Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

Gordon Brown meeting Britain's oil chiefs to discuss higher North Sea output to bring down prices is prompted by oil prices hitting a record high of $135 a barrel, twice as high as a year ago and a staggering 12 times higher than a decade ago. The well-sourced website petrolprices.com is now predicting that petrol will reach £1.50 a litre by September, just 4 months away. Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets is forecasting "oil prices almost doubling over the next five years". That would mean $270 a barrel by 2013. It perhaps explains why the government is now strongly backing BP to get a big new slice of the oil drilling licences soon to be issued in Iraq, and – astonishingly – has now also made clear it intends to annex a third of a million square miles of the seabed off Antarctica to pre-empt any rights to the oil it may contain. The fight for oil has begun in earnest.

But is there the oil to go round? The authoritative International Energy Agency foresees an oil supply crunch within 5 years forcing up prices to unprecedented levels and greatly increasing western dependence on Opec. And the oil industry itself in its own report Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, produced by 175 authorities including all the heads of the world's big oil companies, for the first time predicted that oil and gas may run short by 2015.

The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which half has now been already consumed, while half of the 51 oil-producing countries reported output declines in 2006. Non-Opec production is expected to peak and decline within the next five years, driven mainly by burgeoning demand from China and the US, together with restricted output from Iraq. Then in the following five years Opec's diminishing spare capacity will probably become increasingly unable to accommodate short-term fluctuations, depending on how fast world demand grows and how extensively Opec invests in new capacity. The latter may well not raise production capacity high enough or quickly enough, whether for political reasons or because internal decision-making is too slow or the security environment too hostile.

There are of course exits from this doom-stricken scenario, though none is at all credible. First, discovery of major new oilfields could alter the picture. However, though billions have been spent on the search for new fields, discovery peaked in the mid-1960s and the last big ones were found in the 1970s. Only Iraq has undeveloped super-giant oilfields – at West Qurna, Athabascan tar sands (from Alberta, Canada), extra-heavy oil (from the Orinoco belt in Venezuela), oil shale, and mature source rocks. But the almost insurmountable problem is recoverability, whether poor quality oil (extra-heavy oil), poor quality reservoirs (oil from source rocks), or both (oil shale). Worse, production may be uneconomic because of a very low net energy gain, ie it requires almost as much energy to extract the oil as is made available for subsequent use. And the enormous hike in greenhouse gases generated could produce a turbo climate change effect that would wipe out any benefit from a global post-Kyoto agreement.

But even if supply constraints are ineluctable as the explosion of Chinese growth coincides with falling non-Opec oil production and the beginnings of a slow but remorseless slippage in Opec capacity, the coming crisis could still be eased by significant demand restrictions. Clearly there is substantial room for energy-saving when half the energy generated every day is wasted and when propulsion of an average car is only about 20% efficient, heating of a standard oven only 25%, and electricity generated in some power stations only some 35%. The question, however, is whether improvement can be secured globally on the level and timescale required to push back the crisis more than a few years. Equally, taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels, especially coal, may be crucial, but a decade at least is needed even to test the carbon capture technology in pilot projects, let alone begin to mainstream it. But the most direct means of constraining world demand would be the proposed Rimini protocol, which prescribes that oil-importing countries cut their imports to match the world depletion rate (ie annual production as a percentage of remaining global reserves) now running at about 2% a year. Of course, the fundamental political problem remains that the most powerful oil-hungry countries will not agree. If not Kyoto, why Rimini?

What is most disturbing of all is that the big powers, so far from seeking major adjustments of their energy policies on either the supply or demand fronts or making a major switch into renewables, are actually massively intensifying their competitive struggle short-term for the limited oil reserves left. Despite an unwinnable war in Iraq, the US is still constructing at least five large permanent military bases there in order, according to evidence given to a US Congressional Committee, to control access to Gulf oil, including in Saudi and Iran. As one neocon recently put it, "one of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave". The US is also trying to force through a new Iraqi oil law that would give western, primarily American, oil multinationals control of Iraqi oilfields for the next 30 years.

The US maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries under cover of the "war on terror" to defend American economic interests, particularly access to oil. The principal objective for the continued existence and expansion of Nato post-cold war is the encirclement of Russia and the pre-emption of China dominating access to oil and gas in the Caspian Sea and Middle East regions. It is only the beginning of the unannounced titanic global resource struggle between the US and China, the world's largest importers of oil (China overtook Japan in 2003). Islam has been dragged into this tussle because it is in the Islamic world where most of these resources lie, but Islam is only a secondary player. In the case of Russia, the recent pronounced stepping up of western attacks on Putin and claims he is undermining democracy are ultimately aimed at securing a pro-western government there, and access to Russian oil and gas when Russia has more of these two hydrocarbons together than any other country in the world.

The struggle has also spilled over into West Africa, reckoned to hold some 66 billion barrels of oil typically low in sulphur and thus ideal for refining. In 2005 the US imported more oil from the Gulf of Guinea than from Saudi and Kuwait combined, and is expected over the next 10 years to import more oil from Africa than from the Middle East. In step with this, the Pentagon is setting up a new unified military command for the continent named Africom. Conversely, Angola is now China's main supplier of crude oil, overtaking Saudi Arabia last year. There is no doubt that Africom, which will greatly increase the US military presence in Africa, is aimed at the growing conflict with China over oil supplies.

As Joe Lieberman, former US presidential candidate, put it, efforts by the US and China to use imports to meet growing demand "may escalate competition for oil to something as hot and dangerous as the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union".

This article originally appeared in Comment is Free on 29 June 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/29/oil.oilandgascompanies

Posted by Michael Meacher at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The oil price today at $135 a barrel - twice as high as a year ago, a staggering 12 times higher than a decade ago - is a wake-up call to the Government which they have been shamefully neglecting for far too long. Whether it's because of surging Asian demand (Chinese and Indian economic growth rates of 8-10% a year for the last decade, and set to continue), market speculators, or OPEC keeping more oil in the ground to maximize future profits, it is really pointless for DBERR and the hapless Minister Malcolm Wicks to make a humiliating appeal to OPEC to please increase oil supplies. There's no more chance of that than New Labour winning Crewe.

With petrol prices now expected to hit £1.50 a litre by as early as September and oil prices expected to double again within the next 5 years - many think sooner - nothing will solve this problem except a fundamental shift out of oil as fast as is practicable. Oil is primarily used for transport and for heating, in addition to industrial applications. For heating, it means urgent switching out of fossil fuels to to renewables (solar, wind, biomass, ground/air heat pumps, microgeneration), replacing renewable obligation certificates by feed-in tariffs that have worked so remarkably well in Germany. For cars, it means putting far greater R&D resources into hybrids and into far faster development of hydrogen fuel cell cars. For planes, since there is no practicable alternative to oil/kerosene, and since biofuels are an even worse cure than the disease, the pressure is now on prioritising flights, switching wherever feasible to localised food production, and sharply regulating carbon emissions in the interests both of climate change and energy efficiency.

