Main

Energy Archives

October 10, 2007 - Tidal Power in the UK

The Sustainable Development Commission’s report about Tidal Power has been out for more than a week now, and we have just about weathered the storm from environmental NGOs – and the Environment Agency – horrified as they were that the Sustainable Development Commission could possibly have given its name to an upbeat assessment of the potential for a barrage on the Severn estuary.

I can’t really blame them. It’s been an article of faith for so long that all self-respecting greenies will, by self-definition, be opposed to a barrage on the Severn. It is, after all, a quite unique environment, and the damage that a barrage will do will indeed be severe. Birds, fish, countless invertebrates, let alone a huge expanse of mud flats, will be lost. No wonder so many people believe that it’s impossible to pursue a barrage proposal without breaching our legal obligations under the Birds and Habitats Directives. We think they are wrong on that score. With the right kind of compensatory package, that damage can be “offset”, if not absolutely in the same part of the world, then certainly elsewhere in the UK.

One NGO that was noticeably restrained in expressing its concerns at the time was The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Little did we know that they were about to announce a major new habitat restoration project at Wallasea Island on the south Essex coast. Building on a prototype project pioneered right next door by Defra, this will be one of the largest schemes of its kind in western Europe, returning arable farmland to a mosaic of mud flats, salt marshes and coastal marshland – a very special kind of habitat, 90% of which has been lost in the UK over the last century through drainage and development.

I defy you not to be inspired by this project – http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/w/wallaseaisland/index.asp

“It will be an exciting landmark conservation and engineering project for the 21st Century on a scale never before attempted in the UK, and the largest of its type in Europe. It will demonstrate how land can be managed to help the coast and its wildlife adapt in the face of climate change and accelerated sea level rise.

The RSPB is working to transform a large area of arable farmland at Wallasea Island, in the heart of an internationally important estuary, back into coastal marshland. This will create a wetland mosaic of mudflats and saltmarshes, shallow lagoons and pastures. These will be criss-crossed by low-lying bunds along which visitors will be able to access much of this new 'Wild Coast' ".

But I couldn’t help noticing that there was no price tag attached at the moment! It will, for sure, run to many millions, and this still has to be raised. And that of course is just a fraction of the total compensation package that is likely to be required for the Severn Barrage.

Our argument on that score is a simple one. We are going to have to do many, many schemes of the Wallasea Island kind as we start to adapt to accelerating climate change. And where exactly is the money going to come from? There is just no way that loyal supporters of the RSPB are going to be able to stump up such a massive amount.

But if the bill for such compensatory packages (as we ourselves have recommended) is included right up front in the capital costs of the Severn Barrage project, we just might have one of those elusive win wins: 120 years of relatively cheap, nearly zero-carbon electricity, providing 5% of our total electricity needs, plus an adaptation strategy that really does do the job on an ecological front.

Posted on October 10, 2007 1:24 PM | | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

October 26, 2007 - Good news from Wales

Excellent news from Wales. First Minister Rhodri Morgan has just announced a very creative plan to bring forward nearly 1,000 MegaWatts of new wind energy on Forestry Commission land owned by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Subject to the standard planning process, developers will be able to bid for major new wind farms on Forestry Commission land, with part of the “rental value” from the use of that land going back into community-based projects – to the tune of around £4 million a year. And part of that must be invested in schemes to reduce CO2 emissions in the local community. Efficiency plus renewables plus community benefits – spot on!

I haven’t seen the responses in the media as yet, but, for once, I hope the positive voices will outweigh the moaning minnies who still think the best way of dealing with climate change is to just carry on talking about it.

Their ranks have been strongly reinforced of late by what I call the “wouldn’t-it-be-better-brigade” – as in “wouldn’t it be better to invest in energy efficiency”, “wouldn’t it be better to put the wind farms offshore”, “wouldn’t it be better to focus on small-scale generation on our homes”, and so on. To which the answer has to be “No, No and No”: all of those things would be great in their own right, but they wouldn’t be better. People still don’t get this: we need the whole boiling lot, and then a lot more on top of that, and then a lot more on top of that.

Which is why I’m so gobsmacked by those who have piously pointed out since the SDC’s report on tidal energy that a Severn Barrage would contribute only 5% of the UK’s electricity over the next 120 years. Only 5%! Do they have any idea how hard it’s going to be to get 1%, let alone 5%?

