November 24: Empty words and contradictions of the new dash for gas

THE much-hyped speech by the Energy Secretary Amber Rudd (“Energy policy shift will phase out coal but put climate fight on backburner”, The Yorkshire Post, November 18) was a spectacular display of Governmental cognitive dissonance, saying one thing while acting in an entirely contradictory manner.

In what can only be called spin, Amber Rudd offered warm words about “a new energy infrastructure, fit for the 21st century” yet her department ploughs ahead with firing up of outdated high-carbon gas power stations, set to burn climate changing fossil fuels for decades to come.

Shutting down coal power stations is a good move, and campaigners should be applauded for their long-running focus on this important goal, but doing so while promising a wave of new gas power stations simply doesn’t get close to ensuring we meet the energy challenges we face. If we are rightly concerned about importing expensive Russian gas, then obviously the only way to achieve fuel for these gas stations would be to frack the last drop of gas from our poor little island. This is not a goal we should consider.

Mrs Rudd spoke of competitiveness being at the heart of our energy system, yet her Government has committed to subsidising outrageously expensive nuclear power stations while slashing support for solar and wind, which are popular, cheaper and faster to deploy and dismantle. All industrial investment in a strong renewable energy infrastructure should be supported by the Government with the same enthusiasm as it now showing in covering the land with fracking wells.

It is not only wind power or solar but also wave, ground source and hydro, plentiful from SSE; water being in abundance in North Yorkshire also.

In these crucial days ahead of the Paris climate talks, the Government is compounding the failure of its short-sighted energy strategy.

Never has a greater chance 
for rethinking the way we 
power our communities been presented to us; yet Mrs Rudd and her colleagues look set to squander this unique opportunity by hiding behind hot air and spin while failing to take the urgent action needed to tackle climate change.

How is she going to explain 
the UK’s totally negative approach on climate change to our European colleagues in Paris?

I am very disappointed by the lack of honesty and initiative.