Notes About Business

The government in the UK promised to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by eighty percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. In recent weeks, however, the UK public opinion started to question the dedication of the government.

Wallstreetpit.com has recently published an article that claims the wind power projects owned by BP in the UK, Turkey, China and India will shut down and BP will refocus its energy on the US. This same article suggests that thirty percent of the UK’s energy supply will come from wind power. Readers are wondering why the government is letting BP move their wind power projects to the US when they claim to be focusing on green energy sources like windfarms.

Adding a few questions of its own, the Guardian website released an article claiming that Great Britain is one of the best locations in the world for windfarm technology. Great Britain’s lengthy coastline and famous wind conditions lend it nicely to the development of windfarms.

This same article names a new partnership between two major wind technology companies, Iberdola Renewables and Vattenfall, which will be building a new wind farm in the UK. This wind farm will cost 780m pounds to build and have an expected output of 300MW. Is it the pulling out of BP that allows for this new joint venture to be built? Why is wind technology being left up to private enterprise if the government is supposed to be fully behind it?

More criticism has been lodged about the funding and difficult to understand planning that the government will need if it does, indeed, plan to invest so much of its attention to green energy. If wind farms are supposed to be responsible for thirty percent of the United Kingdom’s energy supply, a large number of farms will need to be constructed to keep up with the energy demand. An independent group, The Carbon Trust, estimates that the building of these windfarms will need to speed up considerably and, at the same time; the project budget will need to cut about sixteen billion pounds from its original projections. A website called Redgreenandblue.com says that only twenty five percent of the windfarms the UK needs will actually be constructed by the self imposed 2020 deadline.

Not only experts, but also most public opinions in the United Kingdom agree that renewable energy and not the current power grid is the future of energy production for the country. Green energy costs less money in the long run and is better for the globe than the current power grid system. Unfortunately, because of the shortfalls, British people should ask how committed the UK government really is to green energy. If the government truly wants to implement wind energy, why is the project budget being reduced? What is keeping the 2020 goal from happening?