Anyway, back to Rhodri’s wind farms. The big ones (more than 50 MegaWatts) will have to be approved by BERR, which currently seems to have lost its renewables bottle in a big way. Leaked memos, ministerial back-sliding, “if it’s not nuclear, we don’t want to know”. So fingers crossed they don’t screw it up for Wales as and when the proposals start coming through the system.

Posted on October 26, 2007 2:40 PM | | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

February 21, 2008 - Renewable energy in Wales

Helped launched the new Renewable Energy Route Map for the Welsh Assembly Government yesterday – out for consultation until May, and well worth a look.

What grabs you immediately is the seriousness of intent – with an ambition to generate all the electricity Wales uses from renewable sources within the next 20 years. And may be even a bit more to export to the rest of the UK.

The Route Map is also wholly integrated with plans for massively ramping up energy efficiency targets in Wales, all part and parcel of the plan to start reducing emissions of C02 by 3% per annum from 2011 onwards.

That kind of ambition level is bound to stir a bit of controversy. It means lots of wind farms – on and offshore; it means lots of energy from waste (done in the right way, in my opinion, at a suitably small scale, rather than just opting for mega-mass-burn incinerators); it means lots of biomass and microgeneration – the contribution of which to the overall target is small, but the ‘engagement value’ of which (as in getting people in Wales personally involved) is huge. And it raises the stakes even further as regards the Severn Barrage.

Listening to Jane Davidson, the Welsh Minister responsible for all this, putting forward such exciting plans made me compare all this to the UK-wide scene. Over the last month, a number of articles in the media have show just how dreadful our performance on renewables has been since 1997 – the lowest in Europe, at 2%, after Malta and Luxembourg, despite having the best available resource. Grant schemes have largely failed, the Renewables Obligation has under-performed, planning obstacles have not been addressed, Ofgem has been semi-detached, and Ministers have just muddled along as if it never really mattered. “Pathetic” is how I described it yesterday, and pathetic is what it is.

But is that about to change? BERR will be producing a new Renewable Energy Strategy later this year, and Malcolm Wicks (who really does mind about these things, must be deeply embarrassed at where the UK is today) has indicated that it will be far-reaching and very ambitious – indeed “revolutionary” – as it will need to be to restore any kind of credibility in terms of the UK’s need to meet our new target of 15% of all energy coming from renewables by 2020.

So the Wales Route Map provides a pretty good starting point for Malcolm to be getting along with.

Posted on February 21, 2008 3:20 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 10, 2008 - Real Time Displays

I sometimes wonder if BERR is a Department with a death wish – the death in question being its reputation when it comes to addressing climate change, fuel poverty, energy efficiency and other key sustainability issues. There’s some kind of fundamental perversity in the way it sets about dealing with these issues that it is almost impossible to account for. Even in the small things – like smart meters and real time displays (RTDs).

In both Energy White Paper and in its Climate Change Programme Report to Parliament, the Government unambiguously pledged that it would mandate all energy supply companies to provide RTDs for electricity to any customer who asked for one. The policy was expected to result in around 2.5 million customers asking for an RTD, at a cost of around £37 million. Available evidence suggests that energy savings of between 5% to 15% could be achieved by customers who acquire an RTD, especially as these are likely to be the most energy-conscious consumers.

Indeed, the Climate Change Programme confidently identified savings of 0.2 MtC to come from “improved billing and metering by 2010”. But there’s no other policy in place to achieve this apart from the “free RTD on request” policy.

All clear so far. But this is where it starts to go wrong. BERR is now seeking to weaken the RTD commitment to one where supply companies would not be required to send consumers an RTD on request. BERR now favours a roll-out of what are known as ‘smart meters’.

Smart meters do a lot more than RTDs. They could, potentially, give suppliers or consumers a greater choice of tariffs, accurate monthly bills, and much more useful real time information for gas as well as electricity. So the Sustainable Development Commission fully supports the Government’s desire to get smart meters into all households, as a necessary step to the development of a number of carbon-saving measures.

However, there will inevitably be serious delays in putting that policy into practice (a roll-out could take up to 10 years before the majority of households received a smart meter, at a cost of several billion pounds), delays which will undermine enthusiastic customers from better understanding their energy demand.

