Renewable Technologies (Tariffs) - 16th September 2010

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)

We are committed to achieving our 2020 renewable energy target, which is a European Union legislative goal. The coalition programme for government commits us to the establishment of a full feed-in-tariff, with the aim of securing a significant increase in investment in renewables while maintaining a banded renewables obligation and not changing the ground rules for existing investments. We are also strongly committed to action on renewable heat.

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10:39 Chris Huhne

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the last Chancellor because, of course, one of the legacies we are having to deal with in government is the fact that the last Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, identified £44 billion of expenditure cuts without a single expenditure cut specified in that total. The reality is that we have had to clear up the legacy of his Government. The reality is exactly as the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), said: there is no money left. We are therefore having to make some extremely tough choices, but on carbon capture and storage I can assure the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) that the coalition agreement between the two Government parties says very clearly that there will be four CCS projects. That is an extremely important part of our low-carbon future and, of course, it is crucial in ensuring that we have a competitive advantage in these areas, because the UK has a lead in CCS technology, as we have seen from our university researchers.

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