Nigg Clegg, the true master of talking out of your arse is off again, this time he says we can be self-sufficient in energy by 2050 without building new coal-fired or nuclear power stations. He has announced a massive five page (yes five full pages!) ‘Apollo Project for UK Energy Independence’. The main thrust of his brilliant plan is to "Source all energy requirements from within the EU by 2030 so that the country does not need to import energy from unstable regimes." Sounds good but if Clegg were to pay a visit to this planet for a short while he would realise that the idea of sourcing our energy requirements from within in the EU by 2030 is a work of science fiction:

From the EurActiv Site:

Oil and gas reserves are unevenly distributed around the globe, and the largest reserves are situated in politically or economically insecure regions (Middle-East, Russia). North Sea oil and gas fields have already been exploited beyond their peak, leaving Europe dependent on non-EU countries for future supply.

The Commission Green Paper on security of energy supply (November 2000) drew a sobering picture of the EU's energy situation. If no action is taken, it predicted, the EU's energy dependency will climb from 50% in 2000 to 70% in 2030. The particular situation for the main imported fossil fuels was described as follows:

Oil:

45% of EU oil imports originate from the Middle East;
by 2030, 90% of EU oil consumption will have to be covered by imports

Gas:

40% of EU gas imports originate from Russia (30% Algeria, 25% Norway);
By 2030, over 60% of EU gas imports are expected to come from Russia with overall external dependency expected to reach 80%.

Coal:

By 2030, 66% of EU needs is expected to be covered by imports.

To back up this massive five page document, Clegg points us to his Liberal Democrat policy paper 82 (2007) in which he claims that the Lib Dems will Increase the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation to require at least 10 per cent of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from renewable sources by 2015.

Isn't this just another example of the Lib Dems living in cloud cuckoo land when we know the damage Biofuels are causing?