Letters and Notes
UK renewables demonstration projects: who pulls the plug?
At the 2013 Beesley Lecture on climate change policy, David Kennedy, Chief Executive of
the Climate Change Commission (CCC), discussed the role of the Commission in providing
support for promising but not-yet-economic technologies. The last CCC budget report identified these technologies as: wind power (especially off-shore wind), tidal range, geothermal, solar and potentially CCS (carbon capture and storage). As described by David Kennedy, current CCC and government policy is to provide support for
these technologies until they can float off into commercial operation without government
support. But, what happens if they don’t successfully graduate? Who will pull the plug? When,
how and on what basis?
February 1, 2014