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Written by SONE
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Sunday, 01 January 2006 |
IT’S ALL WARMING UP – OR COOLING DOWN – RATHER NICELY
One of our patrons, James Lovelock CH, has told us to prepare to meet our doom because of accelerating global warming. The Tories and Liberal Democrats are glowing green. President Putin has been extremely helpful, like the rebels forcing Shell to retreat from the Niger delta, by cutting off the Ukraine’s gas supply. The weather has had us on a knife edge and some heavy users of energy have shut down because gas is too dear.
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph wrote a vigorous go-nuclear leader and Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express and Ruth Lea, head of the Centre for Policy Studies, in the Daily Telegraph, also weighed in.
Amicus led the unions in a call for nuclear power. The heads of six engineering institutions wrote a letter to The Times telling the Government to get on with nuclear building. And the Financial Times forecast the Government would go for it this year.
Altogether things are shaping up nicely for the start in earnest of the energy review, formally announced on January 23. By all accounts, the Prime Minister wants to sort out his failing energy policy, but the nagging question remains whether he has the political strength to do so as he compromises across the board on other policies before Labour MPs have even massed for their February effort to try to kill the nuclear option.
Nuclear’s Parliamentary opponents will, of course, be out of tune with the voters. The public are seen in successive polls to be warming to the idea of nuclear as considerations of personal interest and convenience kick in. A MORI poll has found 54% of people would be willing to support new nuclear power stations if it would help solve global warming compared with 60% against five years ago. Shorn of the climate change reference, 34% supported and 42% opposed nuclear, but 23% leaned neither one way nor the other.
All this occurred against a very disturbing start to the New Year. The Times informed us on New Year’s Eve that two days earlier the National Grid issued a warning of trouble at tea-time if more power was not brought on to the system and told distributors to prepare to cut off some customers if generators didn’t respond. It said the supply cushion fluctuated between a third and a half of the normal comfort zone of 2-4MW. Apparently, we got away with it.
Big users of gas who have seen wholesale prices triple over the past three years had an even more worrying start. Some intensive energy users had already shut down and may not re-open. And then Mr Putin temporarily cut off Ukraine’s gas supply and consequently interfered with the flow to Europe. As we write, Moscow’s coldest winter for years is due to freeze over us. Come February only dogmatic fools may be opposed to nuclear now that Mr Putin has shown he is ready to use energy as a political weapon.
APOCALYPSE NOW
The energy review was formally announced against the background of a warning for the human race of Biblical severity. A SONE patron, Professor James Lovelock CH, told us through the Independent (which specialises in trauma) that man had so damaged the planet’s health that it would soon pass into a morbid fever, placing civilisation in great danger.
The author of the Gaia theory of a self-sustaining Earth, provided it is not abused, spoke as “a planetary physician”. He said that before this century was out billions would die and the few breeding pairs of humans who survived would be in the Arctic where the climate would remain tolerable. The temperature would rise by 8degsC in temperate regions and 5degsC in the tropics. He said we should try to sustain civilisation for as long as possible. To do this we needed “the security of a powered descent” through nuclear energy. We must make our peace with the Earth while we were still strong enough to negotiate and not “a broken rabble led by brutal war lords”.
FoE’s fabulous 15 plan
Not even Friends of the Earth felt things were this bad. They went on to prove it by issuing effectively their evidence to the Government’s energy review in which they said nuclear power was not necessary.
Instead, they identified “15 sustainable energy solutions which could meet much of our energy needs and make the UK a world leader in developing a low carbon, nuclearfree economy.” We list their fabulous 15 solutions as follows:
· Proper insulation of homes and offices
· Tough energy efficiency standards for electrical appliances
· Halve CO2 emissions from vehicles by requiring e.g. hybrid technology as part of a new law to cut UK carbon emissions by 3% a year
· Generate 20-30% of current domestic electricity and heat demand through microgeneration
· Generate 25% by CHP
· Use biomass and crops for 10% of electricity, 5% of transport fuel and 5-10% of current heat needs
· Reduce the need for people to travel and encourage them, when they do, to walk, cycle and use buses and trains more through tax and technology
· Require offshore wind to produce 10% of UK electricity and 5% from onshore wind.
