Britain tries to block green energy laws (The Guardian)

The article is about Britain trying to water down language in new EU legislation. Basically the EU wants to give renewable energy projects priority access to the transmission grid where as the UK government isn't so keen.

Some interesting facts come out of the article though. According to a recent report 9.3 GW of wind power is waiting to be connected to the grid. This seems to be me to be a bit of a crime, get the turbines connected, according to the guardian that is the equivalent of a new generation of nuclear power stations. I know which ones I would rather have.

There is hints in the article that certain industrial lobby groups have put pressure on the government to water down the legislation. The suggestion is that the nuclear power lobby are pushing hard for these new reactors and want to make sure the economic and political justification is not water down.

I wrote previously in 2007 about generating capacity caught up in the planning system for wind power. It would seem that the renewables sector is hobbled continuously by bureacuracy. The government should do the responsible thing and sort things out. If we got everything on the drawing board cleared, built and connected to the grid we could forget about nuclear power and even start looking towards closing some of the dirty coal stations. No need to worry about renewables target by 2020 either as it would be happily smashed.