[font face=Serif][font size=5]Brexit Brings Chaos to Europes Clean-Energy Goals[/font]
[font size=4]The departure of the EUs second-largest economy could have unsettling implications for the Paris climate accord.[/font]
by Richard Martin | June 24, 2016
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U.K. voters decision to exit the European Union sent shock waves through world markets today, including the energy sector. The consensus from policymakers, clean-energy advocates, and analysts was that while Brexit will not completely derail the EUs efforts to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris climate accord, it will certainly throw a spanner in the works.
Under Prime Minister David Cameron and his predecessors, Britain has been a leader on energy policy and support for renewable energy. Several features of EU-wide energy policy in the last decadeincluding breaking up power monopolies that controlled generation, transmission, and distributionhave been modeled in part on U.K. legislation.
More recently, though, the U.K. government has retreated from its support of clean energy, with severe cuts in subsidies for both rooftop and large-scale solar installations. A report released earlier this year by the
U.K. Renewable Energy Association found that repeated policy interventions of the Government are harming the UKs position as a global leader, slowing growth rates, and are increasing the likelihood that legally binding 2020 renewable energy targets
will not be achieved. Freed from its obligations under EU treaties and agreements, a new U.K. government could continue that about-face. The countrys renewable-energy targets for 2020 were i
n doubt even before Thursdays vote, many believe, and departing the EU could make them unreachable.
A
March report by Vivid Economics, commissioned by the British grid operator National Grid, found that leaving the EU could cost the U.K. half a billion pounds (nearly $700 million) a year in the 2020s as a result of uncertainty over energy and climate investments.
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