Blair agreed to green energy target ‘by mistake’

It has taken me a while to catch up with this, but it is worth trying to get the historical record straight.

In November BBC Panorama broadcast a film called “What’s Fuelling Your Energy Bill?” which claimed that Tony Blair had agreed a demanding target of obtaining 15 per cent of UK energy from renewable sources by 2020 at a March 2007 EU summit – and that he had agreed to it by mistake, confusing a target for electricity with one for energy as a whole (including gas and transport fuel).

This was seized on by Christopher Booker and the climate change sceptics as evidence of mind-boggling incompetence and conspiracy. Or something.

But the Panorama programme is a parody of what actually happened. What Blair agreed at a Brussels summit on 9 March 2007 was an EU target of obtaining 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Each country would have its own “differentiated” national target, to be negotiated separately.

The negotiations over the UK’s figure continued after Blair left office. They were hard-fought, both in the Gordon Brown government (between John Hutton, the Business Secretary, and Hilary Benn at Environment) and between the UK and the European Commission.

The national targets were not set until 23 January 2008. The UK’s target, of 15 per cent, was the third lowest in the EU, after Malta and Luxembourg.

The central witness for Panorama’s ”Blair gaffe” story was Sir David King, who was the Government’s chief scientific adviser until the end of 2007. He spoke about “very tired people in the meeting” at the end of the March 2007 summit, explaining the apparent confusion between “electricity” and total “energy”. Or it could have been that “people just took their eye off the ball”, he said.

Was it a gaffe, the BBC asked? “It could have been,” he said. “But was it a bad gaffe? Is it a good target? It may well be a good target.”

I know officials, including Sir David, were surprised that the 20 per cent target was agreed, and there were suggestions at the time that EU leaders did not realise how hard it would be to achieve.

But I do not know if Panorama was suggesting that the original agreement, to an EU-wide 20 per cent target, was a “gaffe”, in which case it was one made by 26 other countries too; or whether it was Gordon Brown’s failure to negotiate a lower UK target, lower than one already lower than any other large economy, that was a mistake.

Neither seems plausible; either would be misleading. The BBC’s contribution to contemporary history is once again found wanting.

Photograph of Tony Blair arriving at Brussels summit, March 2007: Photographic Library of the Council of the EU

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• http://twitter.com/JohnRentoul John Rentoul

  Good point about “generating”. I have changed it. 

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  John we keep on making mistakes, from Greta Britain to now $ and Pound ,from employtment to Malthus was wrong but do we really read the truth and go by it? When I read The Economist of August 6th to 12th 2011, “Finding Britain’s Bill Gates”, Page 23-25I wonder why this article was written at this time. No I am not pessimist, but the sarcasm stays. Why did he leave for USA, built the empire and forgot UK.  The government can help, be able to, is an enormous word. Why not now, when Indians working hard in UK, took the Silicon Valley to Bangalore, India. History does not give another chance, you have it or you lose, it. Crying over the spilt milk has no way to write say, hear of this. The first idea that the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
  Maria Montessori
  I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA
  NO.

• geedeesea

  Aside from defending Blair’s good name, what else is of interest in this? The EC proposed two targets for the year 2020: a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and an increase in energy from renewable sources to 20%. It looks a little too snappy to have come from scientists, doesn’t it? 20 20 by 2020.

  (If I’ve understood it correctly, the words ‘by’ and ‘to’ are significant).

  As John Rentoul says, the UK for its part only agreed to a renewable energy target of 15% and not 20%, which suggests others have agreed to higher targets. Indeed, they have. Austria 34%, Finland 38%, Latvia 40%, Sweden 49% (gulp). Against these, the UK’s target of 15% looks quite modest. The House of Lords EU Committee looked at the whole thing and said, “We believe the UK should commit to an energy reduction target, such as 20% by 2020, by the spring of 2009 with a fully worked-out strategy specifying the steps needed to achieve this.”

  It seems then that John Rentoul maybe right in suggesting, or hinting, that Blair (or even Brown) actually achieved a much lower target for the UK. But there is another point in the House of Lords report which puts it all in context: ”Although 15% is not the highest target assigned to any Member State, the UK has the largest percentage point increase to achieve.” So the BBC’s programme title may at least have some basis.

  As a footnote, the European Wind Energy Association said this time last year that they’d analysed all the energy action plans submitted by the 27 member states and expect the EU to beat the target of 20% of energy from renewable energy by 2020.

  Googleable sources: (1) House of Lords EU Committee, EU’s Target for Renewable Energy: 20% by 2020 Volume I: Report, (2) European Commission Energy Renewable Energy Targets by 2020, (3) EWEA EU will exceed renewable energy goal of 20% by 2020

• Guest

  My dad had a little black mongrel terrier that my mum named Blair, they returned with it from Ireland in ‘97. Unfortunately he died in 2002, my dad not the dog, shortly after my mom. He, the dog, went on to be pampered to death in 2008 with some Tory and Zion loving in-laws of my brother.

  Blair was only in the green business on behalf of a far right Zionist agenda. He became a fool whose time was up in ‘02.