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Energy giant axes £4bn UK turbine project
Green blow as RWE shelves offshore plan amid uncertainty over policy
Weeks after warning that the government was treating environmental subsidies as a "political football", the German-owned RWE npower is pulling out of the £4bn Atlantic Array project in the Bristol Channel because the economics do not stack up.
The move comes as figures show that energy firms reaped a 77% increase in profits per customer last year, due to bill increases that the big six say are partly due to government green levies.
The shelving of the Atlantic Array is a setback for the government, which is banking on bigger windfarms in deeper waters to help provide low-carbon power. The RWE cancellation is the first axing of a Round 3 windfarm - schemes such as those in Dogger Bank, Hornsea and East Anglia, which are supposed to help the government meet a target of generating 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. It will also raise further concerns about investors being frightened away by political rows and policy uncertainty.
The Renewable Energy Association (REA), which lobbies for more low-carbon power, said government infighting over subsidies was causing deep uncertainty in the industry.
Ahead of next week's autumn statement, the chancellor is looking to transfer the £1.6bn cost of the energy companies obligation (Eco) and the smaller warm home discount to the taxpayer, removing the burden from household bills.
"We need assurances from George Osborne in the autumn statement about where we stand," said a spokesman for the REA. "Nick Clegg says one thing about the green levies, Michael Fallon [the energy minister] another."
Last week David Cameron was reported to have talked about the need to get rid of "green crap" from energy bills. Number 10 said it did not recognise the phrase but did not deny the sentiment. Peter Atherton, a leading energy analyst, warned last week that investment in power generation was "killed stone dead" until the next election by Ed Miliband's call for a price freeze and government delays in introducing promised electricity market reform.
The political and public environment for power companies is set to become more hostile following the publication of figures on Monday showing that the average profit per customer for the big six rose from £30 to £53 last year. The industry watchdog said the rise was due to higher bills and increased energy use during a harsh winter, not due to cost reduction.
RWE indicated that the government might have to raise green subsidies - and thus increase bills or the burden on the taxpayer - after admitting that technical difficulties had pushed the price up so far that it could not be justified under the current subsidy regime.
"This is not a decision we have taken lightly; however, given the technological challenges and market conditions, now is not the right time for RWE to continue to progress with this project," said Paul Cowling, director of offshore wind at RWE Innogy.
The Atlantic Array would have provided clean energy for almost 1m homes and provided thousands of jobs in the construction phase. Cowling insisted RWE remained committed to offshore wind and would be proceeding with a range of other projects off the coast of Britain.
The move comes as figures show that energy firms reaped a 77% increase in profits per customer last year, due to bill increases that the big six say are partly due to government green levies.
The shelving of the Atlantic Array is a setback for the government, which is banking on bigger windfarms in deeper waters to help provide low-carbon power. The RWE cancellation is the first axing of a Round 3 windfarm - schemes such as those in Dogger Bank, Hornsea and East Anglia, which are supposed to help the government meet a target of generating 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. It will also raise further concerns about investors being frightened away by political rows and policy uncertainty.
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Save for the nation Van Dyck appeal
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Slavery case suspects linked to Maoist group
The couple accused of holding three women as domestic slaves in south London for 30 years had been leading lights in a cultlike far-left political group which worshipped the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and believed that their area of south London was on the verge of being liberated by China's Red Army.Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, named for the first time on Monday, was a senior member of the tiny Communist party of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the early 1970s, before splitting away in 1974 to form an even more niche and hardline grouping, the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
His 67-year-old wife, Chanda, was part of the same grouping, which set itself up in 1976 in a library-cum-commune inside a large Victorian building in Brixton, south London, with about 25 members. Its leader, Balakrishnan, was known at the time as Comrade Bala.
Steve Rayner, an academic who studied the group, noted its cultlike attributes, in which there was little debate and the few members with jobs donated all their income to the organisation. Rayner, a professor at Oxford University, who studied Balakrishnan's group for a 1979 PhD thesis on leftwing groups, described the leader's "superior ability to manipulate" other members, who were mainly from overseas and appeared vulnerable.
Rayner's investigation found that members, who wore Mao badges at all times, believed that they and the rest of Brixton would soon be liberated by the Red Army. He said the group was the "clearest case of far-left millenarianism which I have encountered".
The couple were both arrested on suspicion of holding three women captive at a series of addresses in south London including, most recently, a council-owned flat in Peckford Place, Brixton. Police inquiries have since tied the group to more than a dozen properties around south London over the decades.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, named for the first time on Monday, was a senior member of the tiny Communist party of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the early 1970s, before splitting away in 1974 to form an even more niche and hardline grouping, the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
His 67-year-old wife, Chanda, was part of the same grouping, which set itself up in 1976 in a library-cum-commune inside a large Victorian building in Brixton, south London, with about 25 members. Its leader, Balakrishnan, was known at the time as Comrade Bala.
Continued on page 4 >>
Out and down How hard has depression hit cricket?
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