£42M renewables funding 'squandered', say Lib Dems

Renewables - touted by the Government, but £42M pot left unspent

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The Government has not spent any of a £42M pot for developing wind and wave technologies since setting the fund up in 2004, according to the Liberal Democrats.

Answering questions from the Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, the government admitted that:

• The entire £42M budget for the Wave and Tidal-stream Energy Demonstration Scheme - the Government's measure for allowing marine technologies to progress through their early phase - has remained unspent since it was announced in 2004

• The associated £2m budget for monitoring the environmental impacts of wave and tidal projects has also remained entirely unspent

• Only around one fifth (£1.13M of a budget of £5.64M) of the available budget for infrastructure support has been spent.

None of this funding has been spent in the past year.

Commenting, Swinson said: "These figures show the yawning gulf between rhetoric and reality when it comes to this Government's record on renewable energy.

"Britain has world-leading potential when it comes to wave and tidal energy, yet the Government is sitting idly on the funding which the sector so desperately needs.

"How can the Government hope to meet its targets on renewable energy when it is not even capable of spending the modest funding it has set aside for wave and tidal technology?

"This is a vital time for the development of the renewable energy industry. Instead of spending so much time pushing its nuclear energy agenda, the Government should be focussing on getting funding for renewable technologies to where it's needed."