March 12, 2015 2.30 pm
This story is over 85 months old
Backing renewable energy with ‘green bonds’
Green bonds: Labour MP candidate Lucy Rigby argues that clean energy needs to be back on the political top-table and that ‘green bonds’ are a step in the right direction.
Britain could learn a few things from Germany in terms of environmental policy – not least on solar energy, in which the Germans lead the world.
One thing the Germans do particularly well is to involve the public and local communities in financing and backing new green energy projects. This is without doubt something which should be copied here.
This weekend, Caroline Flint MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, announced that the public will be invited to invest in new, interest-bearing premium bonds which will specifically fund billions of pounds of investment in solar, wind and other forms of clean energy.
The oversight of these new ‘green bonds’ will be managed by the existing Green Investment Bank.
The benefits of such a scheme to the environment are clear and, brutally, there is a great deal of progress to be made on this score.
By 2020, we need to invest around £100 billion in the electricity system alone, as we replace ageing and polluting sources of power with new, cleaner alternatives; but, at present, investment is running at half that level.
Having promised to be “the greenest government ever” and been pictured with huskies in the Arctic, David Cameron subsequently very firmly ditched his green mask – to the point of giving climate change deniers to key roles in government, including as Environment Secretary.
This total abandonment of Britain’s green agenda is to all our detriment and it falls to the next government to put promoting clean energy and tackling climate change back on the political top-table.
We need to do much more to secure the required levels of green investment in areas such as low-carbon energy generation, energy efficiency, and transport.
In addition, the Green Investment Bank needs new powers to boost investment in green energy if the UK was to meets its environmental targets.
The proposed green bonds would also offer financial advantages for investors, with bondholders seeing a healthy return. Experts believe that they would yield far higher rates of return than many traditional methods of saving.
However, perhaps the most welcome change such a scheme would bring would be to foster the involvement of ordinary citizens in the development of green energy policy and the nurturing of a financial and civic interest in community energy production and distribution.
In many German communities, a majority of the population are investors in an increasingly decentralised green energy system, and see their investments yielding strong returns.
Of course, green bonds aren’t the sole answer to our renewable energy needs, but they’re definitely a very welcome step in the right direction.
Lucy Rigby is Lincoln Labour's candidate to be the city's next MP. She is a solicitor and lives in central Lincoln.
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A burglar who took sentimental items from the home of an 84-year-old woman while she was asleep in her chair was on Wednesday jailed for 20 months.
Lincoln Crown Court heard Wendy Bird woke to find her handbag had been taken from the living room of her Mablethorpe home.
Jerry Johnson, 25, of no fixed address, admitted burgling the property on 4 March this year.
Phillip Plant, prosecuting, said Mrs Bird fell asleep after being left at 11am by a relative and woke at 1.45pm to find her handbag gone.
Among the items taken were a watch valued at £800, £40 in cash, some sentimental gold rings, a bank card and batteries for a hearing aid.
Mr Plant said Johnson was a disqualified driver but later the same day used Mrs Bird’s bank card to spend £21 at the Empire filling station in Mablethorpe.
Police were able to identify Johnson on CCTV from his distinctive tattoos and the car was spotted again at Tesco in Skegness at 4.30pm on the same day.
The court heard Johnson failed to stop for officers and drove away, before being involved in a collision.
Johnson also pleaded guilty to failing to stop, failing to stop after an accident, driving while disqualified and a charge of fraudulently using Mrs Bird’s bank card on 4 March.
In a victim impact statement Mrs Bird said she now felt like a prisoner in her own home and always had to keep her doors locked.
Johnson, who represented himself in court, apologised to Mrs Bird, stating: “To the lady I am really sorry. At the time I was on drugs.”
Passing sentence Judge John Pini QC told Johnson: “This was a very mean offence.”
He was jailed for 20 months and disqualified from driving for two years and ten months.
Hospital bosses have painted a brighter future for health services in the county as they laid out their post-COVID ambitions on Tuesday.
Representatives from United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust were updating Lincolnshire County Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee on the latest progress after a CQC inspection earlier this year found they had made significant improvements but still labelled the trust as ‘requires improvement’.
Chief operating officer Simon Evans and director of nursing Karen Dunderdale laid out a series of ambitions including aims to deliver between 104-120% more elective care and diagnostic activity than pre-pandemic and to reduce and eliminate long-term waiting lists.
They said they had already achieved over and above those targets, including hitting 200% more elective surgery at one point, however, said there was a substantial challenge to maintain that success.
“We did have the fire at Lincoln and that is a real challenge to us,” said Simon.
“We’ve had to put in place many temporary measures to manage that but we’re still very confident of achieving the targets in the report.”
Recent positive news, said the bosses, included an increase in its workforce of 531 whole-time equivalent staff which they said was “small but important” in the grand scheme of the trust.
Simon told the committee recruitment and retention had improved since the trust was taken out of special measures by CQC.
“It is a substantial step forward… and left behind some of the stigma,” he said.
“We have already seen recruitment processes with more candidates applying.
“The reputation of the organisation has really lifted, particularly over the past year or so.”
They admitted, however, there were some “significant gaps” in areas across the board, but that funding was being made available.
New roles were also being developed which aimed to “up-skill” staff to cover some deficiencies.
They also praised the new Clinical Diagnosis Centre in Grantham along with plans to create a second one elsewhere in Lincolnshire.
And Simon praised the upgrades to A&E departments in Boston and Lincoln, calling the former “the largest development… perhaps since it was built”.
He said this will help take a “much larger number of patients” and speed up ambulance handover.
However, some councillors were unconvinced, particularly around ambulance waiting times.
The planned entrance to the new and expanded A&E build in Boston. | Image: ULHT
Councillor Terry Boston, one of the longest health scrutiny members, said: “I’m afraid that what you’re telling me about the ambulance delays, and what is happening is almost word for word, what was being said 10 years ago, and nothing has changed.
“They’re still there. When are we going to do something about it?
“It’s not just the people of sitting in ambulances but the impact of getting an ambulance out to somebody.”
Simon admitted it was a “genuine challenge” and was a symptom of wider issues around urgent and emergency care – including the level of occupancy by patients that might not need to be there.
He noted that as of Tuesday morning there had been 175 patients within Lincoln and Pilgrim Hospitals that did not need acute care, while 55 patients had been waiting for beds in A&E.
He said measures were being put into place and there was work ongoing but said “things are very different to the last 10 years”.
Councillors also raised questions around needing more detail on the plans, paediatric services, non-medical staff and robotic surgery but voted in line with officer recommendations to consider the reports.
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