The U.K. needs a "meaningful carbon price" to underpin investment in cleaner energy, the Cabinet minister in charge of energy said.
Substantial investment in nuclear power and systems that capture and carbon-dioxide emissions won’t "happen quickly enough unless we strengthen the incentives," Chris Huhne, head of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said in a speech today. "The current price of carbon is simply not doing this. It is not yet driving our economy towards the green technologies of the future anywhere near quickly enough."
Prime Minister David Cameron’s administration is considering a minimum price for CO2 emissions when the cost of European Union permits falls below a certain level. That would raise costs for power from plants fired by coal and natural gas which are cheaper and quicker to build than atomic reactors.
Huhne’s comments build the case for imposing a floor price for carbon. The government plans to set out its proposals to “support the carbon price” later in 2010, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in his budget on June 22.
Huhne, a Liberal Democrat in the coalition led by Conservative David Cameron, said the government will promote the country’s first new nuclear reactors since the 1980s "so long as there is no public subsidy."
"We will learn from past mistakes, streamlining planning, dealing with waste, reprocessing and decommissioning," he said in the speech in London.
Huhne reiterated his suggestion that the EU should raise its goal for cutting carbon emissions, currently 20 percent from 1990 levels. The EU hasn’t moved yet, citing a lack of similar action in other nations.
"It is simply not true that others are doing nothing, as some have argued," Huhne said. "Even as we continue to seek a legally binding global agreement, there is rapid action in China and Japan. Even in the United States, where prospects of early cap and trade legislation are slim, the administration is planning on pushing business hard through the Environmental Protection Agency."