The irony of all this is that the Energy Bill now going through Parliament is already obsolete. It is a real tragedy that the drastic change in both climate change and energy policies are being driven abruptly and painfully by the inexorability of failing global supplies rather than planned for in a radical but controlled manner.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With French and German companies lining up to build new nuclear power stations in Britain, the die now seems cast for nuclear. Or is it?

The Government’s goal is certainly ambitious. Ten countries – primarily the UK, USA, France and Canada, but also including Japan, Korea, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Switzerland – have set up a body called the Generation IV International Forum to develop a successor nuclear energy system to the previous Generations I (Magnox) and II (AGRs and the Sizewell B Light Water Reactor) and to follow the Generation III systems now being built. The latter includes the French Areva Evolutionary Pressure Reactor (EPR), the prototype of which is currently being constructed at Olkiluoto in Finland, with another being built in France. It is intended that these Generation III models plus (hopefully) improved versions in future will lead reactor orders through to 2030, after which it is hoped that Generation IV will kick in, the goal of which is nuclear sustainability.

However, the roadmap to get there is beset by profound practical problems which may well prove insurmountable. Generation II and III nuclear power plants operate in a ‘once-through’ mode, which means that only half of the 0.7% fissionable uranium U-235 content of natural uranium goes into the fuel while most of the heavy metal ends up in enrichment tails and in spent fuel as waste. This therefore requires a constant and increasing supply of natural uranium to meet the rising demand for electricity, while at the same time it intensifies the already unresolved problem of what to do with vast accumulations of radioactive waste.

Even the optimistic IAEA-OECD Red Book of world uranium reserves puts the total at 4.7 million tonnes, and that assumes a purchase price of at least $130/kg. In fact prices are currently nearly twice as high, yet primary uranium production is falling. But even if the Red Book figures were roughly correct and not significantly inflated, their total of known uranium resources is expected to be exhausted by 2030.

If fast reactors were to be introduced by then – which is the centrepiece of the strategy – a further 10 million tonnes, twice the known resources, would have to be ready for production, and this could only come from ‘speculative and undiscovered resources’. The nuclear power industry answers this by reference to the universality of uranium in the Earth’s crust and in seawater; but the enormous energy needed to extract it from these low concentration sources would actually exceed the energy output of the fission of the fuel thus provided, so in terms of net energy availability it is irrelevant.

These pressures are already being felt. The US gets half its nuclear fuel from diluted former nuclear weapons’ highly enriched uranium from Russia, and even Russia itself with its insufficient primary production will be forced to rely on ex-weapons material to power its planned expansion. The UK’s aim of security of energy supply will not be aided by 100% import of nuclear fuels on top of increased dependence on imported fossil fuels, notably gas. Japan has closed 7 nuclear power stations built on an earthquake fault line. Olkiluoto is already 2 years behind schedule after just 2 ½ years building and already has a £1bn cost overrun, and there can be no reliable evidence on the economics of nuclear power until the new designs of the Westinghouse AP1000 and European EPR water reactors have been fully tested over many years in service. Contrary to claims by the industry, unresolved questions of cost and the looming shortage of uranium are the biggest challenge to its revival.

To overcome the fragility of this recovery, the industry looks to Generation IV development of the fast reactor by 2030 as the key to ultimate nuclear sustainability. However if for this purpose the fast reactor were adopted in ‘breeder’ mode, an even greater quantity of highly radioactive actinides (plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium) would be generated, exacerbating still further the waste management problem. If on the other hand the fast reactor were adopted in ‘burner’ mode, as currently seems likely to prevail, the waste problem is alleviated, but there is no sustainability.

The Generation IV fuel systems offer at present 6 types, of which two are emerging as likely candidates. One is the very-high-temperature gas-cooled thermal reactor (VHTR) which can be used for coal gasification as well as thermo-chemical hydrogen production. The US Government favours this because a hydrogen economy is seen as the solution to the exhaustion of oil reserves and the petrol (gasoline) derived from it. The main problem with the VHTR, which has a coolant system outlet temperature of about 1,000ºC, is likely to arise from irradiation characterised by the Wigner Effect and from progressive disintegration by neutron bombardment.

Indeed a similar problem with the Wigner energy in pile 1 at Windscale (now Sellafield) caused the fire and melted the fuel elements. Given the very high temperatures needed for this complex and quite likely unstable process, its viability would need rigorous and exhaustive testing before such a problematic reactor were ever adopted.

The second favoured Generation IV candidate is the sodium-cooled fast reactor system (SFR). The idea here is that as supplies of natural uranium decline, it is replaced by a plutonium-based fuel which is incrementally augmented by fresh plutonium in a repetitive cycle, providing claims of sustainability. It is envisaged that there is a gain in the plutonium in a surrounding ‘blanket’ of uranium 238 over and above the plutoniun consumed in the reaction, with a doubling time of 15-20 years. But again there are two key problems. It is a burner reactor, not a breeder, so that whilst reducing waste management problems it does not provide for sustainability.

Secondly, even if fast reactors of this kind could be successfully deployed – a big if – the doubling time of 15-20 years would require supplies of natural uranium to be maintained for decades, if not centuries, until the fleet of ‘once-through’ reactors can be progressively replaced. And the uranium simply isn’t available for that timespan. So, a nuclear renaissance? Forget it.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The EU announcement today that Britain has to meet a mandatory target to produce at least 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 changes the entire energy equation for the UK. It renders the Energy Bill which received Second Reading in the Commons last night largely obsolete.

The crucial point is that the target relates to Britain’s total energy needs, not just electricity generation, but also transport fuel and heating. Since the contribution that renewables make to transport fuel is next to nothing and to heating is relatively small, the implication is that the UK will be required, if the target is to be met and it’s a mandatory one, to generate some 30-40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Since the figure today is just 4%, that’s an 8-fold increase in only 12 years!

What that means is that the Government will have to deliver on their ambitious promise to provide 33GW from offshore wind-power by 2020, as well as kick-starting a range of new renewable and decentralised technologies in which Britain can take a lead, including wave and tidal power. It means building new power stations which with CHP can, as in Scandinavia, achieve 90%+ efficiency levels and can burn cleaner fuels like biomass as well as fossil fuels. It means switching from Britain’s current renewable obligation certificate system to feed-in tariffs which give fixed-price rather than variable support and have been pioneered so successfully in Germany. And it means a massive improvement in our currently lamentable performance on energy efficiency – the Government’s own Environmental Technology Support Unit has stated that a 20-30% improvement by both industry and individual households is entirely practicable and affordable.

There is a further implication. If we do all these things – and we’ve got to in order to meet the mandatory EU target – then we will not need any nuclear power stations. That has enormous implications for Britain’s future energy policy. The Government’s case for nuclear was always weak (largely based on the nuclear fixation of DTI/DBERR officials), and now even that weak case will not be necessary.

