Liz McInnes
Main Page: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman is right that we need more joint working. The ambitions we have to address our climate change targets require joint working. I will meet my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in order to work more closely with her. If we are to protect our environment from dangerous climate change, all Departments need to play an active role—and I will ensure that they do so.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
2. What steps she is taking to increase the proportion of energy that is generated from renewable sources.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
As the hon. Lady may know, the most recent step we have taken to support renewable energy deployment is the introduction of contracts for difference, which give companies the certainty they need to make long-term investments. This has helped us to drive down costs and focus on best value for consumers by requiring renewable technologies to compete for support for the first time.
Liz McInnes
Last week it was revealed that we had missed our interim EU 2020 target for renewable energy generation. How will pulling the plug on the cheapest form of renewable energy help us to achieve it?
Andrea Leadsom
We do not accept that we have missed it. Our interim reporting covers the period to the end of 2015, and we believe that we are on track to meet that target.
The important point made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in her announcement last week was that we do not want to over-deploy onshore wind, because only a certain amount of subsidy is available to meet the requirements of decarbonisation while keeping bills down. Any over-deployment of onshore wind could cause other, important, technologies to lose out.