UK opposes a 2030 renewable energy target (Conservative push nuclear)

[kristopher]

18. Outstanding question.

We have alternatives for all carbon fuels. We just need to cut the umbilical cord.

The flow of events should be have two currents.
First the widescale deployment of renewables is having the predicted outcome of driving down prices rapidly. As we go through the transition process in the advanced economies, in developing nations (where grid infrastructure is non-existent or weak) distributed generation is already economically preferable at the just-above-subsistence levels of society. Between the two, there is a huge market opening up for advancing the supply chain and manufacturing base for renewables.

That ensures a continued decline in costs.

Second, by lowering the stranglehold of entrenched energy in the developed nations on the political process we create more opportunities for global action in the arena of the other policy tools that have heretofore been of limited value. The increased use of policies like renewable targets and FITs (my favorite) and the imposition of a global carbon tax become real possibilities when the balance of control over the energy system within the first world shifts away from carbon.

That is a cycle which ends carbon.