The Government’s claim was that nuclear was needed to keep the lights on and to help meet Britain’s climate change commitments, and they also said that there would be no public subsidies and that the nuclear waste problem was perfectly manageable. The evidence is that all four statements are far from true.

First, nuclear can’t keep the lights on because no nuclear plant can now be built in time to meet the 2017-2020 energy gap when 20GW of new capacity will be needed to replace obsolete nuclear and coal plants. Anyway nuclear stations regularly take twice as long to build and cost twice as much as was planned. The Finnish plant currently being built is already 2 years late after just 2 years building, and the cost overrun is already over £1bn.

Secondly, nuclear cannot slash our carbon emissions while delivering energy security because nuclear provides such a tiny part of our energy requirements – just 3 ½ % at present, and falling. Half of our energy demand is for heat, which is mainly gas-based, and the next biggest demand is for transport fuels, which are mainly oil-based. Electricity generation represents the smallest component of energy demand, and new nuclear would be only a small portion of that.

Third, it clearly is not true that there will be no hidden subsidies. Paragraph 3.73 of the Energy White Paper indicates that the Government intends to put a cap on the cost of decommissioning for nuclear operators, and the rest – which could still be huge – will be paid by the taxpayer. Paragraph 3.52 is the give-away: “If the protections we are putting in place through the Energy Bill prove insufficient, in extreme circumstances the Government may be called upon to meet the costs of ensuring the protection of the public and the environment”. And these circumstances will not be extreme because the costs of decommissioning after 150 years – the time between the start of a new nuclear plant and when the waste is finally put into a geological repository – cannot be estimated and are potentially exponential. The decommissioning costs of existing plant are already £75bn with a further £21bn required to dispose of the waste – that’s equal to 7% of Britain’s entire annual GNP.

Nor, fourthly, is the nuclear waste problem manageable. There are already 10,000 tonnes of long-life radioactive toxic waste in this country, and Government estimates it will be 500,000 tonnes by the end of this century, even with no new nuclear build. So where is all the old waste and new additional waste going to go? There has been virtually no progress at all in answering that problem since the last Conservative Government abandoned the search for a nuclear waste dump in 1997.

Against this depressing background, perhaps today’s EU announcement will now point Britain in a profoundly different and much more hopeful direction. It is after all a mandatory requirement.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Gordon Brown’s renewables conversion on the Damascene road to climate change is extremely welcome, but like all miracles needs to be examined very closely. It is magnificent that the bar for green achievement has now been so dramatically raised, but until plausible mechanisms to get there are set out, the claims ring not a little hollow.

Britain has long been committed to a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to the baseline 1990, as demanded by the Commission on Environmental Protection in the 1990s. In the base year 1990 Britain’s carbon emissions were about 160 million tonnes CO² (mtC), so by 2050 they have to be down to some 64 mtC, i.e. a reduction of 1.6 mtC every year for 60 years. So in the ten years since 1997 they should have been cut by about 16 mtC. In fact, initially over that period carbon emissions were cut significantly, but then over the latter part of the period they rose substantially, with a net increase over the whole decade of 2%. If then over the last 10 years emissions have gone up by 3 mtC rather than down by 16, what assurances are there that in the next 43 years emissions will be cut by 2 mtC every year from now on to meet the 60% reduction target by 2050?

To Gordon Brown’s credit he is now going further and committing to an 80% cut by 2020, which is indeed what the world’s scientists are now saying is necessary. But that only sharpens the question still further. To meet that tougher target, how exactly are we going to cut by 2.7 mtC every year from now to 2050?

When it comes to Brown’s new targets on renewables, acclamation must give way to incredulity. At present, Britain generates just 4% of its electricity from renewable sources of energy. In most of the EU it’s 10-20%, and in Scandinavia it’s 30-50%. The PM is now committing the UK to meet the EU target of 20% of its energy (not just for electricity generation) from renewables by 2020. Since it is all primary energy that is being referred to (i.e. for space heating and transport), that would mean some 40% of our electricity must come from renewables. To paraphrase, c’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas l’ecologie. How precisely is a 10-fold increase in renewables to be achieved in the next 13 years?

What makes these objectives less than credible is that it is Gordon Brown himself who has blocked most of the mechanisms that might have delivered these targets. When the Government (I know because I was a Defra Minister at the time) was planning to put into statute a requirement on the top thousand companies in the UK to report annually on their emissions so that the public would know whether each year they were reducing them or not, Gordon Brown unceremoniously ditched the commitment in 2005 because at a CBI dinner just beforehand he wanted to flaunt his de-regulatory credentials. He also dropped in 2000 the fuel duty escalator which increased the price of petrol each year by more than the rate of inflation in order to encourage motorists to use their car less wherever they could because of the environmental damage involved. And it is Gordon Brown who has continued to provide huge subsidies year after year to the fossil fuel industries of oil, gas and coal which are the basic cause of the whole climate change problem.

The other oddity of this sudden spurt of greenery is that it sits uncomfortably alongside a raft of policies pulling in exactly the opposite direction. The Government is still committed to triple airport capacity in the UK by 2030 (and only yesterday announced a third runway at Heathrow) which with the huge number of extra flights entailed would make it virtually impossible to reach these ambitious new climate change targets. Gordon Brown is still committed to a massive nuclear energy revival which, given the enormous costs, would certainly squeeze out any sustained expansion of renewables. And the Government has continued to block measures which would give a major boost to the woefully low standards of energy efficiency in housing and other measures like the Merton Rule to expand the use of renewables in house construction.

So, Gordon, bully for you with your latest aspirations, but how exactly are you going to achieve them?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gordon Brown wants to reassure Bush at the Mansion House tonight that the ‘special relationship’ still lies at the heart of UK foreign policy. After a teeny-weeny bit of independence in beginning to withdraw British troops from Iraq, we have to genuflect again. The real question we should be asking is: are we seeking a closer relationship because we believe that US policies are broadly right or simply because that is where the power is?

There is of course no special relationship, almost by definition, since the essential tenet of the neo-con philosophy is unilateralism, Might is Right, and self-interest overrides everything whatever their ‘friends’ may say. We are no more likely to carry influence if we play the deferential courtier than if we play the critical friend. As we found out painfully throughout the Blair years, playing to the American tune unremittingly on every occasion gained not a singly demonstrable concession.

So are American policies right? Of course there is a considerable US-European consensus across a broad spectrum of policy which nobody seriously doubts. But there are some very important areas of discord where we have a responsibility to make our voice heard.