· Require industry to install efficient motors
· Use wave and tidal power to produce 5% of our electricity
· Create tidal lagoons to produce 5-10% of electricity
· Legislation against leaving appliances - e.g. TVs – in stand-by mode
· Replace ordinary light bulbs with energy efficient ones
· Use smart devices on appliances such as fridges to control peaks in demand
· Investigate the import of electricity from large-scale solar power plants in the Sahara. In this way FoE would replace fossil fuels and nuclear. The plan does not have the merit of a single costing or, so far as we can see, any exposure to engineers. If it had, FOE’s ideas on micro-generation, CHP, biomass and crops and wind power would have been strangled at birth. This is, of course, the usual FOE plan for wrecking Britain. For Friends of the Earth read Enemies of the People.
POLITICAL PUERILITY
It may well be that Tony Blair now stands alone in wishing to give Britain (and this part of the planet) an energy policy it needs and deserves. If so, he will be entitled to be called a statesman. He will certainly stand in stark contrast to David Cameron, the Tory leader, and Sir Menzies Campbell who is the putative new leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Cameron’s engagement of Zac Goldsmith, viscerally anti-nuke editor of The Ecologist, as an adviser to his Quality of Life Policy Group, is not necessarily evidence of a refusal to face facts. Goldsmith may well drive serious Tories up the wall sooner than we think.
But the prognosis is not good. On January 17 Cameron and six colleagues, including Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin, foregathered publicly to switch their home energy supplies online to a renewable supplier. We also, incidentally, learned from the press that “Ming” Campbell had, uninventively, made his watchwords “environment, environment, environment” and promised to rid himself of his beloved gasguzzling Jag.
Pathetic
It is sad to see grown men in such pathetic poses. It is even sadder to discover that HM Loyal Opposition are apparently blissfully unaware that, through the simple laws of arithmetic and physics, their new “green” power contracts will be undeliverable.
There won’t be enough “green” electricity to go round when the wind doesn’t blow or blows a gale, especially as large-scale hydro is not defined as renewable. It will be less deliverable at any time the more people they persuade to sign up, given that wind produces only 0.5% of total power when it is blowing optimally.
Fortuitously, they may well get “green” power from the greenest - nuclear - source when the nation is becalmed, as it was on December 28 when only three of the nation’s 70 Met. Offices recorded wind speeds above nine knots. But that is no doubt not what Conservative Central Office intended.
If it is any consolation to them, Industry Minister, Lord Sainsbury, defined nuclear as “renewable” on October 27 last year. We await the removal of nuclear power’s liability for the climate change levy. Meanwhile, we wonder, as did our patron Gordon Adam, in The Times, whether Cameron’s green house would be connected to the gas and electricity grids. If not, spare a thought for Mrs Cameron.
GROWLING OVER GOLDSMITH
The Goldsmith appointment has caused a fair bit of growling and in West Cumbria a splendid inter-party spat. The local MP, Jamie Reed, successor to Dr Jack Cunningham, said he was “saddened and amazed” by the appointment. Whereupon, constituency Conservatives accused him of hypocrisy, bearing in mind such Labour anti-nukes as Peter Hain MP and, we might have had added, Sir Jonathon Porritt, Mr Blair’s adviser.
However, this does not get us very far. More usefully, a SONE member in Cumbria, Graham Brightman, has written to Mr Cameron at the request of his ward councillor asking him, in effect, what he is up to. Goldsmith, he says, is entitled to his opinions but was it likely the ordinary citizen’s quality of life would be enhanced if anybody took any notice of him?
The Tory policy group, he said, should advocate effective measures against climate change and, if carbon-free electricity generation was a serious aim, nuclear power stations must be retained and those closing at least replaced.
The Conservative leader needs to be told this by all SONE’s 300 members.
OLD WARNING REFRESHED
It is to be hoped that Cameron and Blair read a telling letter by Lord (David) Howell, Energy Secretary 25 years ago, in the Financial Times on January 4. He recalled a dinner at the German Embassy in London to honour Henry Moore, the sculptor.
Helmut Schmidt tells Margaret Thatcher over coffee that Germany has just signed a contract to take 14% of its daily gas supply from Russia. She clatters her cup down and expostulates: “Helmut, this is very dangerous”. Helmut seeks to soothe: “My dear Margaret, there is no danger. They need to sell the gas and, in fact, the percentage will rise. For Austria, it is much higher already.” Margaret promptly instructs David to ensure that the UK never gets into the same position.
Lord Howell then switches to Moscow, August 2005. He says he is being received by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister. He asks Lavrov whether Russia will use its vast energy exports as a diplomatic weapon. “Of course”, he replies.
