Conference III

Just a delightful little story here.

Quite gobsmacking actually.

A former chief scientific advisor to the government has said that EU renewable-energy quotas will cause widespread fuel poverty. Sir David King believes that European heads of state, in agreeing the targets, may have mistaken electricity usage for total energy consumption – leading to overly ambitious and expensive goals being set.

So, umm,. how did this happen?

King believes that the EU heads of state may only have meant to sign up to 20 per cent of electricity being renewable, not 20 per cent of all energy used.

"I think there was some degree of confusion at the heads of states meeting dealing with this," he told the Beeb.

"If they had said 20 per cent renewables on the electricity grids across the European Union by 2020, we would have had a realistic target… saying 20 per cent of all energy, I actually wonder whether that wasn\’t a mistake. I was rather surprised when I heard what the decision was."

Umm, simply a cock up? Those fine politicians, those entrusted with running the economy for 500 million people, made a simple yet grossly expensive error?

And this shows the value of taking such decisions at EU level in what manner? If nations were taking these decisions separately then perhaps one or two might screw up in this manner but we wouldn\’t have 500 million blighted by it would we?