Nuclear Power Is Not An Energy Policy

(external-resource, 23 Jun 2015) The British Government do not have an energy policy. They may think they have one, and they may regularly tell us that they have one, but in reality, they don’t. There are a number of elements of regulatory work and market intervention that they are engaged with, but none of these by itself is significant enough to count as a policy for energy. Moreover, all of these elements taken together do not add up to energy security, energy efficiency, decarbonisation and affordable energy.

What it takes to have an energy policy is a clear understanding of what is a realistic strategy for reinvestment in energy after the dry years of privatisation, and a focus on energy efficiency, and getting sufficient low carbon energy built to meet the Carbon Budget on time. Current British Government ambitions on energy are not realistic, will not attract sufficient investment, will not promote increased energy efficiency and will not achieve the right scale and speed of decarbonisation.

I’m going to break down my critique into a series of small chunks. The first one is a quick look at the numbers and outcomes arising from the British Government’s obsessive promotion of nuclear power, a fantasy science fiction that is out of reach, not least because the industry is dog-tired and motheaten.

Less than four years ago, in December 2011, the previous government, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, published its “ Carbon Plan ” (having issued a draft in March 2011 ). In there were the results of a curious piece of modelling, using software called “MARKAL”. The “core” run for electricity generation produced mix with 33 gigawatts (33 GW) of nuclear power, 45 GW of renewables and 28 GW of fossil fuel-fired power capacity with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to scoop up the carbon dioxide and pump it deep underground out of harm’s way. Table 1 in the report, “Summary of 2050 future”, gave three alternative scenarios, “Renewables”, which showed a tendency towards more energy efficiency, “CCS” which required more bioenergy to be input to the system, and “Nuclear” which showed less energy efficiency. The nuclear power generation in each of these three options ranged between 16 GW (“Renewables”) and 75 GW (“Nuclear”).

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external-resource, 23 Jun 2015: Nuclear Power Is Not An Energy Policy