ENGINEERS UNITE: YOU HAVE ONLY YOUR REPUTATIONS TO LOSE
By common consent among those who take these matters seriously, British
energy policy is in a mess. This is not in any way to ignore or write
down the Government’s belated commitment to nuclear power, but since it
comes 10 years too late it does not help much in present circumstances.
Many cannot see how we can avoid power cuts over the next 10 years, even if we are prepared to pay through the nose with another dash for gas, assuming we can get hold of it.
Yet there remain many who loudly write coal and nuclear out of future supply and confidently espouse the notion that Britain can thrive on wind, waves, tides, other water currents, solar, microgeneration of various kinds and improved energy efficiency. The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, is a case in point.
While espousing nuclear, the Government tries to keep its nose relatively clean with the so-called Greens by promising thousands more on- and offshore wind turbines, even though it admits they will need conventional back-up because of the well-known variability of the wind. This currying of favour does not do it much good since the militant Greens have spent August vainly trying to close Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in North Kent.
In short, what we are suffering now through rising inflation, soaring energy prices, climbing unemployment, tight credit and faltering growth could – and almost certainly will - be compounded in the medium term by a lack of sufficient electricity to power whatever economy emerges from today’s straits.
In these circumstances, we raise the question as to whether the major engineering institutions are doing enough for their own good – let alone for us as consumers - to alert the nation to the risks being run by false Green assertions about energy policy, their abiding opposition to nuclear and conventional coal-fired power stations and political timidity.
We acknowledge that many in these institutions have been “greenwashed” or are very reluctant to speak out because the Government does not seem to take criticism easily. But that does not excuse the realistic and brave from making their views forcibly known. Now is the time to stand up and be counted. Otherwise, the population will reasonably ask when the lights go out how the engineering professions could have permitted this calamity.
We propose to do our bit this autumn by updating our leaflet, “The looming energy crisis”, which was sent before the 2005 general election to the Cabinet and all MPs. Nobody will be able to say that SONE kept mum in the face of a serious threat to the British nation’s prosperity and security.
GOVERNMENT ADMISSION
Our authority for claiming that the Government knows very well that wind power needs backup to cover for unpredictable wind power is none other than Baroness Vadera, a junior Minister and Prime Ministerial crony.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon, the Independent Labour peer, asked her on June 23 whether the Government had had discussions with the National Grid on wind power policy and the need for cover.
She stated: “My noble friend makes a valid point... Wind generation is intermittent and therefore needs... base-load capacity which means we need to build for coal and gas to back up the wind. That is why it [wind] is not the most effective source in terms of energy security of supply, but it is very effective for climate change”.
That answer is, of course, rather like giving with one hand and taking away with the other. One reality – the need for cover – is recognised but the other –that since coal and gas are on stand by wind does little to reduce CO2 emissions – is ignored. So, as a matter of interest, is nuclear.
This illustrates how far we have yet to go to educate Ministerial opinion.
REDHANDEDLY WISE
The need for back up is at the root of the Government’s efforts to change a line in an EU Directive requiring renewable energy sources to be given priority for connection to the National Grid. The Business Department wants to change the wording about according priority from “shall” to “may” because it says it cannot give total priority to renewables since back-up gas plants may need priority..
This has inevitably brought Greenpeace accusations that the Government has been caught red-handed undermining clean energy across Europe and is proof that going nuclear would squeeze out renewables.
In fact, this suggests that before we get to nuclear we shall have another dash for gas with all that it entails for insecurity and rising energy bills.
NATIONAL GRID – WHAT ADVICE?
Baroness Vadera’s response (above) raises the question as to what the National Grid is up to.
We know, from SONE’s visit to its HQ in June, that it is concerned about unmonitored “embedded” generation. This may well include more than half current total wind generating capacity since, we understand, only major Scottish wind “farms” are monitored.
What is still puzzling, however, is the NG’s apparent complacency about coping with more and more wind power. This suggests that it is not sending out the alarm signals our engineering members think the Government should have been receiving long ago.
Indeed, during our visit it exhibited immense confidence in solving any technical problem that might be thrown at it. But then it would, wouldn’t it? This does no harm to its share price.
