THE days of meeting an unchecked demand for energy through monolithic carbon-intensive power stations are coming to an end. On that statement last week from Scottish and Southern Energy, Britain’s second-largest gas and electricity supplier, there can be little disagreement. Centralised, fossil fuel-fired generation will have to give way to a combination of energy efficiency and diversity because the fossil fuels are finite and for the sake of the planet.
It’s where we go after that that the argument starts and the vested interests line up their arguments on either side of the political battleground. In tackling the twin problems of the energy crisis and climate change, a crude division can be made between those who seek a fundamental redrawing of the way we live and those who resist any move to a sustainable revolution that would perforce change many aspects of the way society functions.
In that respect, the industry view as represented by SSE and the Government, as represented by Gordon Brown in his announcement of an expansion of Britain’s dependence on nuclear energy are at odds.
The energy company suggests that, in future, the emphasis will be on energy efficiency, renewables, cleaned-up fossil fuel plants and microgeneration. That happens to coincide broadly with environmentalists such as Friends of the Earth (see page 5) and Greenpeace which makes a powerful case against nuclear energy on pages 10-11.
Mr Brown’s announcement of an undefined expansion was odd to say the least. It came amid, if not in response to, concern about rising oil prices and the knock-on effect for petrol, food and household goods. The link is fatuous, as is any suggestion that nuclear power, being “cleaner”, will help Britain meet its targets on reducing carbon emissions.
In evidence to the Commons environmental audit committee this week nuclear industry chiefs predicted that an additional two nuclear power stations might be built by 2020. That is five years later than the date set by Britain and the European Union for emissions to be sufficiently lowered to have a significant effect on climate change. And, of course, too late to make an iota of change on oil production or prices and therefore the energy crisis. While waving the nuclear option as a panacea to the fuel gap, the Government not only fails to say when it might start to plug the gap, it also refuses to say how, and by how much, a new nuclear energy programme will be subsidised by the taxpayer, or even to acknowledge that subsidy is the only way that the industry will agree to get involved. It is not good enough simply to say that “the market” will decide, not least when the industry itself is at odds on exactly how few new nuclear plants could be built by, at the earliest, 2020.
By then, under EU law currently under preparation, Britain should have achieved a 50 gigawatt level of energy from renewables. That’s a 15 per cent increase compared to the Government’s current and optimistic prediction of 5 per cent and a symbolic illustration of the lack of commitment and confusion on the green agenda and energy gap.
The Government is, as with other environment-friendly options, making the right noises on low carbon building programmes, but at an unambitious level which cannot be seen as a serious step forward until schemes are on the same whole-community scale as are proliferating in Germany.
On biofuels, the Government is displaying a laissez-faire approach to a development which may for commercial reasons take off before it is discovered to have little or no overall climactic benefit.
Instead the Government should impose a moratorium until there is greater evidence of a substantial benefit over a biofuel life-cycle. As Oli Usher details on page 18, the rush to biofuels is already hurting the poorest people in the world and destroying fragile ecosystems.
The embrace of nuclear power as a solution to the energy gap is camouflage for the fact that the Government has no cohesive energy policy and that, in terms of progress toward finding one, it not only risks taking Britain toward a new dark age, but is still trapped in one.