Iraq is a prime example, though far from the only one. It is becoming clear that the US intend a permanent military presence in Iraq as long as Saudi, Iraqi and Iranian oil lasts, amounting in total to more than half global oil reserves. For this purpose the US is strong-arming an oil law through the Iraqi Government which is virtually expropriating all future Iraqi oil revenues which on some official US estimates could reach the stupendous level of £30 trillions, 12 times the UK GNP! The Americans are now building five colossal military bases across Iraq to enforce their will. We should be telling them this is a recipe for an endless insurgency which is not only flagrantly illegal, but an unwinnable quagmire which can only erode the West’s position to the benefit of Iran, China and Russia.

Second, the US won the Cold War in 1989, but then blew it by passing up a priceless opportunity to win over Russia as a long-term ally. Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down, pulled the Red Army back inside its border, removed the Communist Party from absolute control, and embraced American-style capitalism. Putin went out of his way to aid American forces after 9/11 and did not use his Security Council veto to block the US invasion of Iraq. What has been his reward? The US, exploiting Russian weakness at every turn, moved NATO into Eastern Europe and then into the former Soviet republics. The US bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 despite Russian protests, and is now placing a missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic as well as unilaterally abrogating the ABM Treaty which has produced stability for 30 years. Is it any surprise that Putin is now so suspicious and uncooperative towards the West? This is fundamentally the wrong policy, and we should be saying that loud and clear to the US before we alienate yet further one of the great powers that should be our ally.

Third, instead of continually fudging his options over Iran, Gordon Brown should be making clear that whilst we support economic and diplomatic pressures to deter an Iranian nuclear bomb, we do not and will not support a military attack on Iran. It would have catastrophic consequences – setting the whole Middle East alight, provoking intensified Iranian intervention in Iraq, seriously disrupting the world oil supply a quarter of which passes daily through the straits of Hormuz, unleashing murderous retaliation maybe as far as Western capitals, All without being able ultimately to prevent an Iranian bomb, and indeed generating a national unity behind the mullahs when otherwise an unpopular regime might steadily unravel because of economic failure.

It is our duty to make clear to the Americans now our strong opposition to their perverse and counter-productive military threats towards Iran. Otherwise, the Cold War will be succeeded by another long term geo-political conflict, only conducted at much higher temperature.

Graphic: Project Gutenberg

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:39 PM | Permalink

From today's Times:

Politics is in a curiously disorientated state in Britain today. On one side, old-style Toryism was voted out in 1997, and has now been replaced by a soft veneer of environmentalism and family-centredness that contrasts sharply with the excesses of private equity capitalism. On the other, the persistent shifting to the right under new Labour has now blown itself out, as the polls indicate, leaving a large segment of political space occupied by mainstream Labour opinion and probably a majority of the electorate as a whole largely disenfranchised.

This key part of the spectrum urgently needs representation to give it fresh direction — not old Labour either, but a modern progressive politics addressing the big issues now being ducked and championing key groups now being marginalised.

First, we need a change of direction to heal the divisions that are increasingly straining the fabric of our society. The Government has made some progress in reducing poverty, but not nearly enough. Inequalities are actually increasing. The average pay of the chief executives of the top FTSE 100 companies is now £46,150 a week, 250 times the minimum wage and 500 times the state pension, while at the same time there are still 12.5 million people, including more than 2 million children, living in households below the Government’s poverty line. This matters because reducing inequality leads to less violence, better health, longer life expectancy, lower teenage birth rates and higher educational attainment.

We need a new approach to cutting crime if we genuinely believe in being as tough on the causes of crime as on crime itself. It’s not sensible to go on banging people up even faster than we can build new prisons without tackling much harder the causes of criminality, and putting much more emphasis on reducing recidivism. Despite unprecedented increase in the use of custody, reconviction rates have soared. The hardline policy isn’t working.

We must drastically reduce the prison population, confining it to violent and dangerous offenders. We should provide instead secure units in the community where lesser offenders are required to attend compulsory courses on anger control, money management and parenting, and also to receive education and skills training and treatment for drug addiction and mental health needs, and are made to do unpaid work to repay the community.

Probably the best crime reduction value for money comes from parenting programmes and youth inclusion panels, bringing together local services to focus support on 8 to 13-year-olds at highest risk. Of course there are increased costs involved in intensive rehabilitation, but if prison places and reoffending costs can be significantly reduced, there should be a substantial net saving in public expenditure.

We need too to arrest the overcentralisation of power in this country. Key decisions, such as the replacement of Trident and the restoration of nuclear energy, should not be taken without consultation of the Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion.

Indeed, the most direct way to win back public trust and reconnect with the electorate is for the Government to be seen as genuinely accountable, listening and being prepared to adjust in the face of strong public demand.

It also means Parliament reasserting its authority by taking the right to ratify (or not) nominations to the Cabinet made by the Prime Minister, by appointing committees of inquiry where the Government refuses to do so (as over rendition flights), by ending the Royal Prerogative whereby the Prime Minister can unilaterally declare war and authorise military action, and through its select committees tabling its own motions for debate and voting on the floor of the Commons. Giving the public the right to initiate legislation through referendums is another issue to explore.

We also need much more vigorously to tackle the greatest threat facing the world today: climate change. It must permeate every policy area of Government — not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy. It is not enough merely to talk of the end of oil dependence when our electricity generation from renewable energy is, at just 4 per cent, by far the lowest in Europe.

We need an overall plan to meet the scientists’ target of reducing carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050. It is a colossal challenge, but a win-win-win-win scenario. It will increase energy efficiency hugely, create large savings for industry and some of our poorest households, protect our economy against sudden destabilising external shocks and safeguard us from climate catastrophe.

Finally, we must stop being subservient to the US. We can’t go on being America’s glove puppet, as we have been over Iraq and Lebanon, and, most worryingly, Iran. We need a foreign policy that robustly reasserts our own essential British interests and our commitment to the UN. The first demonstration of that should be strong opposition to any potential US or Israeli attack on Iran, and insistence that the nuclear impasse must be resolved by negotiation or by UN sanctions, not by violence.

We should take the advice not of the US but of British military commanders on the spot in speeding up our troop withdrawal from Iraq. And we should push for a wider international peace conference for a joint settlement of interconnected Middle East issues that cannot be solved one by one. The latest reports of a US change of heart about talking to Iran and Syria make this now a serious possibility.

It is because I believe that radical new policies of this kind would reenergise politics in this country that I am standing for the leadership of the Labour Party.

www.michaelmeacher.info

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:04 PM | Permalink

In yesterday's Budget, Gordon Brown pre-empted the Tories by, in effect, doing their work for them - cutting corporation Tax and cutting the basic income tax rate. What he has not done is produce a real Labour Budget which would dramatically cut growing inequality by ending glaring tax loopholes that favour the rich. (E.g. non domicile tax status for the super rich and the taper relief exemption for private equity investors) while at the same time raising the basic State pension to pensioner credit level as of right for all pensioners and linking all future increases in the pension to earnings.

