By Allegra Stratton,
The Guardian
The Treasury is the most powerful department in Whitehall, but it is busy making itself unpopular even by its own abrasive standards. Jeremy Heywood, the most judicious of civil servants, was recently heard to say that the government's attempt to create a new green bank had become a battle of "everybody against the Treasury". Everyone, it seems, including the prime minister's wife.
The green investment bank has become a kind of philosopher's stone – designed to help turn the UK's currently very low number of billions of pounds for green energy into loans underwriting 100s of times that amount. The aim is to get up and running the kind of renewable energy providers the country is going to need in a generation.
There are many greenies in the government. Inside the Cabinet Office there is Oliver Letwin who has left behind the days when he commuted weekly to New Zealand for the bank NM Rothschild. He's supposed to have flown so much he was once awarded with BA's award for that year's most frequent flyer. Now he's the agenda's most ardent champion.
Republicans Want To Ax Renewable Energy and Environment
Green Investing blog
Congressional Republicans on Wednesday released a budget plan that would impose deep cuts on energy efficiency and renewable energy, scientific research and environmental protection.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would lose $899 million. In addition, Republicans want to cut $1.4 billion from a program that guarantees construction loans for new energy projects, such as nuclear reactors, electric transmission lines and solar arrays.
Also on the list of proposed energy cuts are $1.1 billion in the Office of Science, which funds advanced clean energy research; and $186 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is leading development of technical standards for smart grid installations and cyber protection, and $169 million for nuclear energy.
Trillions for biomass projects fruitless
Kyodo News
None of the government's 214 biomass promotion projects — with public funding coming to ¥6.55 trillion — over the past six years has produced effective results in the struggle against global warming, according to an official report released Tuesday.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, which evaluates public works projects, urged the agriculture and five other ministries conducting biomass projects using sewage sludge, garbage and wood, to take corrective action.
The Administrative Evaluation Bureau found in a study of biomass projects through March 2009 that the cumulative budget totaled about ¥6.55 trillion.
