Renewable energy: The Conservatives have dropped the wrong target

It would have been perfectly possible for the green energy policy to be set in such a way as to achieve its target

Many of the new green power stations that were expected to spring up over the next decade will no longer be built, after subsidies for onshore wind and solar energy were slashed (Corbis)

If an obsession with targets were the only thing required to achieve a successful economy or deliver excellent public services then Stalin’s Russia would have been voluntarily copied all over the world, and Gordon Brown might be celebrating his eighth year in No 10.

So it is that many of the targets set by recent governments have turned out to be useless – as with the spectacular failure of David Cameron’s rash promise to limit migration to tens of thousands. This was made a nonsense of by the realities of the EU and the moral imperative of providing shelter to those fleeing conflict from Syria. Now we learn that net migration has hit 336,000 or so, leaving the Government to be attacked by the left and the right.

The effective abandonment of the official target on renewable energy is more regrettable. For it would have been perfectly possible for policy to be set in such a way as to achieve that end. The truth, though, is that the Government wants to reduce energy bills at almost any cost to the environment. Substituting cheap fossil fuels for solar and wind power is the quickest way to achieve that end. It may turn out to be smart electoral politics; but this will never now be the greenest government in history.

Another target missed, then.