Lord Howell wondered why anyone is even faintly surprised at what went on between Russia and the Ukraine over gas. We would ask the same question if we had not spent the last few years listening to politicians, energy experts and somethings in the City disdainfully pooh-poohing the very idea that anybody would interfere with energy supplies.
Whether they would or not, it is unwise to put them in the way of temptation.
STIRRINGS IN SCOTLAND
We are told that Scotland’s First Minister, Jack McConnell is paving the way for the Scottish Labour Party to abandon its opposition to new nuclear power stations in Scotland. He is asking his colleagues whether they should commit the party to a new generation of reactors.
The Sunday Herald reported mid-month that the soundings will lay the foundation for the manifesto for the 2007 Holyrood Parliamentary elections. The issue is sensitive because Labour’s Liberal Democrat coalition partners won’t touch nuclear while the disposal of radioactive waste remains “unsolved”.
It seems that senior Labour figures have decided that they can no longer ignore nuclear because it is a UK “reserved” issue under devolution, or sit out the UK debate, because of implications for planning and Scotland’s overall energy needs. They have blocked a Labour attempt to label nuclear “a less desirable” option.
Hunterston nuclear power station is due to close in 2011 but Torness not until 2023.
France renews commitment
In his New Year address, President Chirac cemented his commitment to nuclear power while urging accelerated development of solar power and hybrid cars. He pledged that no train would run on fossil fuels by 2026 and urged a five-fold increase in biomass production over two years.
Curiously, Lord Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell, told the Oxford Farming Conference that making petrol or diesel from energy crops such as maize was “scarcely worthwhile”.It was more efficient to use straw or green waste.
The IAEA has found that stressing the climatic benefits of nuclear power influences 10% of the people to be more supportive across 18 countries. It increased support for nuclear in 14 of the 18 countries surveyed. The argument had the highest impact in Indonesia and least – ie none – in Japan, Jordan, Russia and Morocco. Neither Jordan nor Morocco have nuclear power.
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
The six institutions backing nuclear power in a letter to The Times on January 6 were: the Institutions of Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Incorporated and Structural Engineers and the Institute of Marine Engineering.
In a joint letter, their chief executives urged the Government not to delay decisions that “might prevent nuclear power remaining an integral part of the UK’s future energy mix”. There were no safety or technical reasons to do so.
It was imperative that the Government clarified its policy and regulatory framework to provide a stable background for future investment in energy and that a cross-party consensus was reached since the timeframe over which investments were analysed spanned several parliaments.
CARBON TAX SOLUTION
Given that it will be the market and not government that builds the next generation of nuclear power stations, is a form of carbon tax all nuclear needs to make it irresistible? This is a question being asked at energy conferences. The argument is that, such is the hunger for business, there is no problem in securing both fixed price and performance contracts for new power stations, thereby protecting investors on two counts.
Similarly, fuel supply and waste disposal contracts were available and it was perfectly possible to open up power supply contracts to auction on the Finnish model. If there were also carbon contracts, payable on delivery – ie of carbon production avoided – then nuclear would be in a very strong position in the market. What is more, it would be the market that would identify nuclear as the preferred option, not governments.
There is one snag. They call it BETA which used to be called NETA. How can you take long-term decisions when the chosen method of electricity supply regulation is strictly short term and is inhibiting not just nuclear but all investment in electricity supply, apart from wind?
BRIEFING FOR MEMBERS
Very shortly the committee will be circulating briefing prepared for the New Year to all members – one a general briefing on the case for nuclear power and the other on the availability of uranium since anti-nukes claim there is an acute shortage.
The briefing will appear in a house style similar to that of the leaflet “The Looming Energy Crisis” and will be developed as well as updated from time to time. The committee hopes that members will make regular use of the material in letters to the press and discussions.
It would have been better had we waited until publication of the briefing before giving you a preview of one interesting fact in it. The gremlins really got into the arithmetic so we must issue a correction: The annual electricity consumption of the average semi would keep Heathrow going for only 8.75 minutes (not 1.5 seconds)!
A MORAL ARGUMENT
Greens regularly claim that 150,000 people a year are already dying as a result of global warming. We know of no justification for this figure. It may well have been plucked out of thin air. But if it is true, it is surely an argument for nuclear power since a) there has been no recorded death from a radiation accident in the UK for 50 years and b) the world’s 441 nuclear power stations avoid more greenhouse gas production than would the full operation of Kyoto, with USA compliance. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 19 June 2006 )
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