Green Energy - Central Government

I’ve got a bug for finding out the amount that government spends on Green Energy. It is something that is interesting and also something that shows us what they are doing to help the environment. After doing the post on green energy in Wales and some of the councils in England, I wanted to see what Central government was spending on this issue.  

So I sent them all the same request, which was:

Please can you tell me how much money has your Department has invested in renewable energies for itself since 01/01/10. Please can you also state how much money it is estimated is saved because of the use of renewable energy, and what specifically it has bought.

This was an interesting one for me for a NUMBER of reasons, which I will go into below. So what were the responses?  Here we go!

Name	Spent	Saved
Export Credits Guarantee Department	Detailed breakdown of all activities.  See request
Department for International Development	Refused
Department for Communities and Local Government	Carbon reduction	£1.7 million
Department for Culture, Media and Sport	See report
Department for Education	Energy saving measures	£2 million
Department for Infrastructure (Northern Ireland)	At time of writing - no infor
Department for Transport	solar panels	£5,800
Attorney General’s Office	Unable
Cabinet Office	See below
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy	Refused
Department for Work and Pensions	Delayed - none - answerd on the 15/09/16
Department of Health	None
Foreign and Commonwealth Office	Unable
Her Majesty’s Treasury	No Info
Home Office	Delayed
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Education	None
Ministry of Defence	£1.5m
Privy Council Office	Delayed
Ministry of Justice	Unable
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)	£1692429.20

When you see the Cabinet office, the reason that this is blank is because they gave the wrong response to the wrong answer, so was not able to give you their response.

The first interesting thing was that almost ALL of the requests were late.  Monday (When they were all due) they all late, bar a few.  Hmmm…  The amount that DID NOT answer or are still late.  This is another thing that interests me.  Makes you wonder what they are trying to do.  Some of them have a pretty good reason for not getting back (such as the huge amount of buildings overseas and so forth).

The fact remains that the MOD and DEFRA spent over a million in getting to be green (The army is going green…). Shows that they care.  Shows also that some of this department have not even thought about it, either.