A tough decision – or just an unpopular one?
May 1st 2005

Tough decisions lay ahead for the Government to enable the UK economy to have enough reliable and environmentally benign energy to sustain it. Tim McManan-Smith, editor, Water Energy & Environment Journal assesses the current situation and concludes that there is only one way out of it

The sums just don’t add up. The UK’s future energy policy will not provide the amount of energy needed to run the country without huge imports of gas from politically unstable regions of the world. If we remove coal (environmentally unfriendly) and nuclear (politically undesirable) then we are left with a 54% shortfall in electricity generation. This cannot and will not be bridged by renewable energy sources. Of course, these technologies have an increasingly important role to play in the energy mix but they have a long way to go (at present they produce about 4% of the UK’s electricity supply).

There is also the problem of how to make renewable energy into a large scale contributor. Biomass would need an area 55 times the size of Kent to supply the UK’s electricity needs, Wind an area 55 times that of Dartmoor. Wind power has the potential for the biggest contribution and yet efficiency is between 20% and 30% due to the fact that the wind turbines won’t work if it is not windy or if it is too windy! Importing gas in large quantities is not only a security problem and at the mercy of huge price fluctuations it is a large carbon producer (half that of coal, but nonetheless significant).

The only hope of reducing carbon emissions in a short space of time is nuclear generation. It is possible to ignore the nuclear option, however, do we have time? If the environmental imperative is reduction of emissions then something has to be done sooner rather than later. Energy efficiency is always seen as something of a saviour by the Government. By getting people (especially businesses) to be more efficient it is assumed that targets can be met. Although energy efficiency is a wise practice to employ for any business resulting in reduced overhead costs; the reality is that it only keeps pace with increasing energy demand.

Energy efficiency should not be spoken of only as part of the solution to global warming. It is simply good practice to reduce costs. Many of the technology solutions such as those featured in these pages have payback times that are so swift that it is gross negligence for management to ignore these devices. Reducing energy consumption is a necessary part of running a company and is not primarily about responsible company.

With nuclear power there is a problem of waste disposal but this has to be solved anyway with the current build-up from the past 50 years of nuclear power. A survey by the Royal Academy of Engineering found that gas and nuclear were level pegging in terms of the cost of power generation. However, the nuclear figure contained the cost of decommissioning and waste and since that survey gas prices have soared. It also found that wind would be twice as expensive due to the need for back-up generation when the turbines are not in use. So nuclear is environmentally benign, cost competitive and waste problems can be overcome. It will be more politically unpopular and damaging to the economy if we lose generation capacity and are subject to wide scale blackouts. The development of nuclear power generation can be used as a stop-gap until sufficient new technology and/or renewable technology is able to take the strain but at the moment it is not.

We cannot turn back to coal if we are to reach emissions targets, so the question is not if, but when are we to build? The answer is the sooner the better. It takes ten years to get a nuclear power station up and running. By 2020 nuclear power will contribute 3-5% compared to the 22% it now does. With the desire to reduce dependence on coal, this leaves a gap too large to be plugged by renewable energy in the medium term. There must be action now, sitting on the fence is not an option.

For the latest information on energy efficiency see www.energy-online.net being pro-environment or a socially

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