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Renewable Energy: Research

Volume 454: debated on Monday 11 December 2006

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much his Department has spent on research on (a) nuclear energy, (b) clean coal technology, (c) solar power, (d) wind power, (e) hydro-electric power, (f) marine renewable energy and (g) energy from biomass in the last five years. (107680)

The Department of Trade and Industry, through the Technology Programme, and the Research Councils' expenditure in support of research and related training is given in the following table.

In addition, the Research Councils (RCs) are providing funding of £13.88 million over the period 2004-09 for the UK Energy Research Centre (which undertakes a range of research relating to sustainable energy) and energy is included in the work of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (which has some £15.8 million funding from the Research Councils over 2000-08).

£ million

Technology

Funding body

Funding for 2001-02

Funding for 2002-03

Funding for 2003-04

Funding for 2004-05

Funding for 2005-06

Nuclear fission

DTI1

2.00

2.10

2.10

2.20

2.30

RCs

0.33

0.31

0.21

0.11

0.95

Nuclear fusion

DTI

14.40

14.80

0

0

0

RCs2

0

0

15.90

22.70

20.60

Clean coal

DTI

4.40

3.00

5.00

36.50

4

RCs5

1.12

1.35

1.25

1.83

1.93

Solar PV

DTI

1.50

4.50

3.10

2.00

4

RCs

3.54

2.77

2.38

2.68

2.53

Wind power

DTI

1.20

1.40

1.40

1.50

4

RCs

0.33

0.49

0.48

0.24

0.13

Hydro

DTI

0.10

0.20

0.10

0

4

RCs6

Marine

DTI

1.00

2.70

5.00

1.30

4

RCs

0.61

0.62

0.83

1.00

1.03

Biomass

DTI

1.30

1.60

3.20

1.00

4

RCs7

0.75

0.93

1.18

1.25

2.02

1 Expenditure is to assist emergency support arrangements provided by the Met Office in the event of a nuclear release into the atmosphere, and includes a contribution towards the cost of the underpinning meteorological modelling capability. This funding is not provided through the Technology Programme.2 Responsibility for funding fusion transferred from DTI to EPSRC in April 2003.3 Estimated figure.4 Final figures for DTI spend in 2005-06 are not available at this time.5 Expenditure by Research Councils on conventional energy including clean coal technologies, but excluding carbon capture and storage.6 Very low level of expenditure cannot be established definitively at this time.7 Includes Research Council expenditure on biofuels.