Friday 1 June 2012

U-turns help government in 'greenest ever' pledge

When the UK government was formed in 2010, the coalition agreement contained the claim that it was going to be "the greenest government ever". These pledges have fallen by the wayside as a concentration on economic and fiscal policy and making sure the proles are as miserable as possible has overridden any other concern. But new figures released by the department for energy and climate change (DECC) show that is now being reversed and the UK is on target to meet it's emissions requirements.

"By wiring government into the National Grid", said Sir Bernard Lightson, chief civil servant to DECC, "we've been able to use the power generated by the constant u-turns to increase our renewables capacity by 20%. This has knock-on effects in reducing our reliance on supply of oil and gas from overseas with resultant budget savings and increasing the security and reliability of supply".

Criticism has been raised that, like wind, u-turn power is intermittent and cannot be relied on to supply demand when most needed. Sir Lightson responded, saying "we believe there is an inexhaustible supply of power to be gained from this source, and with fixed terms introduced, there'll be plenty of u-turns to generate electricity from until at least 2015."

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