BERR at its worst all over again. A typical lack of consistency, clarity and real leadership. So our message to BERR is a simple one: this is not an either or situation. We need RTDs now, and smart meters over the next few years. Stop taking orders from the energy supply companies by going back on your commitment to compel them to provide RTDs. Stick to your guns. Get it right – for once.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 10, 2008 5:34 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

May 13, 2008 - London Array

So, Shell International have decided to pull out of the London Array project, the largest offshore wind farm (at around 100MW) in the UK.

I’ve got a little file on my desk here of all the press releases that the London Array Consortium has put out over the last few years – not least to drum up support from people like me as it wrestled with a recalcitrant Local Authority and other issues in terms of securing planning permission for the facilities required for the London Array.

It’s a great scheme. It still is – with or without Shell, whose withdrawal strikes me as a terrible decision. It’s difficult to imagine how companies of this kind come to decisions of that sort.

So I was all the more grateful for a windy uplift the day after Shell announced this decision, when I went along to help celebrate the commissioning of the Westmill Wind Farm, just outside Swindon – 5 x 1.3MW turbines, which anyone now using the mainline services into or out of Paddington can observe out of the train window. If ever you need firm confirmation that wind turbines enhance certain landscapes, rather than destroy them, Westmill provides that in all its glory!

westmill_windfarm1.jpg But what makes Westmill even more special is the fact that it is a co-operative venture, with a large number of individuals (including myself) who bought into the project, and 50% of whom live within a 50 mile radius of the project.
This was a great day!

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of co-operative wind projects of this kind in the UK – in contrast, for instance, to Denmark. As far as I can discover, there are no more than 5 actually up and running, with a few more in the pipeline.

So why does that matter? Who cares whether it is small-scale, local co-operative ventures delivering the Megawatts, or vast great, overhead-heavy multi-nationals? In truth, I will settle for more and more MW of wind wherever it comes from, but I have to say that I would much rather that many more on-shore projects came from Westmill look-alikes, leaving the off-shore mega-projects to the big guys – even if Shell does seem to have lost its bottle.

And I can’t help but think that this would make a bigger difference in terms of overcoming the often utterly spurious objections of planning committees than any amount of wordy advisory notes from government.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on May 13, 2008 11:34 AM | | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

June 30, 2008 - Renewable Energy Strategy

There is a lot (mostly justifiable) cynicism out there regarding the use of targets to drive environmental improvements. In May, the think-tank Policy Exchange brought out an analysis of all the different targets set by the Government on environmental issues since 1997, and gave them a real pasting on just how far short they have fallen on so many of them.

But the implication behind the Report that any target-setting process in the field of environmental policy is largely a waste of time is entirely misplaced. Targets can drive both policy reform and improved outcomes.

And there is no bigger target out there at the moment than the EU’s target of providing 20% of all the energy it needs (not just electricity) from renewable resources by 2020. After some lively horse-trading, it was decided earlier on in the year that the UK share of that EU-wide target should be 15% - which means at least 30% (and probably close to 40%) of our electricity will need to come from renewables – it’s just so much tougher doing transport or heating by renewables.

Acceptance of this target led to months of the deepest angst inside BERR. On Thursday last week, it eventually delivered itself of a draft Renewable Energy Strategy. And it’s not half bad. Indeed, after a decade of incredibly damaging dithering, BERR Officials have at last begun to think through the reality of meeting energy security and low-carbon objectives through renewables.

Part of that new-found purpose is based on the development and deployment of the technologies themselves – particularly offshore wind, which is where we can get the biggest bang for our renewable buck. But the most encouraging thing about this draft Strategy is the recognition that making renewables work depends not so much on the technology bit as on other key aspects of energy policy, namely: energy efficiency (properly accounted for in the Strategy, for the first time since the 2003 Energy White Paper, though even now without a clear plan of action); planning (with really encouraging new emphasis on community and local benefits); grid connections (at long last, BERR is getting tough with Ofgem to get its own act sorted out on low-carbon measures); and even behaviour change – rumour has it that BERR won’t be too upset if their Lordships force the Government to give way on accepting the need for the accelerated introduction of feed-in tariffs – the single most important factor in driving the astonishing renewables success story in Germany and elsewhere.

