Investment of £110bn in electricity infrastructure is needed by 2020 to meet increase in demand, to provide back-up capacity, and because of scheduled closure of one fifth of existing capacity.
Using competition to award companies licences to transmit electricity from offshore wind farms has benefits but consumers might end up bearing the cost of inflation.
Reported fraud in Employment Programmes is low despite past flaws such as in the New Deal. New improvement controls are better, yet risks remain.
This briefing has been prepared for the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, to inform their discussion of potential inquiries on nuclear energy. On 27 April 2012 the Committee launched an inquiry into Building New Nuclear: The Challenges Ahead.
This competition was launched in 2007 with insufficient planning and recognition of the commercial risks and cancelled four years later. With commercial scale carbon capture and storage technology still to be developed, DECC must learn from the failure of this project.
This briefing was prepared for the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee to support its evidence session on the work of Ofgem.
A briefing for the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and the Energy and Climate Change Committee.
Despite the fact that the Defra has made improvements in its financial management, the NAO cannot yet conclude that the Department is achieving value for money in its financial management activity.
Giving greater responsibility and discretion to local authorities to identify flood risk and target investment raises significant challenges, especially during a time of budget cuts and other newly devolved responsibilities. Greater value for money can be achieved through these reforms, but key elements of what is required are not yet in place.
This Departmental Overview is one of 17 we have produced covering our work on each major government department. It summarises our work on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during 2010-2011.
