much. What we did need to do was to reduce dependency on oil and diversify our energy sources. We needed to do this for a number of reasons; we needed to have more secure energy sources in the long-run; we needed to take action to deal with the costs of climate change and as the Stern Review showed, the earlier we took action to deal with these measures, the lower the costs would be.

Asked if there was going to be any further compensation for those who could not afford the price rises, the PMS said that the Government understood the difficulties that people faced at the moment in relation to rising energy bills. We increased the winter fuel allowance in the Budget, we had also been working with energy companies to see what the Government could do in conjunction with them to help vulnerable customers in particular. This was an area where we would continue to see what more we could do.

Asked if the Prime Minister would support a cut in gas prices, the PMS said the Prime Minister would need to take considered advice from the Treasury and BERR before reaching a decision on that. Asked if the £100billion figure in the Prime Minister’s speech included the private and public sector, the PMS said that it did.

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