The Government has been accused of failing to spend any of the £42 million budget it has allocated for the development of wave and tidal energy technologies. The Liberal Democrats said it had obtained figures revealing that the entire budget for the Wave and Tidal-stream Energy Demonstration Scheme - the Government’s measure for allowing marine technologies to progress through their early phase - had remained unspent since it was announced in 2004. MP Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire), who obtained the information through Parliamentary questions, said: “These figures show the yawning gulf between rhetoric and reality when it comes to this Government’s record on renewable energy. Britain has world-leading potential when it comes to wave and tidal energy, yet the Government is sitting idly on the funding which the sector so desperately needs. How can the Government hope to meet its targets on renewable energy when it is not even capable of spending the modest funding it has set aside for wave and tidal technology?”

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4 August 2008
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