Real breakthroughs – as Greenpeace and others have acknowledged. Still some blindingly obvious blind-spots (doing this in a way that further hammers the fuel-poor in the UK is really not smart), but without doubt the best thing to emerge from BERR over the last five years.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 30, 2008 1:52 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

August 8, 2008 - Coal verses Nuclear

So, here are the offending words:

"I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen – as long as its total emissions are taken into account, we know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried, how much this will cost and who will pay, and there is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will used by the military. We can no longer afford any rigid principle but one: that the harm done to people living now and in the future most be minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be."

Source: one George Monbiot, scourge of literally all and sundry, especially of those who are perceived by him to be "betraying the cause."

Context: George is (probably even now) at the Climate Camp outside Kingsnorth in Kent, energetically supporting the campaign against E.ON's proposal to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – with or without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) built in.

Common ground: this is a campaign with which I am in total agreement – planning permission for E.ON at Kingsnorth would usher in a new and utterly disastrous lease of life for coal in the UK. There may be up to eight further coal-fired power stations in the pipeline. The fact that BERR would appear to be minded to go ahead with such a proposal tells you all you need to know about the Government’s head-long retreat from what we now know to have been the high point of sustainable energy thinking in the 2003 Energy White Paper.

Disagreement: as George says, a horror story. But does one’s horror at one horror story justify turning a blind eye to another – equally horrifying – horror story? "Yes", says George, because our every sinew must now be strained to combat the threat of resurgent coal. "No", say I, because a resurgent nuclear industry constitutes (almost) as grave a threat to the emergence of truly sustainable energy strategies as coal does.

I am putting the 'almost' in there to build a bridge back to George's startlingly irresponsible and throw-away 'green light' for nuclear. As you can see, he is trying to hedge that improbable endorsement with a few conditions that both he and I would agree are all but impossible for the nuclear industry to comply with.

But a communicator as astute and clever as George should (and surely does) know the difference between a 'Yes … If' position and a 'No … Unless' position.

Does all this mean an irrevocable split in the Green Movement? Yes and No. Yes, because there are indeed widely diverging views about the potential contribution that nuclear might make to a low-carbon world. No, because there always have been such diverging views, and we are all (for the most part!) united in our anger and disgust at the sheer stupidity of something like Kingsnorth.

So please do check out the Climate Camp 08 website. It's excellent.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on August 8, 2008 10:39 AM | | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

September 15, 2008 - Energy Efficiency

Well, full marks to Gordon for squeezing an extra £900 million out of the big energy companies to help narrow the fuel poverty gap in the UK. In all, around £3 billion has now been identified for spending on home insulation over the next three years. I don’t think we should be too cynical about this, as it will make a difference from 2009.

Or, at least, it should – if the Government gets serious (for the first time in eleven years) about delivering these efficiency-related promises. I know it isn’t helpful to go on and on about this, but the principal reason we find ourselves in such a pickle over energy policy in the UK today is the near-total lack of traction that the energy efficiency agenda has had since 1997. Between them, the Treasury and DTI/BERR have ensured it’s always been relegated to “a minor league issue”, and DEFRA, (theoretically, the lead department on energy efficiency) has never had the clout to counter their combined negativity.

All the more reason, to welcome the good things that have happened despite that institutional mess. Government figures indicate that about 1.6 million households have received assistance through the Warm Front and Decent Homes schemes – primarily for home insulation and central heating. Winter fuel payments have helped reduce extreme discomfort and danger for some of the poorest in society, as have the reduced (“social”) tariffs from which more than half a million customers are now said to be benefiting.

But the overall impact still falls far short of what’s required. Over the years, initiatives have come and confusingly gone, whilst inadequate lumps of money have been trumpeted one moment only to be surreptitiously axed the next. The energy companies have gone along with a sequence of sub-optimal interventions (from the first Energy Efficiency Commitment onwards), and OFGEM has stood on the sidelines with its usual “more than my job’s worth” indifference.

And that, of course, is the nub of it. In any market-based energy economy, everything depends on how the private sector suppliers are regulated/incentivised to deliver overarching policy objectives. The bedrock reality here in the UK remains incredibly simple: all the principal reward mechanisms for these companies are still based on them selling more units of energy. That’s how profits are generated, dividends kept high, share prices protected, and senior executive salaries and bonuses determined. Why does anybody expect anything else to come out the other end other than more kilowatts of electricity and more therms of gas?

