The government needs to clearly know what their plans are and communicate those to the public effectively.
This is what Researcher at research organisation, Institute for Government, Rosa Hodgkin told us.
She said: ‘The previous government had a target of 2035 which they were not on track for and we’ve found that main issue that came up again and again was grid capacity.
‘So there are lots of renewables that are ready to come online but there’s not enough capacity to move the energy around the grid. And at the moment, the government pays billions to renewable generators to switch off renewables because they can’t transport the energy that the generators are producing.
‘And that’s more of a problem with renewables than with fossil fuel electricity generation because they’re generally further away from sources of demand. You can basically build a power plant right next to a big city if you need to but you can’t always put a wind farm there.
‘And particularly with offshore wind, you end up having to transport the energy much further.
‘The issue with the grid is that it hasn’t been upgraded for a very long time. It was already struggling and now you’re asking it to do something really completely different. 2030 is basically five years away now and it’s taking years for renewable generation projects to get connection to the grid.’
Rosa told us that the government must confront many physical infrastructure and policy blockades to net zero.
She said: ‘The planning system is another major issue. The average wait time for nationally significant infrastructure projects is over four years to get planning consent.
‘So again, with only five years until 2030, that is a big problem.
‘And then there is the issue of supply chains and the workforce. The UK is competing against a lot of other countries on the net zero bandwagon and the components are short in supply. And then there is the people who actually know how to do things, so engineers, etc.. So those are the physical barriers.
‘Then there are the policy barriers where there has been an inconsistency of messaging from the government and inconsistency in policies. So there has been some flip-flopping around in terms of phase out dates and such.’
Rosa told us that the constant changes in the previous government led to uncertainty within the energy sector but the change in government, things are looking somewhat better.
She said: ‘The political priorities of the prime Minister impacts what gets done in Westminster. And I think Boris Johnson was more committed, most people would say that Rishi Sunak was maybe less committed. And I’m hopeful for this next government.
‘They’ve been much more consistent in their messaging so far. We hear that it is a genuine priority for them. So hopefully, we should get more consistency in messaging and I hope that they will maybe start to open up that conversation with the public about support and such.’
Watch the full episode below.
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