Renewables industry and friends

It’s a competitive world out there, but I always find it disappointing when one industrial sector attacks another over the safety or environmental worthiness of its products or processes: there are enough professional industry-bashers out there as it is.

Last week, renewable energy companies and trade associations joined groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, RSBP, Oxfam and even the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) in a protest outside Downing Street.

The protesters, who wore green hard hats to highlight the number of jobs being created in the low-carbon sector, delivered a letter to the PM demanding tougher targets for “polluting” fossil fuel-based industries.

There was no mention of the many more workers in traditional industries who could lose their jobs, or the people who will struggle to keep warm each winter, if the UK introduces arbitrary emissions targets that - through ‘carbon leakage’ - are likely to do more harm to the environment than good.

Those involved in the renewable energy sector might also consider that some of their fellow protestors - more likely Greenpeace than the NFWI - could one day be camped outside their facilities with some equally ill-considered protest about their particular industrial activities.