As the SDC has been arguing for the best part of two years, everything depends therefore on sorting out a fit-for-purpose regulatory regime. And that means transforming the role of OFGEM so that it is explicitly empowered to do a proper job on fuel poverty, energy efficiency, climate change and so on. BERR’s response? They will tinker around with the guidance they give OFGEM, but the current statutory duties will remain untouched. And that’s the way it will stay – unless an increasingly feisty group of peers on the House of Lords can persuade Ministers to see reason through the last stages of the Energy Bill.

If they can’t, hunker down for more one-off “emergency” interventions, more risk-averse meddling (as is like to be the case with the forthcoming Supplier’s Obligation), and more palliative tax-payer handouts and imposed social tariffs – all forlornly designed to counter the inherent dysfunctionality at the heart of the regulatory system. All these things will make a difference on the margins. But they cannot possibly deliver the efficiency revolution that is now so desperately needed.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on September 15, 2008 4:05 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

October 7, 2008 - Fuel Poverty

It's always reassuring, as an advisory body, when one's advice is acted upon. The Sustainable Development Commission has been recommending the creation of a new department to bring together energy and climate change since the time of the 2003 Energy White Paper, and we're delighted that it has at last happened.

As we see it, the principal benefits will be as follows:

1. Enabling infinitely better coordination on both policy and implementation than has proved possible over the last 11 years. By combining Defra’s interests (climate change and energy efficiency) with BERR’s interests (energy policy, regulation etc), joined-up should become the norm rather than the rare exception.

There are other departments, of course, with big climate change responsibility (CLG, DFT, the rest of BERR, and particularly Treasury), but at least they won’t be able to play “divide and rule” with what should now be a much harder-hitting department.

2. Providing an authoritative sponsoring department for the complex network of organisations involved in the area, including The Carbon Trust, The Energy Saving Trust, The Office of Climate Change and (most importantly) The Committee for Climate Change – the one bit of the system with real clout.

3. Getting OFGEM under control, finally, so that its statutory remit is amended to ensure that it to plays its part in delivering a low-carbon economy for the UK – something of which it is currently entirely incapable.

4. Getting some of BERR’s more intransigent elements under better control. The reality is that BERR had, to all extents and purposes, become “a wholly owned subsidiary of the major energy companies”. This had become a massive problem in terms of proper policy development.

The pro-nuclear, pro-coal lobbies inside BERR won't of course disappear overnight, but they may find their influence properly curtailed.

And what a telling welcome for Ed Miliband, on his first full day in the new department, as Help The Aged and Friends Of The Earth launch a judicial review against the Government on its continuing, disgraceful failure to address the scandal of fuel poverty – with around 5 million households spending more than 10% of their income on heating and power (which is the official definition of fuel poverty).

Energy efficiency stands at Number 1 in the hierarchy of measures needed to address climate change. By far the best thing the government could do now to show it really understands this priority would be to massively ramp up its wholly inadequate efforts on fuel poverty.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 7, 2008 11:36 AM | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

October 28, 2008 - Wind Power

The British Wind Energy Association held its 30th Anniversary conference last week – at the Excel Centre in Docklands. Two and a half thousand people taking part over three days. Huge exhibition. Gordon Brown did a video message, Nick Clegg a star turn. Outside, stock markets were plunging and pundits were reaching for ever more apocalyptic heights of rhetoric. Inside, an industry that has truly come of age was quietly flexing it muscles, gearing up to what will be the most astonishing growth period in energy markets since the erstwhile "dash for gas" in the 80s.

A few doubters were in attendance, including some of the NIMBY NGOs which have ensured a far slower roll out for on shore wind farms than would otherwise have been the case. Theirs is an amazing record: literally dozens of planning committees the length and breadth of the land brow beaten and befuddled by often outrageous mis-information and outright scaremongering. They’re still hard at it whenever they get the chance: since January 2006, only 54% of 167 on shore wind farm applications have been consented at the local level. A further 12% were eventually consented at appeal.

This remains a serious problem. With that EU target of 15% of all our energy needing to come from renewables by 2020 now staring policy makers in the face, the race is on for a massive expansion of both on shore and off shore wind. The reality is that wind energy will have to contribute the lion’s share of that target, given the relative immaturity of most of the other potential renewable technologies, and some of the difficulties associated with renewables in the heat and transport sectors.

