{"id":18051,"date":"2018-07-31T11:55:25","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T08:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2026-09-15T15:21:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:21:49","slug":"why-has-uk-clean-energy-investment-plummeted-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/why-has-uk-clean-energy-investment-plummeted-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why has UK clean energy investment plummeted?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s very clear there is a very substantial downward trend in new investment, which is across the board in terms of investment in clean technology ranging from big wind farms right down to the effective collapse of the solar market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Judging by the headlines,\u00a0renewable energy\u00a0in Britain is booming. Barely a week goes by without news that wind power has\u00a0overtaken nuclear\u00a0or the country has gone\u00a0another successive day without coal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet these figures obscure a reality in which the withdrawal of government support and confusion around future investments have led to a\u00a0\u201cdramatic and worrying collapse\u201d\u00a0in green investment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics say the government has created a \u201chostile environment\u201d for renewable energy that scares away potential investors and prevents the UK from reaching its full potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

The arrival of the Climate Change Act in 2008 and the subsequent rollout of electricity market reforms saw the UK become a world leader in renewables, particularly wind power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a very clear policy framework from 2008 and that has been less certain in recent years,\u201d says Emma Pinchbeck, executive director at trade association RenewableUK.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat explains why we have had record-breaking deployment as things come online from that previous policy framework, but why now we are looking at a dropoff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There tends to be a lag of five to 10 years between a project being funded and it coming online, which is why we are only now experiencing the benefits of this early investment period.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Despite widespread popular support for renewables \u2013 85 per cent, according to the latest figures \u2013 annual investment in clean energy is now at its lowest point in a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not all bad, according to Phil MacDonald at climate change think tank Sandbag: \u201cThe dropoff in investment partly hides a good news story, which is that renewables have fallen in cost dramatically,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Improvements in wind and solar technology now mean the UK is getting more renewable energy for less money, but this does not account for the decline in its entirety.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear there is a\u00a0substantial downward trend\u00a0in new investment, which is across the board in terms of investment in clean technology ranging from big wind farms right down to the effective collapse of the solar market,\u201d says Dr Alan Whitehead, Labour\u2019s shadow minister for energy and climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a report published this week by the Environmental Audit Committee, MPs warned this decline posed a real threat to the UK\u2019s climate change targets for the next decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

Committee chair Mary Creagh said this week: \u201cBillions of pounds of investment is needed in clean energy, transport, heating and industry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut a dramatic fall in investment is threatening the government\u2019s ability to meet legally binding climate change targets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This downward trend can be traced to decisions made by the government in 2015, particularly its withdrawal of support for onshore wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under pressure from a group of MPs calling onshore wind \u201cinefficient and intermittent\u201d, the Conservatives made a manifesto pledge to remove subsidies from new onshore wind projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of these issues that had a very niche political purpose, which was to assuage the concerns of some marginal consistencies in England, and to give the public more of a say over infrastructure in their neighbourhoods,\u201d says Whitehead.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, what was not clear at that time was that the cost of onshore wind was set to plummet, making it the cheapest form of electricity generation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the withdrawal of support and\u00a0subsequent policy changes\u00a0mean onshore wind is now essentially banned in the UK, with planning applications for new developments plummeting by 94 per cent since 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, a 65 per cent cut to subsidies for households installing solar panels and a budget that declined to provide new support for renewables before 2025 led to new private investments falling off a cliff.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Nourse, of renewable energy investors Greencoat Capital, says the sudden drop in investment in comparison to previous years is partly the result of a \u201clast rush sale\u201d in which onshore wind projects were hurried through in the lead up to these policy changes.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, he adds that ultimately the collapse results from the lack of auctions for new large-scale renewable projects in the past couple of years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose auctions are not being run, not so much because of solar but because of a visceral dislike of onshore wind,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitehead adds: \u201cCumulatively that was a real neon-lighted statement that the government was pulling the plug on what had previously been a reasonably smoothly operated regime of support to bring renewables to market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With a lack of certainty about support for new projects, experts say the government has effectively scared away any investment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, the country is beginning to introduce a \u2018hostile environment\u2019 for green investment for the future,\u201d says Whitehead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinchbeck says: \u201cThis is a booming market, and the UK is currently the world leader for wind resource and development \u2013 but small decisions can often have really big consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe onshore wind move was taken by many in the international community to mean the UK wasn\u2019t actually committed to renewables development.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a gap that other nations are happy to step into. Many onshore wind farms being built across Europe are now set to be so cheap they can be built without subsidies, and figures reported by the UN in April revealed China was by far the world\u2019s largest investor in renewable energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UK is currently still a world leader in renewables, with nearly 30 per cent of the country’s electricity in 2017 generated by clean sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry said: “Our renewables sector is a British success story and will continue to thrive, with clean growth at the heart our modern Industrial Strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last five years investment in renewables has more than doubled while we will have invested \u00a32.5bn on low carbon innovation by 2021.”<\/span><\/p>\n

However, as it stands the government\u2019s clean growth strategy \u2013 intended as an \u201cambitious blueprint for Britain\u2019s low-carbon future\u201d \u2013 will\u00a0not be enough\u00a0to meet its legally binding carbon budgets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creagh said this week there was a need to \u201curgently plug this policy gap and publish its plan to secure the investment required to meet the UK\u2019s climate change targets\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinchbeck adds: \u201cWe\u2019ll be at least 50 per cent renewable by 2030 \u2013 I suspect that\u2019s actually on the conservative side \u2013 but a lot of what we will be able to do will depend on policy decisions that the government makes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWill we maximise the potential of this very cheap energy resource or not?\u201d (Source: independent.co.uk)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s very clear there is a very substantial downward trend in new investment, which is across the board in terms of investment in clean technology ranging\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","_ms_company":[]},"categories":[7315],"tags":[7532,7541],"class_list":["post-18051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-onshore","tag-clean-energy","tag-climate-change-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19609,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18051\/revisions\/19609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}