RENEWABLES CAN POWER SCOTLAND’S ENERGY REVOLUTION

£150 MILLION FUEL LEVY COULD BOOST INVESTMENT

NO NEED FOR NUCLEAR

A major report has confirmed that renewable energy can power Scotland’s energy revolution.

The report, which has been welcomed by SNP MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville a member of the Scottish Parliament’s Climate Change Committee confirms that Scotland can meet domestic energy needs from renewable sources and has the potential to produce surplus green energy for export.

“The Power of Scotland Renewed” compiled by energy analyst Garard Hassan on behalf of NGO’s including Friends of the Earth Scotland, RSPB Scotland, World Development movement and WWF Scotland says Scotland could meet nearly 70% of domestic electricity use by 2030 from renewables and has the potential to meet over 140% of domestic demand, allowing export of surplus resources.

The report confirms that there is no need for new nuclear power stations in Scotland.

Commenting on the report Lothians MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville also called for the UK Government to release the £150 million fossil fuel levy for investment in Scotland’s green future;

“This is an encouraging report and further demonstrates Scotland’s ability to lead the renewables revolution.

“There is welcome confirmation in this report both of Scotland’s green energy potential and our ability to generate electricity for both domestic consumption and export without costly and unwanted nuclear power stations.

“While we are on target to surpass our ambitious renewable energy targets of 31% of electricity from renewables by 2011 to build a bright and green future we must ensure we invest properly.

“It is unfortunate that £150 million of potential investment in Scotland’s renewables and energy industry is currently sat in a UK Government bank account through a quirk of Treasury accounting. It is time that money was released and invested in Scotland’s energy future.

“With the £10 million Saltire Prize attracting international interest in Scotland’s renewables potential and Scotland’s role in the development of a North Sea Super Grid Scotland is well places to capitalise on the jobs, investment and environmental benefit our renewable resources offer - with the release of £150 million of Scotland's money that investment could receive a major boost.”

Tony Juniper and Jonathan Porritt on voting Green

In the second of a series of videos, Tony Juniper and Sir Jonathan Porritt talk about the value of voting Green in the local and European elections.

They were attending the official launch of the Green party's election campaign in the East of England region. Our lead candidate in the East of England is Rupert Read, the party's spokesperson on public services, and a councillor in Norwich.

Tony Juniper, former director of Friends of the Earth, and now the Green Party's candidate for Cambridge in the next general election, said: "We cannot continue with the high-consumption, high-pollution, resource-wasting economy that Europe has gotten used to. We need Greens in the European Parliament to make that happen."

Sir Jonathan Porritt is founder of Forum for the Future, a former director of FoE, and chair of the Sustainable Development Commission. Sir Jonathan said: "The Green Party is the only party that has consistently told the truth about the state of the Earth, and our relationship with it, over the last 35 years. The party's ideas remain as relevant and as radical as all those years ago."

The local and European elections will be on the 4th of June, 2009.

Future videos will outline Green policies on animal protection, on crime, on fuel poverty and housing.

Politicians "in state of cognitive dissonance" over climate, says UK

Sir Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission - the most influential Green in Britain - told journalists today that British politicians were "in a state of cognitive dissonance" over the ecological crisis.

Cognitive dissonance is the psychologists' term for an inability to make rational decisions despite being able to clearly see the evidence.

The Green Party, on the other hand, has been right all along, Sir Jonathan continued.

Speaking in Bristol at the launch of the South West Green Party campaign for the European Parliament elections, Sir Jonathan said that he fully supported the Green Party and had been a member continuously since its founding.

Sir Jonathan, who was director of Friends of the Earth before taking the top UK sustainable development job, told his audience about a recent analysis he had carried out on the 1979 election manifesto of the Ecology Party, the former name of the Green Party. It showed that 65% of the policies which were included have now been adopted by the three "mainstream" parties. "We were right all along," he said. But he warned that the big three parties still haven't got it right:

"Every single one of the issues that the Green Party has been campaigning on for the last 35 years is getting worse and worse, which means that people should no longer put off the day when they accept that the future is either Green or not at all."

Jonathan Porritt drew attention to the recent negotiations in Copenhagen and his amazement at the level of shock on the part of normally sober scientists when confronted with increasing evidence of runaway climate change.

He said he has been unable to make clear his political allegiances while working as a government adviser but this time around he is prepared to pin his Green colours to the mast. Joking that he only had four months left at the Sustainable Development Commission so he was unlikely to be sacked, he gave a ringing endorsement to the Green Euro-candidates.

A party spokesperson commented: "Now we need all those scientists who are fed up of governments dragging their heels over climate change to point out which party has the right policies. Alternatively, scientists can stand on the a-political sidelines and watch the holocaust that they've predicted actually happen."