The government should scrap 4GW of its planned 13GW target for offshore wind generation by 2020 says a report published today by the Policy Exchange.
By building cheaper gas generation instead, says the think tank, the government could save £700-£900m a year in costs that would have been passed onto bill payers, reports the Daily Telegraph.
These savings could be redeployed by insulating hundreds of thousands more homes and doubling public funding for research and development in key low-carbon technologies, it said.
It argued: “To achieve maximum overall emissions reduction and low carbon innovation, the electricity market needs to be allowed to invest in gas as a transition fuel, subject to a long-term EU emissions cap.”
Even if gas-fired power plants had to be retired early because of the EU’s emissions cap, it would still be a “far cheaper” interim solution than building offshore wind while the costs remain so high, it said.