He has not tackled environmental issues adequately. His policy of bringing the airlines into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in several years time will not deter the fastest rising cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Bringing in a carbon entitlement for individual households in 2012 is far too late. He has done nothing to increase the pathetically low level of electricity generation in UK from renewable sources of energy, still stuck at 4% when the rest of the EU level is 20-25%. Building standards and energy efficiency still remain disappointingly low and he has refused, wrongly, to earmark all green taxes for expenditure on better green alternatives (e.g. bus rail and smaller engine cars).

Posted by Michael Meacher at 04:41 PM | Permalink

Michael's speech to the People's Assembly against the War, yesterday evening in Westminster.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 07:14 AM | Permalink

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:24 AM | Permalink

Getting agreement today to a binding 20% renewables target at the EU summit in Brussels is crucial. But the rhetoric has to be delivered. Britain already has a renewables target of 10% by 2010, but is failing to get anywhere near it.

While Germany, France, Italy and Spain generate 10-25% of their electricity from renewable sources of energy and Sweden and Denmark 25-35%, for Britain the figure is just 4%. This is pathetic, given that around Scotland and the North Sea, we have more wind power and wave and tidal power potential than any other country in Europe.

Kicking targets another decade into the future to conceal the failure to deliver in the shorter term is not good enough.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Meacher: why Spectator readers should vote for me

A leadership election opens up, uniquely, the opportunity to debate and decide on the future course of a government. I am standing because I believe there are several areas of policy where a fundamental change of direction is now needed. And though Spectator readers may initially be sceptical about the relevance of my policies to them, I believe that if they read on with an open mind, they'll find much that they agree with. I'm sure they'll agree, for instance, that New Labour and Tory policies have become similar, almost overlapping, which means that politics has become increasingly fixated on personalities, as though a blanket consensus on policy had been achieved. This is ridiculous. Old-style Toryism was rejected in 1997, and now New Labour - the continuing moving-right show - has clearly faded. It's time, not for Old Labour either, but for a mainstream Labour approach - which may well represent majority opinion within the electorate but has been suppressed for over a decade - to be reasserted as a modern progressive politics with new solutions to today's profound problems.

Continue reading "From the Spectator (3 March 2007)" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:09 AM | Permalink

(From the Independent)

Labour leadership contender answers your questions, such as 'Why not sell your flats to help fight against poverty?' & 'What's your guilty pleasure?'
Published: 05 March 2007

Are you a socialist? What does that mean today? MIKE WOODBRIDGE, Brighton

Yes, I am. A socialist believes that while the market has its proper place, the fundamental principles underpinning society should be equity, social justice, equality of opportunity, and democratic accountability. Even where the market is a dominant force, socialists believe it should be regulated to ensure high environmental, social and labour standards.

Why, as a socialist, do you own so many houses? GARY BROWNE, Glasgow

As I have regularly stated in the register of Members' interests, I own four flats. I have saved throughout my life, and put my savings into property. I don't think [that] is contrary to socialism.

Given your views on poverty, why not sell some of your houses and give the money to charity? Or are you just another hypocritical politician? V AHMAD, Birmingham

I already give a significant amount to charity . I agree there is an urgent need to build much more social, affordable housing but selling my flats which are already occupied would not contribute one iota to that.

Isn't it delusional of you to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership? MAURICE BURKE, Birmingham

No. There should be a contest because only an election enables us to debate the real policy issues. I also believe that members of the Labour Party should have the right to choose their own leaders. I believe, too, that as New Labour, of which Gordon Brown is perhaps the main architect, has moved continually ever further to the right, the mainstream majority of the party has been left disenfranchised and without a voice. It is not sensible to assume the results of any election before the electors have had a chance to deliver their opinion which may sometimes come as rather a shock to the chattering classes. Not too many people I guess expected David Cameron to come from behind and win the Tory Party leadership.

Don't you think Gordon offers Labour the best hope of winning the next election? VALERIE EVANS, Cardiff

Have you seen the last two polls? Both put the Tories 11 per cent ahead, and one poll found that if Gordon was leader, the Tories would be 13 per cent ahead.

I am a Labour supporter, but I despair that Gordon Brown has been such a coward over the war, talks nonsense on 'Britishness' and seems so in love with Rupert Murdoch that he will hand the next election to Cameron. Do you agree - and if not, which bits do you disagree with and why? DAVE FISCHER, Sheffield

Cameron has certainly, at this stage at least, improved the Tories' poll ratings, but not, I think, for the reasons you give.

A majority on the Labour left support John McDonnell and see your campaign as a spoiler which will only split the vote and stop a contest. Will you stand down if John has more nominations when Blair resigns? SUSAN PRESS, Calder Valley

There is no evidence whatever that a majority of people on the Labour Party left and the affiliated trade union movement support John McDonnell for leader. I have a great deal of respect for John, but I don't believe he can get the necessary 45 nominations, whereas I believe I can. I am not splitting the vote, but rather giving the centre-left the chance, to run a candidate who can pass the nominations threshold. But I do agree that whichever of the two of us has the larger number of nominations, the other should stand down when Tony Blair resigns.

Why not use that photo of you on Blackpool beach (very Daniel Craig) for your campaign posters? CONOR MURPHY, Reading

Good try. At least it shows I'm healthy.

Do you think Blair should stand down now?STEVE HARRISON, Bolton

The sooner he stands down, the better.

Why did you vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq?DEAN PALMER, Norwich

I made the biggest mistake of my political life when I supported the war, on the grounds that the Prime Minister repeatedly gave chapter and verse about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and assured us that if only we knew all the intelligence available to him, we would have no doubts about the necessity for this action. I still find it deeply disturbing for democracy that a prime minister can so massage and fabricate the evidence in order to push through a preconceived war plan.

Do you think Blair lied to his MPs and lied to the country over Iraq?JEFF TERRY, Dundee

I think the highly selective manipulation of such evidence as there was, together with the highly prejudicial use to which it was put, was deeply dishonest.

You claim you were misled that Saddam had a WMD programme. Yet you say the West has no right to tell Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. Aren't you being rather inconsistent over Iraq and Iran?JIM ROLAND, London NW11

No, these are two quite separate arguments. Yes, we were certainly misled over Saddam's alleged WMD programme. While we should try to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons by negotiation and UN sanctions, we cannot say that nuclear weapons are indispensable for our own security, and then say Iran does not need them for their own security, especially when Iran (unlike the West) is surrounded by seven states which are nuclear-armed and some very hostile.

Do you truly believe that the US government knew about 9/11 but failed to prevent it?CHRIS QUIGLEY, by email

Clearly the US government did not know the precise time and location of the al-Qa'ida attack, but equally clearly there was a great deal of intelligence beforehand which, for whatever reason, it seems that they did not follow up.

You have suggested that the US government knew about the 9/11 attacks (which is pretty obvious I reckon, but fair play to you nonetheless). How complicit do you believe the UK Government was in 7/7? PAUL HUGHES, by email

Not at all.

