Of all the things the Government can spend money on, building infrastructure has to be the best public good. At least, in spite of costs, we end up with something tangible in exchange for the money.
Today, the Prime Minister announced two new power stations - one of which is a bit small really at 108MW of biofuels, but the other is a badly needed 1500MW gas plant at Thorpe Marsh. if the Government are determined to take us down a 'green' path then this is surely a good mix 95% of the new capacity is gas and 5% biofuels. No doubt we can deal with this and gas is the least polluting type of power station in any event (OK, nuclear, but I will leave the complex debate to Mr Drew on that point).
Anyhow, I question the other particularly the assertion that £1 of Government spending will leverage to £6 in the private sector - I bet that is a based on a spreadsheet with a rather large foes of assumptions and guesstimates on it!
No sounds from Chris Huhne today, perhaps economic reality will defeat the green brigade after all. Now all we need to do is let the shale gas explorers get on with their work and we can secure the Countries energy needs to 2500AD.
We can't afford not to make use of our Shale gas.
ReplyDeleteBe sure that if we don't then one day the Chinese will.
FAOD, these power plants will be built with private money, not govt
ReplyDelete(though the biofuels will of course be subsidised ...)
and it's only 'Section 36 consent', which doesn't mean they will necessarily be built at all
I see the Solar tariffs are being cut.
ReplyDeleteI remember having that solar panel firm bigging up their wares, and claiming Mr drew was 'ill informed' and Mr Quango 'was mad' if he thought that the tariffs weren't set in stone and any government would dare to change them.
I remember saying toll roads were set in stone.
So was the congestion charge..
Right up until the point when they weren't.
Was it on this blog or somewhere else?
Anyway..lets hope they pop back to apologise.
ah, prophets before our time eh Mr Q ?
ReplyDeleteI am sure they will be along to apologise in due course
The £1:£6 ratio would seem to me to imply a multiplier of about 6. All the economic reading I have done talks of multipliers <1.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see what the justification of this enormous multiplier is.
Radio 4 today:
ReplyDelete"You'd need a windmill field the size of Wales and an array of solar panels the size of Greater London to replace the output of carbon fuel."