Diversification in energy technologies 'less cost effective'

News Article - 11 February 2009
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Companies who were keen to make accounting for carbon emissions one of their key business goals may now be thinking twice following the drop in oil prices.

Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister, said that this fall in oil commodities has made the diversification into other energy technologies, such as wind farms, "much less immediately" cost effective.

In a speech on behalf of the Institute of Public Policy Research, she added that the ongoing economic downturn could also aggravate these problems by holding back necessary investment for better equilibrium between supply and demand in the longer term.

"We cannot sensibly postpone diversification until the economic indicators are more much more favourable," Baroness Neville-Jones concluded.

Meanwhile, the 2007 Greenhouse gas emissions final figures published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change have come under fire from campaigners who claim that while the figures show a drop in general emissions, they do not include aviation emissions and only show a one percent drop on results from 1997.

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