Michael Meacher MP

Article for Morning Star, Labour Party Conference Edition, Week beginning 27 September 2004
Tony Blair’s recent hint at the Commons Liaison Committee that the Government might still after all be thinking about new nuclear build, when that option was supposed to have been closed by last year’s Energy White Paper, throws energy policy yet again into the melting pot. But is nuclear really the only route by which Britain can meet its climate change targets, and will the lights go out without it?
The energy regulator Ofgem has just warned that there could be a “pinch-point towards 2010”. Is Britain then going the way of America over electricity cuts? In the last 9 months there have been four major power cuts, in south London and parts of Kent, the West Midlands, Cheltenham and Gloucester, in each case affecting up to a quarter of a million people and causing travel chaos. Although lack of investment or inadequate maintenance were denied at the time, looming behind these temporary disasters lies a complex energy equation with a black hole at its centre.
As the coal baseload gradually diminishes, will renewables fill the gap, or the rise in gas? If the latter, how will security of supply be guaranteed when there is a large-scale gas import requirement within 5-10 years and the gas network was anyway not built to handle this? And if a major increase in the use of gas did arise well beyond the current level of 38% of electricity generation, how then would the Government reach its tough greenhouse gas reduction targets?
Equally, another problem is the lack of storage space for gas to give the UK a strategic reserve. Germany and France have 70 days’ supply for emergencies, but the UK has less than 48 days’ capacity. Since by 2020 some 80% of all electricity will be generated from foreign gas supplies, this suggests that the lights would start to go out within hours if the supply was interrupted, given the long lead times in power generation and the absence of short-term retail price adjustments.
The missing element in all this is renewables, especially wind power. The latest Digest of UK Energy Statistics shows that wind power accounts for only 3.5% of all renewable energy sources. Most of the latter (83%) derive from wastes and biofuels, with much of the remainder generated from large-scale hydro. And renewables as a whole still only account for 3% of electricity generated in the UK. So hitherto wind power has been very marginal.
That could now be about to change, however. The second round of offshore wind licensing, announced late in 2002, focussed development on three strategic zones around the Greater Wash, the Irish Sea and the Thames Estuary, with 15 sites yielding a combined capacity of 5.4-7.2GW. Three of the sites would have a capacity comparable to many coal-fired power stations.
Renewables, notably wind power, are finally clawing their way into the big league. But is it still anywhere near the scale required on the timeline dictated by other energy supply phase-outs and by tightening climate change targets? The force of the latter pressure is shown by the fact that, whilst Kyoto might on the most optimistic assumptions reduce industrialised countries’ greenhouse gas emissions by some 2% by 2010 compared with 1990, the scientists’ demand on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is for cuts of at least 60% by 2050 in order to stabilise global warming. By contrast, on current projections, because the big developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia remain outside the Kyoto Protocol as well as the US, it is likely that global greenhouse gas emissions will actually increase by around 75% by 2050. Nothing could illustrate more starkly the imperative to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels worldwide and to make the massive infrastructure switch to renewables development in the current decade.
Against that background, even the latest boost in UK renewables investment can be gauged as far short of what is urgently required. It still grossly under-exploits a geographically unique UK asset. On a ‘country attractiveness index’ for wind power compiled by Ernst and Young in response to inquiries from clients, Britain came out ahead of Germany and Spain, Europe’s leading markets, and on a global basis above Texas, the previously strongest market.
Yet still too little is being done to deal with the principal barriers – planning difficulties, aviation complaints, grid network constraints (both in distribution and transmission), limits in public awareness, and financing – all correctly identified by the White Paper. In addition, as the industry moves closer to 2010 without a clear decision being made on renewable energy targets beyond that date – the 20% target by 2020 being counted as only an aspiration – the recent surge in interest in wind energy could slide as a result of the fall in Renewable Energy Certificates post-2010.
But even if the 20% target were reached, it would of course still make virtually no difference in CO2 emissions compared with nuclear. The ratcheting up of tighter greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Kyoto process would still have to be met by greatly enhanced energy efficiency, with improvements perhaps in excess of 50%. Is that feasible? Indeed if the 60% greenhouse gas cuts demanded by the scientists were to be achieved by 2050, the reduction in future emissions would have to be of the order of magnitude of eliminating all present emissions from the transport and domestic sectors.
However, experience does suggest that huge improvements in energy efficiency are clearly possible. Some 40% of the reduction in UK energy intensity in a recent decade was brought about by specific energy efficiency investments. The White Paper’s aim to double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency from 1.8% annually is therefore not unrealistic, and some measures are already designed to achieve this, including the early (and hopefully radical) review of building regulations, incentivising the switch to condensing boilers, and extending the Energy Efficiency Commitment. But these are limited, and more ambitious and definite targets are still needed, especially in the transport sector.
The big picture is still that, given the rundown of nuclear to some 7% of electricity generation by 2025 plus the slow but gradual decline of coal over a similar timescale, a yawning gap opening up in UK energy policy remains unaccounted for. Only renewables can plug that gap whilst at the same time meeting the overarching imperatives of climate change reduction. But time is fast running out, and dealing with that huge gap clearly requires a switch to renewables several orders of magnitude greater than anything yet officially proposed.