Calderdale Green Party is hosting a Public Meeting in Hebden Bridge Town Hall on Tuesday 10th September, 7.30pm, to explain its policy that fracking isn’t necessary or desirable.
The speaker is Kirklees Green Party Councillor Andrew Cooper.
Andrew is also the Green Party lead candidate for the Yorkshire and Humber region in the European Elections 2014 and the national party’s Energy spokesperson.
(Header photo credit: Green Party)
On March 12th 2013 I sent a Freedom of Information request about the Private Finance Initiative-funded waste incinerator to Ian Hughes, Head of Democratic and Partnership Services at Calderdale Council. As of yesterday, I still hadn’t received a reply.
Public bodies are supposed to reply to Freedom of Information requests within 20 working days.
But since it turns out that, under the 1972 Local Government Act, local authorities are legally entitled to withhold crucial information from the public, what’s the point?
Today, after chasing up the FOI request yesterday with Calderdale Council, I have received the reply, along with an email saying that the Council originally sent it to me on June 4th.
The Council really needn’t have bothered – it turns out that for most of the questions I asked,
“disclosure…could affect the Council’s negotiations with PRR and similarly PRR’s negotiations with other potential lenders.”
In a new spin on the revolving door, former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne has left jail and collected a job worth £100,000 a year with Zilkha Biomass Energy. Zilhka is a US company that ships wood pellets from America to Northern Europe.
Chris Huhne’s new job doesn’t cut much mustard with critics of the bioenergy industry.
Oliver Munnion, Campaigner for Biofuelwatch, said:
“Chris Huhne is being rewarded for his ardent support for the biomass industry during his time as Energy and Climate Change Secretary. He oversaw vast subsidies and other support mechanisms being put in place for bioenergy which have resulted in a rush for biomass that could see the UK’s demand for wood rise to 90 million tonnes a year – nine times the UK’s annual production.
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The 2013-14 Calderdale Energy Future (CEF) Action Plan is tucked away on the CalderForward website. It lists 11 objectives that it wants to achieve in order to help reduce the area’s carbon emissions, in line with the CEF strategy.
Community renewable energy projects in Calderdale, as well as scores of others across the country, have fallen foul of a little-known Ofgem rule. Introduced in 2011, it bars publicly grant-funded community renewables from receiving Feed In Tariff (FIT) payments for the electricity that they generate.
Affected community renewable schemes only found out about the rule earlier this year. when their FIT payments stopped and they heard that Ofgem would only reinstate them on repayment of an unspecified amount of their grants.
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A Calderdale Council Report on home energy conservation plans for the next two years is critical of the new Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation policy. It advocates “more equitable”, publicly-funded home insulation and other measures to help householders save energy and reduce their energy bills. Calderdale Council Cabinet approved and adopted the Report at its May 2013 meeting.
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Find out more here.
Finn Jensen asks this question at the end of his post on Germany’s energy transition.
The answer may lie in the way that successive UK governments have allowed themselves to be captured by fossil fuel and nuclear companies.
Calderdale Council has just sent me their refusal to provide information about the proposed Bradford/Calderdale Private Finance Initiative (PFI) waste incinerator and power station that I requested before the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) withdrew their funding for this and other proposed waste incinerators.
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