The move to a low-carbon economy - you’ve been quangoed!

Robert Lea
16 Jul 2009

The Mandy and Milly show was truly quangotastic. The First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council and his sidekick who looks after the green stuff have announced their “roadmap to a low carbon economy”.

This statement authored by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband's policy wonks but grandstanded by Lord Mandelson, tells us what the UK must do to eliminate much of our greenhouse gas emissions.

It amounts to a plan for a de-industrial revolution — taking all the dirty stuff out of the economy — and it follows, finally, six years of frustrating policy slide after Labour's 2003 Energy White Paper entitled Creating a Low Carbon Economy.

This latest Energy White Paper has the true New Labour stamp of more statistics than most mortals can comprehend and, yep, plenty of targets.

But to truly understand where this Low Carbon Economy is taking us is to understand just how many quangos Mandy and Milly are planning to create.

Apparently the Green Economy — to give it its now out-of-date name — could produce 400,000 jobs. Many it seems will be created in the bodies that will oversee this revolution and which will be doling out the taxpayer funds. Those quangos (and we will have to get used to all the acronyms) in full are:

ORED, or the Office for Renewable Energy Deployment

ORED will be part of DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change, come on keep up) and will oversee the £120 million offshore wind development budget that could be distributed to help build turbine manufacturing plants and invest in next-generation wind technologies.

The South West LCEA, NaREC, EMEC and the Marine Renewables Proving Fund

Only half as important as wind, marine energy is getting £60 million. Of that, £38 million is going to the new Low Carbon Economic Area (LCEA) in Cornwall testing wave and tidal energies off St Ives and similar testing facilities at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) in Northumberland and the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in the Orkneys. The new Marine Renewables Proving Fund will have a £22 million budget to hand out to boffins hoping to show their devices work.

The NAMRC

A new Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre is to be set up to reinvent the UK nuclear engineering industry. Rolls-Royce and its new nuclear business are set to be the main beneficiary of a £15 million budget to produce a supply chain for up to eight new nuclear reactors that are to be built (which despite the toxic radioactive waste will of course be carbon-free).

OLEV or the Office for Low Emission Vehicles

A new cross-Whitehall, er, vehicle to spend £30 million to find out the best way of producing filling stations —“plugged in places” in the new argot — for electric or hybrid cars, vans and lorries. Not to be confused with Oleg, as in Mandy's friend Deripaska who ran LDV vans into the ground.

The Forum for a Just Transition

A new body made up of politicians, advisors and consultants charged with managing “the economic structural shifts which will have huge social impacts” — or some worthies hoping not too many people get hurt changing to the low carbon economy. And, no, we haven't made this up.

The White Paper in effect explains how Mandelson and Miliband aim to spend the £405 million Alistair Darling made available in April's budget. It's the equivalent of how much one new gas-fired power station would cost — and this for technologies that are supposed to save the planet.

Let's hope the private sector feels incentivised enough to invest the billions more needed.

We have just 96 months to save the planet, that old eco-scaremonger Prince Charles has told us. Trouble is those in senior corporate management who will be charged with implementing the coming revolution in energy consumption appear either to be non-believers and/or are not doing too much about it.

A report from the Chartered Management Institute reveals that while 81% of managers recognise energy usage is a key business issue, just 26% say their organisations are doing anything to actively address their carbon footprint.

Worse, around half of all directors in the survey were happy to be identified as “climate change cynics” and fewer than half admitted to being proud of the environmental record of their current employer.