Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-25)
DR RICHARD
DIXON AND
MR DAVID
NORMAN
19 OCTOBER 2005
Q20 Colin Challen: Do you think that
in a liberalised energy market renewables will have a robust part
to play? I know that CHP is not exactly a renewable but when the
energy markets were liberalised CHP was just blown out of the
water. Do we have any faith that renewables themselves can be
a robust player in a liberalised energy market?
Dr Dixon: In a liberalised energy
market you will only get more of the same unless you invest in
bringing on things that are new, so it is quite correct to invest
in the renewables to get them to the stage where they can compete
on equal terms. The economics of onshore wind, for instance, are
now so good that people are worried that people are becoming millionaires
because they are investing in these schemes and they do not even
need any subsidy they might be getting. We have succeeded in bringing
the onshore wind industry to the point where it is now able to
stand on its own two feet. We are investing a little, probably
not enough, in many other renewables. Nuclear is in a different
position. Nuclear is part of the set of old things and it is not
coming about through the market because it is simply not viable,
and for other reasons, but economically it is not viable. It would
be very wrong of us to invest in nuclear to make it something
that is attractive to the market because that is old technology
we are simply supporting rather than new technology which we are
developing through its expensive development phase to its cheaper
production phase.
Q21 Mark Pritchard: Can I thank you for
your comments about Woking Borough Council earlier, for which
they won the Queen's Award. I used to be a member of that council
and was involved in that. Coming back to nuclear, how do you interpret
the Prime Minister's apparent overtures to the nuclear industry
in the last few weeks given what you have just said?
Dr Dixon: I would say that the
Prime Minister is concerned about his leadership on climate change.
He has said very many of the right things on climate change, he
has committed his party to very many of the right things at the
top level. He has demonstrated international leadership with the
60% target by 2050, for instance. He has staked part of his career
on achieving something on climate change. I suspect that his interest
in at least discussing the nuclear industry and in reopening that
door which was really almost completely shut by the Energy White
Paper is because he is concerned that his record on climate change
emissions is not good enough. Obviously it is not going to help
him meet the short-term targets, so if that is the motivation
he would only be seeing this as a legacy of something that he
has left to the country as a long-term reduction. As I say, I
think he is mistaken if he does believe that in terms of CO2 reductions.
Q22 Mr Ellwood: Could I suggest that
it is actually an overlap between two interests? One is the concerns
that everybody is showing to do with climate change, but there
is also something which has prompted us to look at this prior
to Tony Blair commenting on it which has re-engaged everybody
in this debate about nuclear energy, and that is because we are
running out of other fuels and that is the major concern. How
are we supposed to meet our energy needs? We are now a net importer
of coal, oil and electricity, mostly from France. We have to have
a self-sustainable understanding of energy, a long-term strategy.
With that in mind, do you believe the fact that we have, at least
temporarily, put this question on hold because we have elongated
the length of time that the current nuclear power stations are
being commissioned for?
Dr Dixon: I think the Energy White
Paper did a good job of thinking about these issues. In terms
of security of supply, the decisions seemed to be that we were
content that in the short term as the renewables became a much
bigger part of our portfolio, and as energy efficiency and demand
reduction became realities, we would be quite dependent on imported
gas. Not, as some commentators have tried to suggest, gas which
is coming through very long pipelines from rather unstable political
parts of the world but gas that is coming from those rather stable
countries, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, certainly for
the next 20 years. That was what we built into our piece of research
work based on the Energy White Paper. We are content that out
to 2020 with gas as a bridging fuel, meeting our targets on renewables,
doing a bit more of what was in the Energy White Paper on energy
demand and energy efficiency, there is no gap and there is certainly
no need for new nuclear, we can phase out coal and we can phase
out existing nuclear. One of our great concerns is the delay that
this debate is going to put into the process because you are being
distracted by it, the Government is being distracted by it and
the country will be distracted by it when we should be ploughing
ahead with the really tough job of energy efficiency, energy demand
management and getting the renewables really up to speed. We do
have really quite a short time. This is a big distraction. Nuclear
could never pay off quickly enough even if it could pay off, so
this is a big distraction from the real task which is concentrating
on those other things which really will reduce our emissions.