And since it has no statutory responsibility for the national generation mix or ensuring adequacy of supply, it has the complete answer if supply falls short - its ability to “constrain off” the problem, that is, to impose a power cut, as it did in May for 580,000 consumers.
We may be unduly cynical but it could explain why the Government is so mad keen on spending £100bn on renewables. It is not getting the advice it should have.
THE CLEGG DOCTRINE
If Baroness Vadera has exposed our educational problem, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has heavily underlined it. In an interview with the Independent on August 21 he demanded the scrapping of new nuclear and coal-fired power stations and the establishment of a renewables delivery authority to oversee a massive expansion of wind, solar and wave energy, funded by guaranteed premium prices for green energy.
“Renewable energy is no longer a pipe dream”, he said. “It is realistic and achievable. All it requires is the leadership and vision that has been lacking under years of tired Labour thinking.
That’s why I will set out Liberal Democrat proposals to become energy independent by 2050. This will require the kind of ambition and political will that succeeded in putting man on the Moon”.
It will also require the suspension of the laws of nature and that, we suspect, is beyond Mr Clegg.
He must be a trial to those Liberal Democrats who are members of SONE. In sympathising with them, we hope that privately they will intensify their efforts to get their leader to see sense.
They may have their work cut out. After studying archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, Mr Clegg wrote a thesis at the University of Minnesota on “The political philosophy of the Deep Green Movement”.
KING ARTHUR THE SPECIOUS
This brings us to the celebrated Arthur Scargill who describes himself as an environmentalist. He was outraged by George Monbiot, the Guardian’s resident green, for “selling out his environmental credentials” by admitting that nuclear is the only practical way to deliver secure and economic supplies of electrical power with minimal carbon emissions. The Guardian accordingly lent Mr Scargill space to run the gamut of arguments or claims against nuclear. These included such amazing inventions that nuclear is the most expensive form of electricity – 400% dearer than coal – and that there is no known way of disposing of nuclear waste that will contaminate the planet for thousands of years.
With 1,000 years of domestic coal reserves Britain, he said, could provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals it needs “without causing harm to the environment”. Accordingly, Mr Scargill wants “an integrated energy policy” producing “250m tonnes of indigenous deepmined clean coal per year” and with all power stations fitted with clean coal technology [that does not yet exist].
Scargill’s safety test
As he warmed to his task, he claimed that we do not know because of security and secrecy laws the full extent of the Windscale, Three Mile Island or Chernobyl disasters... “but we do know the incidence of cancer and leukaemia – particularly among children – is 10% higher in or around nuclear power stations and from experts ... that more than 100,000 will die over a 30-year period” as a result of Chernobyl.
Mr Scargill may have lost his industry and his union but he has not lost any of his inventive rhetoric or brass neck. For example, he concluded by saying: “I challenge George Mobiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel – coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes”.
Presumably he knows he can hold his breath for that long. Yet he doesn’t seem to realise that every room – and every colliery – is full of radiation and that what matters is not whether it is full of it but of what kind and intensity.
WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY?
Talking of brass neck brings us to Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, owners of British Gas, which is being pushed by a major shareholder as a partner for British Energy in nuclear’s renaissance.
Unveiling half-yearly profits of nearly £1bn, he complained that the failure to invest proceeds from the North Sea in a sovereign wealth fund or to construct adequate gas storage capacity to prepare for rising imports pointed to insufficient forward planning.
This may well be true but it also surely points to the failure of companies like Centrica to ensure that they have enough gas storage capacity, especially when the nature of the European market means that they are often forced to pay the earth for gas on the spot market.
It also seems to demonstrate that an untutored market will not always provide the goods on time.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE?
As we go to press, we have it from near the horse’s mouth that Gordon Brown has yet to be persuaded to impose a windfall tax on the energy companies who are simultaneously reporting apparently large profits and hoisting their prices again by anything from 20-35 per cent.
Meanwhile, the consumer (according to polls), MPs and unions clamour for just such a tax.
