http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2631117.eceThe problem is easily stated. On current trends, the world will need 50% more energy in 2030 than it does today, which is a lot more than it’s got in the tank. Worse: energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases by then will be 55% higher, which means we’ll fry our grandchildren if not ourselves. These, I should say, are the government’s own figures, published in this year’s energy white paper, not some doodle on a muesli packet by the People’s Yoghurt Collective. To keep itself humming, and to compensate for the exhaustion of North Sea oil and the closure of power stations, the UK pretty desperately needs a strategy. For all its length (342 pages), the white paper is much more about “need to do” than “how to do”. It leaves that to “UK companies”, which will “need to make substantial new investment in power stations, the electricity grid, and gas infrastructure”. On how that investment is to be assured, or even encouraged, it remains largely mute (carbon-trading schemes are its best shot).
Statistics thud like dough into the brain, impossible to digest. The UK and EU between them have signed up to the inevitable think-of-a-number targets. Britain is supposed to produce 10% of its electricity from renewable sources (wind and tide, etc) by 2010, 15% by 2015 and 20% by 2020. At the moment we are managing just 4%. At the same time, it proposes (one can hardly say “plans”) a 26-32% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and 60% by 2050 (both against a 1990 baseline). The European Union, meanwhile, is looking for a 20% cut in total energy consumption (not just electricity) by 2020. Hands up anyone who can pick their way through that lot and come out the other end with all boxes ticked and the lights still on.
So what can we agree upon? If we ignore the zealots who believe that either wind or nuclear could provide a full and permanent solution, then there is a consensus on two important points. No single technology offers a complete answer, so there will have to be diversity. And the mix will have to include conventional power stations. If we ignore the government and listen to the professionals, another truth emerges. As Dr Paul Golby, chief executive of the UK branch of the energy giant E.ON puts it, “It’s five minutes to midnight and the clock is still ticking.” If we don’t agree a plan of action before the witching hour, then the 2015 energy gap will not be filled.
It’s already too late for nuclear (though Golby insists it must have a role in the longer term), and it’s beyond the scope of renewables to do the job on their own. If the lights are going to stay on, then the “substantial new investments” the government wants from UK companies will have to be made pretty damn quick. But no company is going to chance its millions unless it can be sure of a return – impossible without government assurances and, in the case of low-carbon technology, enforcement by law. Golby agrees that currently there is “no coherent energy policy that allows companies to invest”.
Britain is in a world of hurt.
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