Q23 Mr Ellwood: My final question is
by that rationale what are you suggesting the Government will
do in the climate change review that we are currently undergoing?
Dr Dixon: The review is rather
puzzling. The review is running very late and if you were a conspiracy
theorist you would take it as a very bad sign. The Prime Minister
is talking about nuclear, the debate is beginning to happen, and
this crucial document about what we will do on climate change,
and therefore energy, is not emerging because there are arguments
behind the scenes. Why? We do not know. I would take the delay
that has happened in the Climate Change Programme as a bad sign
and I would suggest that there is a big struggle going on internally
about how nuclear will be referred to in that document.
Q24 Mark Pritchard: If the review had
taken place earlier would you be more amenable to nuclear?
Dr Dixon: No. I would say that
there are two levels of argument that would rule out nuclear.
There is a moral argument and there is a pragmatic argument. The
moral argument is a very simple one: it is the most unsustainable
form of energy that we have. For a few short years of energy we
have doomed ten thousand generations to look after the waste that
we have produced. It is the most despicable thing that we have
done to future generations and it would be even worse if we were
to add to that burden by contemplating more reactors. That is
the moral argument. On the pragmatic side, I think it is really
the fact that we cannot invest in both £10 billion to £20
billion worth of nuclear reactors and all the right stuff on energy
efficiency and renewables, it is a choice between the two. Many
in the industry, including the renewables industry for some reason,
try to tell you that it is not a choice between the two but to
me it is absolutely a choice between the two. Even if you were
to believe that it was right to add to the £56 billion of
decommissioning costs; even if you were not worried about proliferation,
which of course we are; even if you were not worried about the
terrorist threat that is presented by nuclear installations, which
we should be; even if you thought that the new designs were safer,
which in many cases they are not and anyway it is the operators
who manage to do things wrong and not the designs; even if you
were not worried about the routine discharges of radioactivity
every moment that a reactor is running, which you should be; even
if you thought there was really a solution to the waste problem,
which there is not; even if you thought that nuclear created jobs,
which it does not in any particularly great number compared to
investment in the alternatives; and even if you believed that
it would make a significant difference in the long-term CO2 emissions,
which I do not believe it would, then I am afraid we would still
say that the bottom line is that you cannot have both, that nuclear
would be a distraction from doing the things we really need to
get on with, which is investing in the renewables, the ones that
are available that we can deploy in large numbers today and the
ones that are just around the corner that need more investment
to get them going, and the concentration we should be putting
into energy efficiency and demand management. I think the lesson
from Finland is pretty clear. They have decided through massive
state subsidy and the fact that they own all the electricity companies
to build a new reactor, a fifth reactor, and already we are seeing
that the industry in general, business, is lobbying to get out
of targets it previously set itself for climate change. It is
falling back on its national programmes for energy efficiency.
There is a mentality that when you have opted for a nuclear reactor,
great, you have solved the climate change problem, you do not
need to do anything else. I am afraid we will suffer from that
mentality in the next two years while we have this debate, but
if we go for nuclear we will be completely condemned by that mentality,
we will think the Government has solved climate change and they
are going to build us ten reactors, we do not need to think about
this anymore. There is a vision of two different future possibilities.
We can go down this route where we build new reactors, where we
have a few large companies dominating the energy market for the
next 40 years, a market that we have rigged to make sure that
nuclear works, a situation where people are disconnected from
the energy they use and we spend a very large amount of money
for very little carbon benefit. Or we can go down the route that
the Energy White Paper proposed, which is high energy efficiency,
high use of renewables, gas as a bridging fuel, where you will
start to see rooftop wind turbines, solar panels on people's roofs,
community level woodchip boilers, and people will start to see
that their energy comes not from some distant place down a wire
but from somewhere nearby and is part of their community, part
of their house, and they should be doing something about it. That
is the choice we face.
Q25 Chairman: Thank you very much. On
that extremely robust and clear note, we thank you for your evidence
and wish you well.
Dr Dixon: Thank you very much
for the opportunity.
|
