By Susanna Twidale<\/p>\n
LONDON, April 21 (Reuters) – Britain will launch a package of measures on Tuesday to accelerate the growth of renewable power and reduce the country\u2019s reliance on fossil fuels which \u200chave soared in cost due to the conflict in Iran, the government said.<\/p>\n
The government said \u200cit will also announce steps to tackle the link between gas and electricity prices, a feature of the energy market that is blamed \u200bfor Britain having some of the highest electricity prices in the world.<\/p>\n
Britain’s Labour government has said it sees the energy transition as a way to fuel much-needed economic growth, and is under pressure to meet an election pledge to cut energy costs for households.<\/p>\n
‘ERA OF FOSSIL FUEL SECURITY IS OVER’<\/p>\n
“As we face the second fossil fuel \u200cshock in less than five years, the \u2060lesson for our country is clear: The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age,\u201d Energy Secretary Ed \u2060Miliband will say at an event, according to sections of his speech released by his ministry.<\/p>\n
Domestic energy prices are poised to soar from July – as the regulator’s price cap enters a new pricing quarter from July to September – due \u200bto surging \u200bwholesale gas costs, which are currently 30% higher than \u200bbefore the Iran conflict began.<\/p>\n
The government will announce \u200cplans to boost renewable power generation such as solar panels and wind turbines on public land which it said could unlock up to 10 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power around 5 million homes.<\/p>\n
It will look to streamline rules to make it easier to build renewable projects and connect them to the power grid and to explore ways to allow companies to build their own grid connections.<\/p>\n
It will also seek to make it \u200ceasier for people to install electric vehicle chargers, solar panels \u200band heat pumps at home.<\/p>\n
DECOUPLING ELECTRICITY PRICES FROM GAS<\/p>\n
Miliband and finance \u200bminister Rachel Reeves will announce steps to “delink” \u200bthe price of electricity from the price of gas, the government said, without going \u200cinto more detail.<\/p>\n
The wholesale price is set every \u200b30 minutes by the cost \u200bof the last energy source used to ensure demand is met. So even if wind, solar and nuclear provide 99% of the power needed, if gas-fired plants are needed to make up the \u200blast 1%, then gas sets the \u200cprice for every buyer and seller.<\/p>\n
Gas-fired power plants are the biggest single source of the country\u2019s \u200belectricity, and can react quickly to demand, so end up setting the price most of \u200bthe time.<\/p>\n
(Reporting By Susanna Twidale; Editing by Andrew Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Susanna Twidale LONDON, April 21 (Reuters) – Britain will launch a package of measures on Tuesday to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,7493,8394,3545,2569,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-18290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-electricity-prices","10":"tag-energy-transition","11":"tag-fossil-fuels","12":"tag-renewable-power","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116439684575813441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}