UK public won't give up flights: env min

LONDON (Reuters) - The British public do not want to give up their holiday flights, said deputy energy and climate minister Joan Ruddock on Wednesday, responding to a letter from the government's adviser on the emissions impacts of aviation.

Britain will depend on energy efficiency measures to meet near-term energy and emissions targets, Ruddock told the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit.

"What we've found in our behavioural research is that people most of all don't want to give up their holiday flights," she said. "There has to be room for people to have choice."

She stood by the government's January decision to add a third runway to the world's busiest international airport, but added that the government would "listen to the debate" on that expansion -- "At this point we do believe we can expand Heathrow. These are the decisions we've made for now."

Britain has a target to return aviation greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels by 2050.

The government's advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said on Wednesday that goal would force the rest of the country to make a 90 percent emissions cut, to achieve a legally-binding, overall goal of an 80 percent cut by 2050.

In July the government unveiled a low-carbon transition plan which aims by 2020 to commercialize technologies which bury greenhouse gases underground, install thousands of wind turbines offshore, and make millions of homes more energy efficient.

Under wider European Union energy and climate change targets Britain has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34 percent by 2020 -- "The plan enables us to do exactly that. We are confident," said Ruddock.

Ruddock was frank about the results of Britain's move to expand renewable energy production during the Labour party's 12 years in power. The country has an EU goal to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020 compared with 2 percent now.

"Yes, it was slow. It's now pretty fast. And we are looking at a seven fold increase (by 2020)." She blamed Britain's rich oil and gas reserves, now running low.

"(The mindset was:) we've been an energy rich nation for so long, we've had our indigenous sources of energy, beginning with our own coal supply, then North Sea oil and gas, and frankly it's been just too easy. The incentive hasn't been there."

Britain will close its dirtiest coal plants in 2015 and several of the country's aging nuclear power plants are also near the end of their life -- but Ruddock did not expect power shortages in a critical period before offshore wind, tidal power and new nuclear come on line in around 2020.

"We don't think there's an issue. We've got very extensive programs of energy efficiency, and in a way, that is the most critical thing. We have a lot (of other) current plans already in the pipeline ... for about 10 gigawatts of electricity (and a) new gas storage facility..."