Do you also believe that the FBI shot John F Kennedy, that Princess Diana was murdered and the US government has covered up the landing of aliens?BEN TROTTER, Cirencester

No. Such allegations are cheap and rather silly.

What steps will you propose to counter global warming? DR GEORGE BLAIR, by email

We should rapidly increase our use of renewable sources of energy (windpower, solar, and micro-generation in people's homes). We should require the airline industry, like every other industry, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions each year. We should increase vehicle excise duty sharply for gas-guzzling cars and use the proceeds to subsidise bus and rail, and smaller-engine cars. We should give each family a carbon entitlement which then has to be reduced each year.

How often have you flown in the past 12 months? FIONA MILLS, Edinburgh

Not at all.

You criticise the 'Westminster bubble' but said you spent the last two months talking to MPs about your campaign. Does this not show you have the same disrespect for people's views as the rest of the Westminster bubble? MARSHA JANE THOMPSON, by email

I said that when people around the country come to vote, they may well take a quite different view of things from the inward-looking Westminster scene, and should be listened to. But I also extensively canvassed my colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party because they alone are the ones who make the nominations.

Why did it take you so long to announce your intention to stand for the Labour leadership when John McDonnell has been campaigning up and down the country for months?MAX MITCHELL, by email

I have been told that John McDonnell announced his candidature without consulting his colleagues. I thought it right first to consult extensively to confirm that my candidature would have the necessary range of support.

What are your guilty pleasures (apart from homeowning)?ALICE SHERWOOD, Tadworth

Wouldn't you like to know! Dropping childish comments in the waste paper basket is one of them.

You always look a bit boring. Are you? ROB JACKSON, by email

No. Why? Are you?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:28 PM | Permalink

Things have been hectic today, so much so that a planned video interview that was going to appear here has had to be put off until next week. As has been well documented, both on televison and radio as well as on a number of blogs, I declared today that I am standing for the leadership fo the Labour Party.

We need an election. We cannot stumble on without the issues being debated. We have seen inequality grow to levels higher than at any time since the 1930s. The world has become a less safe place in which to live. We are simply strolling without the necessary urgency along the path to controlling carbon emissions and dealing with climate change.

Elections have their own dynamic and the ballot could be 3-4 months away. Some of the coverage has predictably focused upon the issue of MP nominations. I am confident that I have the required supoport to be on the ballot. That's not an issue that can be settled until the nominations are actually made. Until then I intend to spend that time campainging hard to make sure the arguments - the alternatives to New Labour - are heard.

The BBC's James Landale seemed to be the only journalist who picked up on the real issues when he said on News 24 that the point of the campaign was to pick up the banner of the Labour left and wave it as loudly and visibly as possible. That's why taking the railways back into public ownership, rejecting renewal of Trident and the gross discrepancies between the highest paid and the lowest were issues I raised at the press conference this morning.

Crucially, he also said the interesting thing will be to see how these policies resonate with party members over the coming months.
Do they want to see Trident renewed? Most polls suggest otherwise, that people know there is no enemy against which they can be used, not terorrists, not rogue states.

Do they want to see the wage packets of the lowest pay to also rise when city bonuses are handed out? I think the answer is yes.

Do they want to see a massive investment in renewable energy technologies, cutting carbon emisisons and providing jobs in manufacturing and in research and development? Addressing global warming does not require wearing a hairshirt, it requires committment and innovation - and the rewards are huge.

If, as I believe, the centre-left is actually the mainstream, then these arguments should resonate loud and very clear. Only by putting them to the party can we see if that is the case. I think I have the policies, experience and expertise required for the job - now I want the party to have the opportunity to decide.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 08:03 PM | Permalink

If Labour is going to win the next general election, we need a fundamentally new direction of travel for the new Government after the election of a new Leader and Deputy Leader. We have lost 4 million votes since 1997 and more than half our membership. This is not just because of the Iraq War, it is also because we are widely perceived, both in the Party and the electorate, to be going down the wrong track over a range of policies. We are losing support too because the style of government – spin, manipulation, centralising power at the top and not listening to the people – is unacceptable. We need radical change on both counts.

We need more than corrections of where we have clearly gone badly wrong – over Iraq, Lebanon and subservience to Bush, over the centralisation and unaccountability of Government today, over the growing and unacceptable inequality between rich and poor, over the privatisation of our public services, over the decline of manufacturing
and the weakness of workplace rights, and over the continuing erosion of civil liberties. What we need above all is a vision of a new direction which can fire the imagination of today’s generation.

What is the biggest threat facing the world today? It isn’t the so-called war on terror, whatever Bush may think. It isn’t the risk of nuclear war, now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union disbanded. The overriding political issue today, the danger that could overwhelm much of the planet, much of the human race, if not in our lifetime but certainly in that of our children or grandchildren, is climate change.

It’s not just the dramatically increasing frequency and ferocity of hurricanes, unprecedented flooding, rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, or melting permafrost. Nor is it just the inextinguishable forest fires, the drying out of millions of hectares of croplands which will no longer produce food, or the mega-dustbowls from Northern China to the American mid-West. What is really frightening is that climate change is not a linear process, but a dynamic and unstable one. Scientists say there are tipping points where a gradual process suddenly explodes out of all proportion, where positive feedback effects abruptly accelerate climate change in unpredictable and overpowering ways – like the dieback of the Amazon, the release of billions of tonnes of methane hydrates from the ocean floor, or the collapse of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets. If any of those happened in the next 50-100 years, the impact on human civilisation would be incalculable. There is no precedent – we are entering uncharted territory.

Now some may say: but that won’t affect us here in the UK, or at least not in our lifetime. Both assumptions are wrong. The UN predicts 50 million environmental refugees by the end of this decade, and where will they come to if not the richer, more settled, northern regions like the UK? The WHO estimates that 9 out of the world’s 10 most dangerous vector-borne disease will increase their coverage worldwide. If the ocean pump fails, the Gulf Stream will collapse and the UK temperature will plummet to that of Siberia. And as to not in our lifetime, Jim Hansen, George Bush’s leading climate modeller – no less – said recently we have “at most 10 years” to make the drastic cuts in emissions that might head off climate catastrophe.

So what should be done? Labour has to become the Party that will lead the world in a fundamental change of direction. It requires a change in how we think about our economics, energy, water management, food security, transportation, international policies, and the nature of civilisation itself. We have to move from the peripheral and tinkering to the profound and visionary.

Tackling climate change is the overarching policy which should permeate every other policy in government – not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy. Put bluntly, we will never have food security, water security, or energy security in this country (or anywhere else) unless we give absolute priority to combating climate change.

So what specifically should a new Government do?

We should be shifting away from massive old-fashioned power stations to decentralised energy systems (wind and solar power, and micro-generation plants in people’s homes), together with much more ambitious investment in large-scale offshore wind farms.

