{"id":72167,"date":"2013-09-23T13:10:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T12:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=72167"},"modified":"2013-09-23T13:11:02","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T12:11:02","slug":"energy-companies-control-government-policy-on-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/energy-companies-control-government-policy-on-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Companies Control Government Energy Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mick Meaney
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A freedom of information act request has revealed that staff members from major UK energy companies have worked for, or are currently working for\u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change.<\/p>\n

At least four members of staff from EDF, RWE Npower Renewables and\u00a0Centrica Energy have also worked at \u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change\u00a0since November 2008.<\/p>\n

Two EDF employees were posted with \u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change\u00a0between November 2008 to April 2010 and November 2010 to May 2011; the secondee employee from RWE Npower Renewables worked at \u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change\u00a0between July 2012 and July this year, while Centrica Energy has a member of staff still in\u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change\u00a0offices until June next year.<\/p>\n

Tom Greatrex, the shadow energy minister said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“It is deeply concerning that it appears that the big energy companies may be running aspects of energy policy. Energy policy is \u201cnot about doing favours for the industry.<\/p>\n

“It is essential there are safeguards to prevent suggestions of conflicts of interest in secondments from industry to a government department that is clearly struggling to get on top of its own policy agenda.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The relationship between the British Government and energy companies has long been documented, even if little reported in the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

As we reported<\/a> earlier this year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer\u00a0George Osborne\u00a0has personal links to the energy industry. In fact, his father-in-law, Lord Howell of Guildford,\u00a0is a\u00a0lobbyist and\u00a0president of the British Institute\u00a0for Energy Economics.<\/p>\n

Osborne has also received tens of thousands of pounds in donations from Michael Hintze, the\u00a0Chief Executive Officer and Senior Investment Officer for\u00a0CQS Asset\u00a0Management and is\u00a0responsible for billions of pounds flowing into the\u00a0energy sector.<\/p>\n

Also, the\u00a0Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN) were given\u00a0a \u00a34.5 million Government grant to build wind farms, months after its director\u00a0Alexander Temerko donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Tory party.<\/p>\n

In fact, last year we reported<\/a> that over one third of all government ministers are linked to energy companies:<\/p>\n

\"Energy-list1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Energy-list2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So the next time the mainstream media reports about tax breaks and million pound grants being funnelled into the energy sector while the economy sinks, ask yourself why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mick Meaney RINF Alternative News A freedom of information act request has revealed that staff members from major UK energy companies have worked for, or are currently working for\u00a0the Department of Energy and Climate Change. At least four members of staff from EDF, RWE Npower Renewables and\u00a0Centrica Energy have also worked at \u00a0the Department of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-72167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}