In that regard, 2008 has been a good year, with more than 40 projects consented to date, totalling a record of nearly 2000 Megawatts. And three big off shore approvals have also been secured.

Whatever the anti-wind brigade may say, public support for on shore wind remains consistently high (at around 80%), with some of the strongest support coming from those living closest to operating wind farms. Support for off shore wind is even higher.

The BWEA has just published a very useful "State of the Industry" report, with all sorts of recommendations as to how the government should now get today’s planning blockages sorted out. But it would help no end if some of our leading “environmental organisations” in the UK finally got to grips with the pressing realities of climate change, and renounced their NIMBY nonsense.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 28, 2008 11:46 AM | | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

May 5, 2009 - Good times, bad times

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m finding it mighty difficult trying to work out whether these are good times or bad times for the renewable energy sector here in the UK.

On the one hand, all the ‘big boys’ (Shell, BP, Scottish and Southern, and so on) have more or less given up and exited the country, and Vestas (the UK’s largest wind manufacturer) sent shockwaves round the markets last week by announcing that it was going to be closing its factory on the Isle of Wight.

On the other hand, the British Wind Energy Association is full of confidence at the prospects for industry (particularly offshore wind), and not just for ‘big wind’. Its latest press release trumpets the conclusions of a new study from America demonstrating major growth in demand for small wind technologies (less than 50 KW). By all accounts, the UK is the world’s biggest exporter of wind turbines in this division, doubling its revenues in 2008 and creating 500 new jobs in the process.

The recent Budget must have strengthened the hand of the renewables optimist, with an additional £500 million for offshore wind to be made available between 2011 and 2014, and £70 million to revive the Low Carbon Buildings Programme and provide new support for community heating schemes.

That particular announcement must also have been very welcome to the UK photovoltaics (PV) industry. Back in March, DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change) went temporarily bonkers by axing funding for its solar PV programme – ostensibly on the grounds that it was proving “too popular”, depriving other technologies in the programme of their anticipated share of support.

This is the kind of stop-start idiocy that has characterised the UK’s support for renewables (and PV in particular) going back over many, many years. Some have hypothesized during that time that this is all the proof you need of genuine conspiracy, not cock-up, engineered by a succession of senior civil servants in thrall to the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies. I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment on such scurrilous hypothesizing, but the intensity and frequency of the cock-ups do rather play into the hands of the conspiracy theorists.

Perhaps that’s now all over? DECC has guaranteed a proper level of ongoing funding for PV, with “no more stop and start”. We’ll see.

In the meantime, if I was an investor, I’d still be very wary. Incoherence in public policy plays straight into scepticism and ambivalence in capital markets. And that’s exactly the problem we still have here in the UK, on both the big stuff and microgeneration.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on May 5, 2009 3:59 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

June 5, 2009 - Nuclear comes clean

The Cheltenham Science Festival is now in full swing, and on Wednesday I went along to listen to Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. Great talk.

However, we didn’t get the full value of Jeremy’s insights, as the festival organisers had stuck him on a panel with four other people, one each for nuclear, coal, wind and Energy from Waste industries. The last two did well (yes, there really is a good sustainability case for the kind of Energy from Waste technologies), but our friends from the coal and nuclear industries were just dreadful. They'd clearly been sent on media training courses, which produced a weird amalgam of the patronising, the banal and the downright dishonest.

But at least we know where we are these days. Not so long ago, the nuclear industry would disdainfully acknowledge that there was a role for renewables alongside nuclear. Not a big role, but at least something to add to the overall supply picture. In the last few months, however, they’ve decided to move into full battle mode, on a "them or us" basis. As Jeremy puts it:

"Those reluctant to abandon the nuclear and fossil-fuel status-quo have been reacting to all this with a fresh candour. In March, both EDF and EON advised the UK Government to cut back on renewables in favour of nuclear. The energy giants declared efforts to get 35% renewables into the UK’s electricity mix – as the Government intends – to be not only unrealistic, but damaging to nuclear plans. They said additional carbon-generating plants would be needed because of the intermittency of renewables."