We should require the airline industry (like every other industry) to reduce year by year their emissions which are the fastest growing source of global warming.

We should increase VED massively for gas-guzzling cars and use the proceeds to subsidise bus and rail, plus give a rebate to smaller-engine car owners.

We should require industry to measure and make public their environmental and climate change impacts, not only greenhouse gas emissions, but their energy efficiency, waste generation, water consumption, and transport impacts, and reduce them year by year.

We should incentivise local food production which would regenerate British agriculture, dramatically cut air miles, and protect security of supply.

We should tighten building standards so that all new construction at least meets the most energy efficient standards already met in Europe and Scandinavia.

We should give each family, according to its size, a carbon entitlement which then has to be reduced each year in such a way so as to reward the conscientious and penalise the wasteful.

And in order to meet the target set by scientists of at least 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared with 1990, Government should set a target of 3% annual reduction in overall UK emissions, set out the new mechanisms to achieve this, publish the results each year, and make whatever changes are necessary year by year to keep the UK on track.

Underpinned by this comprehensive policy, Britain should gain the moral and political authority to lead the way internationally in pressing all other countries, especially the US, China and India, to commit to an enhanced and extended new Climate Change Protocol beyond 2010.

Above all, we should eliminate the biggest political threat to world security today by leading the world out of dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, the struggle for the dwindling supplies of which lies at the heart of the incessant murderous carnage in the Middle East. We do that by huge new investment in renewable sources of energy, in which Britain is unusually well endowed, and by a massive targeted programme in energy conservation. Britain, because of its offshore location, has more wind-power capacity than the rest of Europe put together, but we are using only a tiny fraction of it. At present only 4% of our electricity generation comes from renewables. In Germany, France, Italy and Spain it is 15-25%, and in Scandinavia 25-35% or more. And our waste of energy – in transport, construction, industry, agriculture, and private households – is prodigious.

This is a win-win-win-win scenario. It will bring about a huge step-change in the efficient use of energy, it will save very considerable sums of money both for industry and some of our poorest households, it will protect our society against sudden destabilising external shocks, and it will safeguard the environment from the apocalyptic nightmare of climate change. It is not a utopian vision. It is highly practical and resolutely necessary if the world is to survive in a sustainable form. It will excite the imagination and galvanise our Party by restoring our commitment to a greater and deeper collective cause which has always been our inspiration.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Government's statement that nuclear was can all be safely stored so we needn't worry about it is deeply flawed for several reasons -

1 The statement said the Government is offering " open and transparent partnerships with potential host communities, with appropriate involvement and benefit packages." This is Whitehallspeak for We intend to bribe local authorities to take on a nuclear dump near them - we're far from sure they'll agree otherwise.

Continue reading "Tons and tons and tons of nuclear waste" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 04:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Whilst the world’s attention is locked on the Israel-Hizbullah war, more far-reaching and potentially dangerous threats to global security are growing dramatically, though almost unnoticed. Last month the US Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, let the cat out of the bag: “At least at the present time and for the foreseeable future, we’re going to see oil demand exceeding supply” – a potentially explosive development that the world has never faced before.

Continue reading "The oil wars have already begun" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In their Energy White Paper of February 2003the Government concluded that the looming energy gap – as the old nuclear power plants are closed down, reducing nuclear-generated electricity from 19% now to 7% by 2020 – should be met by a combination of a major expansion of renewables (windpower, biomass, wave and tidal power, solar power) plus much enhanced energy conservation. Tony Blair has now clearly resiled on this. But he is wrong.

Continue reading "Nuclear: The indefensible option" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Speaking to the CBI, Tony Blair has finally made his long suspected support for civil nuclear power explicit , ahead of the government’s own Energy Review. Previously, it was widely believed that the purpose of this review was to enable the Prime Minister to reverse the decisions of the 2003 Energy White Paper. This proposed a major expansion in renewable energy combined with enhanced conservation efforts to compensate for decommissioning ageing nuclear plants, whose contribution to UK energy generation will fall from 19% to 7% by 2020.

Continue reading "Nuclear Energy - Sustainability or vengeance?" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Although the price for July deliveries of Brent crude is over $70 a barrel, Lord Browne, BP's chief executive, thinks prices will halve in the medium term. According to a recent interview, he believes large oilfields are still being found and Canada's oil sands could be exploited.

Continue reading "Our only hope lies in forging a new energy world order" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The launch of the energy review last week was clearly set up to pave the way for the prime minister to put forward a new generation of nuclear plants, reversing the decision the government reached in its energy white paper in 2003. Back then, the conclusion was that the looming energy gap - created as the old nuclear power plants are closed down - should be met by an expansion of renewables, plus much-enhanced energy conservation.

Continue reading "Returning to nuclear power could prove a deadly U-turn " »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Proponents of civil nuclear power will use any and every opportunity to press their case. Small wonder then, that the Russia-Ukraine gas price dispute should have been so quickly deployed by nuclear power advocates. Brian Wilson, former energy minister and now a power industry consultant, told newspapers that the row highlighted the need for the UK to establish security of supply via “indigenous” sources, namely nuclear. Like many of the arguments used to promote nuclear power, this one doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. The UK does not possess its own uranium deposits and would have to import the fuel, just as it will be importing Russian, Algerian and Norwegian gas.

Continue reading "Security Of Supply Does Not Mean Nuclear" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A huge new oil pipeline, opened a week ago but not fully operational till August, is set to become an environmental, political and economic timebomb. Over 1,000 miles long, it is a classic example of pretensions to corporate social responsibility claimed by the BP consortium being trampled all over by the stampede for oil.

Continue reading "Casualties of the oil stampede" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

1. The scale of change required in the world economy in the next few decades following the passing of Peak Oil within the next few years is nothing less than apocalyptic. Since our whole civilisation and our whole economy is based overwhelmingly on oil, namely – industry, agriculture, transportation – the dislocation caused by the growing shortfall in availability is likely to be on a scale unprecedented in human history. Already, four fifths of the world’s oil supply comes from fields discovered before 1970, and even finding a field as large as Ghawar in Saudi Arabia – which is anyway almost inconceivable given the huge improvements in geological knowledge in the last 30 years – it would only meet world demand for another 10 years.

2. So what is to be done?

Continue reading "Political Action on Peak Oil" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Fears about nuclear power are as commonly held as ones about nuclear weapons. When a shipment of nuclear fuel was sent from the USA to France for reprocessing recently, coverage ranged from the News of the World to the Independent, all centring on widespread safety concerns. There is less focus on the economic issues but it may be time to take a harder look, because the UK taxpayer is about to take a scandalous £600m hit, with the possibility of an additional £1bn cost to come.

The reason for this is the commissioning of the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP), built to reprocess spent nuclear fuel for re-use in the power plants of BNFL customers. As environment minister at the time, I was unconvinced of the economic viability of the project and resisted it for three years. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister chose to override this advice and gave his approval for its go-ahead in 2001. By that time, the cost originally projected at £239m had risen to £300m.

