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December Newsletter No. 123 |
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Written by SONE
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
Welcome to the state of utter confusion…
The New Year opens with things getting rather strident and contradictory under the impact of the global financial crisis. The fanatical Greens step up their forecasts of a future hotter than Hell and demands for ever more ludicrous curbs on human activity, regardless of the cost, while the shortage of capital due to the credit “crunch” is casting doubt on energy investments. Wind power is losing friends and sales of electric cars are plummeting as fast as organic food while people worry about meeting the huge capital demands of nuclear power stations.
Governments remain attached to unattainable targets – the latest is the
20/20/20 programme: 20 per cent of Euro energy (not just electricity)
from renewables and a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020.
Europe has, however, watered down the demands on industry at Germany’s
insistence and the latest global warming jamboree in Poznan, Poland,
where they mostly burn coal, scarcely moved towards a new Kyoto
agreement. It just generated a lot of CO2.
For the moment, political determination, as distinct from rhetoric,
seems to be draining out of environmentalism, though many hopes are
reposed in Barak Obama. We shall see whether the new United States
president can reconcile economic sense with the waste inherent in the
false gods called renewables that his high-powered team of global
warmers seem to back as well as nuclear.
At home we have, on the one hand, a report from Lord Adair Turner, the
Government’s climate change adviser, redeemed only by its recognition
of the need for nuclear, and on the other an admirably balanced report
from the Lords’ Economic Committee which, if experience over the last
10 years is any guide, will be ignored because of its lordly common
sense.
The energy industries clearly do not have much time for the new Energy
Secretary, Ed Miliband. They think he is “learning on the job”. He does
not seem to be learning much since he called for “popular mobilisation”
on the style of “Make Poverty History” to press political leaders into
tackling global warming. A week earlier without his urging intruders
got inside Kingsnorth coal fired power station and turned off two per
cent of the UK’s electricity supply for four hours. Nutters should not
be encouraged.
Though gearing up for a nuclear future continues apace, the prospects
for a happier New Year would be greater if this and other nations
directed their passion at securing energy supplies rather than
imperilling them. As things stand, the betting for 2009 is not on
whether the lights will go out but when. That will not save the world.
Meanwhile, we commend to all serious policymakers the pithy truth about
nuclear power devised by Fred Nicholson, one of our members formerly
employed at Heysham nuclear power station - Maximum energy benefit.
Minimum environmental effect.
...to the egg heads
One of the characteristics of the energy scene has long been an irrational enthusiasm for all kinds of supposed routes to clean power regardless of cost. Any old idea is welcomed, even by journals published by the energy institutions, while the obvious, tried and competitive nuclear is virtually ignored.
This month has brought a rich crop. After the idea of using the Sahara desert as a solar power station come solar towers from Seville using reflectors half the size of a tennis court to |
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