By Susanna Twidale
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain should set a 2030 emissions target for the power industry to encourage investment in new low-carbon power plants and keep the country on track for its climate targets, a parliamentary committee said on Wednesday.
"The UK can’t afford any further delays when it comes to replacing dirty power stations," Angus MacNeil, chair of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, said in a statement.
"Investors need certainty and setting a decarbonisation target for the electricity sector would signal the government’s commitment to phasing out fossil fuels," he said.
The government plans to close coal-fired power plants by 2025 to help to meet environmental targets but lack of incentives to invest in replacement plants could contribute to power shortages.
And sudden policy changes last year, such as the scrapping of support for onshore wind farms, has undermined investors' confidence.
To restore confidence the committee said the government should set a target to cut power industry emissions below 100 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (g/CO2/kWh) by 2030.
This would limit the use of gas-fired power as back up for when renewable plants are not running.
Britain already has a legally binding target to cut emissions by 80 percent on 1990 levels by 2050. To meet this, the government sets five-yearly carbon budgets.
The Energy and Climate Change Select Committee said the government should endorse the fifth carbon budget (2028-2032) to cut emissions by 57 percent on 1990 levels by 2030, as set out by advisory body the Committee on Climate Change last year.
In the past, the government has mostly heeded the Committee on Climate Change's advice, approving all the carbon budgets that it has proposed so far.
The country is on track to achieve its carbon budgets to 2022 but the government has previously said it risks missing the fourth, 2023-27 budget, which needs a reduction of 50 percent by 2025.
"We are determined to meet our climate change commitments in the most cost-effective way so we can keep bills as low as possible," a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said.
"We are considering the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and will set the fifth carbon budget in due course," she said.