I had resisted simply because I could not see how the poor contract scenario -the likelihood that BNFL would not win contracts to sell MOX fuel - would make it worthwhile to continue, even though the cost of construction under the previous Tory regime was now written off. To be viable, the SMP had to run at a minimum of 40% of its capacity. Currently, it is barely achieving 15%. Technical problems have plagued the plant both before and during the commissioning process. Much 'remedial' work has been done, leading to not just cost increases - the cost of the SMP is now put at £472m - but a total shutdown of production while the problems are being resolved. The SMP has not yet produced enough fuel to fulfil the order of a single customer. The only contract that was completed had to be sub-contracted to a Belgian competitor. In the meantime, BNFL reported an increased loss of £310m this year, making it technically bankrupt. BNFL directors attributed the losses to the costs of the SMP.

Even had the plant operated smoothly from the outset - an unusual occurrence for any project of this complexity - the economic case was fragile. You need a market to sell in and the market for MOX is terribly small. In Europe it includes Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. From BNFL's perspective, there's a slim possibility that Canada might be a customer, though the British embassy in Ottowa suggests otherwise: "we see no prospect for BNFL in this market" they said.

The other customer is Japan and its importance to the SMP should not be underestimated. "Without Japanese orders, we cannot justify opening the MOX plant" said Norman Askew, then BNFL chief executive in September 2000. The date was prior to the commissioning of the plant, but subsequent to the events that have done more damage than any other to an already weak economic argument.

In 1999, it was discovered that BNFL had falsified quality control data on MOX fuel produced at a demonstration facility and sold to Japan. The Japanese public has a longstanding and deeply held concern over nuclear power. Partly this is due to the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, partly to a surprisingly poor safety record in its nuclear power industry - four people died in an accident at a nuclear power plant earlier this year. A pipe had corroded and burst. It had not been inspected for almost thirty years.

So when the scandal of falsified data was discovered, the effect on BNFL's commercial prospects was huge. Costs to BNFL, (including compensation to Japan and shipping the fuel back to Sellafield) were £113m. The real cost to the MOX project was that it killed off the chances of selling the fuel to Japan for years to come. This year, record oil prices and a gas dispute with China have caused Japan to re-examine the case for using MOX. Even the pro-MOX lobby in Japan expects no orders to be placed before 2007 however, and the contracts are expected to go to BNFL's French rival, Cogema.

Cogema has one great advantage over BNFL. It has successfully operated two MOX plants, one now in the process of being decommissioned, the other operating at near full capacity. In its "MOX for peace" programme, the USA has selected Cogema's Caderache plant to convert weapons grade plutonium to nuclear fuel. It was to Cogema that BNFL turned when it desperately needed advice on how to solve some of its operating problems. "It pains me to tell you this," said BNFL director David Bonser early in October 2004 "but one of these [outside consultants] is Cogema.

So the economic case for SMP was never strong. Official estimates suggested that - if it won enough contracts to operate for ten years - the SMP could show a profit of £216m. Naturally, this did not include the £113m costs of the data falsification scandal. More bizarrely, it did not include the SMP's construction costs either. Nor did it include the potential decommissioning costs, which BNFL has estimated at £92m.

Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General has now revealed for the first time that closure is an option being considered. It may well be sensible to stop throwing good money after bad, but there's another sting in the tail, with a potential £1bn price tag.

Next April, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will come into existence. Its job is to deal with the UK's nuclear waste mountain. Annual costs are put at £2bn. The Treasury has told the NDA that half those costs should be met by the income generated from the operation of the SMP (for which the NDA will become responsible). At the moment the eyebrow raising question - whether the plant remains open or closed - seems to be "what income?"

We must demand greater transparency from all bodies involved in this financial farrago. As minister, I was prevented by the DTI from seeing the detailed costs of the MOX plant and both BNFL and the DTI resisted my attempts to make the costs publicly available. It is surely now clear beyond any doubt that the SMP is a huge financial black hole and should be promptly closed. Instead of reprocessing the spent fuel, it should be subject to dry storage - not only environmentally better, but also £250m cheaper for the UK Exchequer and taxpayer.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:59 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:43 PM | Permalink

(This article originally appeared in the Independent on Sunday.)

The fact that Gordon Brown has agreed to "review" his plan to raise fuel duty by 2p per litre in September - and the consequent calling off of all but one of the planned fuel protests yesterday - has been greeted with sighs of relief all round. Thank heavens for that. We'd all prefer an issue ducked to an embarrassing row, wouldn't we? But now Elliot Morley has popped up and, according to one newspaper, "shattered Labour's fragile truce with the fuel protesters". He says "A simplistic knee-jerk reaction to short-term petrol supply problems is not the answer."

Well, good for him. The whole debate is taking place on the wrong basis. The issue is not merely the price to the car or truck driver (after all, the real cost of motoring has actually fallen in the past two decades), but whether petrol price policy should be driven by Middle East oil markets or by a looming global warming catastrophe.

There is now abundant evidence that global warming is proceeding fasterthan scientists had previously predicted. If we carry on down our present path, we shall treble the amount of carbon dioxide that we emit by 2100, to a level of 1,000 parts per million, twice what scientists regard as a safe level. Greenhouse gas emissions from cars and lorries are now the fastest-rising cause of global warming. Unlike the last time we were in this situation, at the truck drivers' fuel protest in 2000, when the environment wasn't even mentioned, it should now occupy centre stage. The Government should have the courage to make the case - squarely and without apology - that fuel duty is a key instrument in controlling carbon dioxide emissions.

The counter to this argument is that increasing petrol duty is politically unpopular. It will not even be effective: the number of cars around the world, especially in developing countries such as China and India, is set to rise exponentially. Second, greenhouse gas emissions from industry - notably a massive increase in coal-burning to fuel China's increasing industrialisation - are growing rapidly. These will not be affected by Western transport taxes.

However, if the West (including eventually the US, by far the worst polluter) does not give a lead when we are the biggest offenders, countries such as China and India, with two-fifths of the world's population, will not follow suit. So the utterly devastating consequences of global warming will simply be visited on the whole world more quickly. If we delay until climatic disaster is so intense that we are forced to take action in order to survive, it will be too late because scientists believe there is at least a 200-year lead time before measures taken now will begin to cut carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

But it does mean standing up to the vested interests, which the Government hitherto has not been good at, whether over tobacco advertising, promotion of unhealthy fast foods, airline subsidies or alcohol advertising. In the case of the transport lobby, it means sending out a clear and unambiguous message, whether for road traffic or air travel, that there are environmental costs that have to be paid for in full, not least to encourage the search for less damaging means of travel.

It is therefore a much, much bigger issue than whether or not to raise fuel duty by 2p a litre. Nor will pleading with Opec to increase production quotas have much effect when the output of member countries is already 10 per cent above