"Advancing Renewables Together" - providing constructive evidence based advice to Government on the effective delivery of its renewable energy objectives.

The Renewables Advisory Board provides advice to Government on a wide range of renewable energy issues. The board is an independent, non-departmental public body sponsored by the DTI that brings together government departments, the renewables industry and the unions. It aims to develop mutual understanding of the key issues for the industry – like technology development, barriers to market penetration, and export enhancement – both in the short term and over the next 20 years.

The board is chaired by the DTI Energy Minister. Eleven members, including the Chair, come from government departments. The other members have been selected from all sectors of the renewables industry.

At the end of 2004 the board met and considered in detail the barriers facing the development of renewable energy in the UK. As a result of this analysis, the work of the Board was refocused on six workstreams that address the key issues and barriers to the Government’s target of providing 10 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The work streams, jointly chaired by a DTI representative and an industry member, are:

• offshore wind
• Finance and Investment
• Emerging technologies
• Planning
• Unblocking Consents
• Renewables Obligation Review

2003 Work Groups

• Grid
• Vision and Comunications