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Chris Huhne's departure from the Department of Energy and Climate Change sees the exit of a minister who is generally regarded as having fought tenaciously for "green" policies within the Cabinet, writes Richard Black on the BBC website.
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Chris Huhne's departure from the Department of Energy and Climate Change sees the exit of a minister who is generally regarded as having fought tenaciously for "green" policies within the Cabinet, writes Richard Black on the BBC website.
And, he continues, it raises the question of what hue the self-proclaimed "greenest ever government" is likely to be in future. It is a barely-guarded secret that other departments, notably the Treasury, are markedly less keen on policies such as increasing renewable electricity than Huhne' team.
Huhne resigned today following allegations that he and his ex-wife conspired to allow her to take the rap for a speeding offence comitted by Huhne in 2003.
"He's proved a determined and efficient climate change secretary," said Tony Juniper, former head of Friends of the Earth UK and now a consultant on environment and sustainability issues.
"Given that the broader Cabinet has not demonstrated any deep green commitment, his departure does raise concerns about the government's overall direction on this issue," he told BBC News.
Similar plaudits have come in from other environment groups and from the renewable energy industry, the only exception being from solar power companies angered by the recent fiasco over feed-in tariffs. The government should call a halt to its legal action over feed-in-tariffs for solar power following the resignation, said David Hunt, a director with renewable energy company Eco Environments, he continued “While this is no doubt a sad day for Chris Huhne personally, his resignation provides his successor Ed Davey with the opportunity to call a halt to the government’s legal action over feed-in-tariff subsidies.
“Such a move would send out a positive message to Britain’s beleaguered renewable energy that the government does not want to send hundreds of solar businesses to the wall and throw tens of thousands of workers on to the employment scrapheap. It was always going to be hard for Huhne to make such a decision, but there is no reason why his successor should not make this the first priority in his in-tray and give a much needed shot in the arm to an industry which offers so much exciting potential for Britain’s economy.”
A Court of Appeal ruling last week means that any Solar PV installations installed, commissioned and registered between December 12 last year and March 3 this year should receive the higher feed-in-tariff rate of 43.3p for the next 25 years. Customers who register on or after March 3 should also qualify for the higher rate until April 1 when it will drop to 21p.
That issue, damaging as it was, has, according to the BBC, in reality been a sideshow. The big picture is that the government's "greenest ever" pledge has been undermined by the row over selling off public forests, badger culling, and above all by changes to planning regulations that appeared, as one critic said, "to blame the recession on too much protection for dormice".
John Sauven, of Greenpeace, commenting on Huhne's resignation, said: “Chris Huhne will be a tough act to follow, his achievements in getting the Green Bank and stricter legally binding carbon targets are a physical legacy of what he was able to accomplish. He has been a vocal advocate for the green agenda in a government whose green credentials are looking more than a little tarnished."
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