I’m sorry, but this is truly pathetic. Little more a year ago, these nuclear zealots were telling the world (including any prospective investors who would listen) that any new nuclear in the UK would require zero public subsidies. Hardened anti-nuclear campaigners such as myself and Jeremy fell about laughing – not one kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity has ever gone onto the grid, anywhere in the world, over forty years, without some kind of public subsidy. So why does anybody suppose that it’s going to be any different this time round?

At least the big energy companies have now had the decency to come out and tell us at least part of the truth about their nuclear ambitions.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 5, 2009 9:33 AM | | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

December 8, 2009 - Time to renew fight against nuclear distractions

It was Teddy Goldsmith’s “Memorial Celebration” on Tuesday last week.

I think everyone thought it was extraordinarily important to have a chance to think back over the life’s work of this extraordinary man. From the mid-1960s onwards, he was often the first to raise big sustainability issues, to pursue them ferociously through the pages of The Ecologist (established in 1969 and “virtualised” 40 years later in 2009), and to keep confronting people with the often uncomfortable logic of what it means to fashion genuinely sustainable lives for an ever-expanding number of human beings on an ever-shrinking planet.

Sadly, I didn’t see much of Teddy in his last few years. But he was often present in my thinking about different issues, particularly in terms of his views on population, economic growth, agriculture, GM and so on. And nowhere more powerfully than in the renewed debate about the potential role of nuclear power in a more sustainable world.

Right now, those who still feel that nuclear power has no role to play in a genuinely sustainable world are completely downcast at having to fight those same old battles all over again – this time with the added problem of a growing number of serious environmentalists who’ve thrown in their lot (holding their noses as they go) with the nuclear option.

It has to be said that there’s no enthusiasm for the fight. How could there be? And at the moment, there’s no clear sense of where the leadership is going to come from.

More than ever, we’re going to miss that utterly uncompromising, forensic focus that Teddy brought to bear on the nuclear industry – especially in terms of Windscale/Sellafield, Dounreay, Sizewell and so on.

Without Teddy, who is going to rub people’s noses in the continuing scandal of nuclear waste mismanagement, and remind people that this government promised time after time that there would be no expansion of nuclear power in this country until it had sorted out the problems of nuclear waste?

Who is going to hold to account politicians and industry leaders for whom secrecy remains the default mindset?

Who is going to expose the near-fraudulent accounting practices endemic within the nuclear industry that continue to blind people to the true economic costs and penalties involved in nuclear power?

Who is going to interrogate the philosophical and moral implications of one generation imposing on the next a set of problems and security hazards for which they themselves have absolutely no solution?

And who is going to take on those sincere but utterly misguided environmentalists who’ve “gone nuclear” over the last few years because they feel there’s no alternative?

Sustainable development activists can’t afford to be absolutist about new technology developments. When the facts change, we should indeed change our minds. Even in the Green Party (after very lively discussions with Teddy himself!), I argued that we should be open to the theoretical possibility that evolved nuclear technologies, at some point in the future, might have a contribution to make to a genuinely sustainable energy mix.

And who can tell what lies ahead in that regard. Once issues regarding cost, public subsidy, waste, decommissioning, proliferation, vulnerability to terrorism and availability of uranium have all been addressed and sorted, maybe that day will dawn.

But it hasn’t dawned yet. And there’s nothing in the latest reactor designs currently under consideration that tell me that it’s going to dawn any time soon.

As Teddy would be pointing out right now, by the time that day does dawn, it will almost certainly be too late anyway. And we will have wasted all that time and all that money fixated on our nuclear fantasies, and failing to do the obvious sustainable stuff on efficiency and renewables.

So I don’t doubt that those still opposed to the nuclear option will be drawing down on Teddy’s astonishing life work, as they reluctantly pick up their cudgels all over again.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on December 8, 2009 12:48 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

March 18, 2010 - The war of words over home-produced electricity feed-in tariffs could cost dearly

On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was remarkably intemperate: “pricey conceit … great green rip-off… scam…comically inefficient…squandering the public’s money…perfectly useless… a swindle…blinded by sentiment” etc, etc.

A lot of this seemed to be aimed, very personally, at Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman of Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries.

Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight.

Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust.

I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful.

But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards.

This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues?

One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control.

But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs.

George Monbiot's article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
Jeremy Leggett's response http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on March 18, 2010 2:35 PM | | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]