The United Kingdom has been in the news over the past year for its efforts to become greener. For various reasons the United Kingdom has stepped up its efforts at raising recycling rates and lowering carbon emissions. The UK came under fire earlier this year for failing to reach several of the recycling and waste management goals set out by the European Union. Since then the UK has been encouraging local councils to get involved and come up with new and innovative schemes to get the United Kingdom moving towards a greener future. This has all led up to the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, where the United Kingdom has been a leader and set some of the most ambitious goals of any country.
The real questions becomes whether or not the UK has the infrastructure in place to achieve many of the lofty goals that it laid out at the summit. Currently the United Kingdom has one of the most competitive energy markets in the entire world, which will make it difficult to regulate, especially the amount of regulation it will take to get to the goals set out at the summit. The United Kingdom hopes to cut emissions by over a third in ten years and by eighty percent over the next forty years. These targets will take a renewed investment in alternative energy which is already occurring all over the United Kingdom.
In addition to solar and wind, cities in the United Kingdom have followed the American model of turning waste into energy using gasification.
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