No doubt their campaign will be reinforced by the news that France has put a cap of two per cent on electricity price rises while the French firm, EdF, raises its prices here by 22 per cent. This ignores the fact that France generates 80% of its electricity with uranium compared with about 18 per cent in the UK.
However, Ed Mayo, head of the Government’s new consumer focus group, says British consumers are having their “pockets picked” by foreign energy firms to subsidise customers in their own countries and that lack of competition on the Continent is “ripping off” British families.
Another slant
It looks like an open and shut case but then Carl Mortishead, world business editor of The Times, put another slant on it on July 31. He said that Britain alone had an effective spot market for gas (which generates up to 40 per cent of electricity) whereas on the Continent gas was largely sold under long-term contracts. Because we are no longer self-sufficient and have to import gas its price has become linked to the oil price.
In the spot market timing is all. Within five days the price for gas for next day delivery had fallen from 60p to 33p a therm. There is thus a lot of luck involved in the face of rapid ups and downs.
Moreover, the utilities have not been making any money on domestic supplies for some time and no company can continue to run at a loss when profits are needed for re-investment in new plant, exploration and production. He also pointed out that we need these companies to be successful not simply for future energy supplies but because pension funds are heavily invested in them.
National failure
What cannot be denied in all this is a national failure to plan for the decline of British North Sea gas, the increasing world demand for natural gas and the closure of ageing coal and nuclear power stations, not to mention less liberal energy markets abroad. It has left the UK cruelly exposed in a gas-hungry world where supplies are liable to political control.
That is where we started this Newsletter.
THIS MAD, MAD WORLD
In these circumstances it beggars belief that the police have had a lively August either arresting or rescuing from their own follies Green campaigners trying not merely to prevent a new coal power station being built at Kingsnorth, Kent, but also to close down the existing one.
This is, of course, just a token of what is to come when they start pouring concrete on a new nuclear site. .
Meanwhile, energy companies are calling for more subsidies for offshore wind farms since it turns out that they are at best marginal even with a 100 per cent subsidy. This is not surprising with rising costs and a load factor for offshore turbines of 25.6 per cent last year, lower than 2006 – and lower than onshore at 27.5 per cent.
In spite of this vast expenditure and the rigging of the planning process in favour of renewables, wind generated only 1.3 per cent of our electricity last year and renewables at best five per cent. Yet in 18 months’ time the Government has committed us to produce 10 per cent of electricity from renewables. It is not going to happen.
Consequences
The only conclusion to draw from all this is that the Greens wish to close down Britain economically in order to save the planet. This is perhaps what the engineering institutions should be telling the people.
Paul Spare, a member of SONE’s committee, certainly told them where Green policies will get us in the Sunday Telegraph on August 24.
Responding to a “misleading” picture painted by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth about Danish electricity from renewables, he wrote: “For long periods in January Danish wind turbines provide no useful power so that reserve fossil fuel plants have to be employed. As a consequence CO2 output per capita in Denmark is about twice that of Sweden, France and Switzerland where electricity is almost all hydro or nuclear. Since Greenpeace objects to hydro, nuclear and coal plants, if we followed their policies we would have increasing CO2 output as well as power cuts and more hypothermia deaths”.
The energy bills do not bear thinking about.
AGM
All members wishing to attend SONE’s AGM on Tuesday, October 21 should let the Secretary know either by letter to 9 Monahan Avenue, Purley, Surrey CR8 3BB; by phone on 020-8660- 8970 or by e-mail –
Places this year are strictly limited.
The meeting will be held at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at 1 Birdcage Walk, just off Parliament Square, from 12noon to 3pm.
Coffee will be available from 11.30am.
We shall be addressed by the Business Secretary, John Hutton, from 2-3pm. After essential SONE business at 12 noon, Lord O’Neill, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, will give us their assessment of where we have got to with nuclear’s development by way of briefing for the session with the Minister.
Formal notice of the meeting, together with copies of the annual report and accounts, will be sent to members late next month.
CHAIRMAN’S APPEAL
The appeal by the chairman, Sir William McAlpine, for funds to help SONE continue its work has so far produced the record sum of £7,995. This is a truly magnificent response and the committee is deeply grateful to all who have contributed. The chairman is writing personally to thank them.
