Last year the Government signed a European renewable energy agreement - the Renewable Energy Directive which said that the UK must get 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. However, the Government tried to wriggle out of its commitments and put forward a series of proposals to weaken the Directive.
Friends of the Earth groups across the country turned out in force on Saturday 25th October to highlight the absurd situation of the government having a new climate change law yet trying to water down the solutions.
Julie and Maureen ran the Sheffield Friends of the Earth stall. They asked members of the public to sign postcards to be sent to their MP. The postcards suggested that MPs support the original targets for the Renewable Energy Directive.
After the stall Maureen Edwards said, “The public were generally in favour of renewable energy. It wasn't difficult to get them to send postcards to their MP's to back the 15% by 2020 target that the government is trying to wriggle out of”.
Despite collecting 50 postcards on Saturday, Maureen return to the City Centre on Tuesday to run another stall collecting postcards. Nationally 149 groups took part and collected around 10,000 postcards.
After intensive lobbying the Government backed a strong Directive. Overall Friends of the Earth was pleased with the Directive, but were deeply disappointed that attempts to remove a 10% target for biofuels have failed.