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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1122-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE TRADE AND INDUSTRY COMMITTEE
NUCLEAR NEW BUILD: ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED
Tuesday 23 May 2006 SIR JONATHAN PORRITT and MS SARA EPPEL Evidence heard in Public Questions 107 - 173
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Trade and Industry Committee on Tuesday 23 May 2006 Members present Peter Luff, in the Chair Roger Berry Mr Peter Bone Mr Michael Clapham Mr Lindsay Hoyle Miss Julie Kirkbride Anne Moffat Dr Tony Wright ________________ Memoranda submitted by Sir Jonathan Porritt
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir Jonathan Porritt, Chairman, and Ms Sara Eppel, Director of policy, Sustainable Development Commission, gave evidence. Q107 Chairman: Sir Jonathan, Sara, welcome to this second evidence session in the Committee's inquiry into the issues concerning nuclear new build. As usual can I begin by asking you to introduce yourselves in the context of this particular session? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Thank you very much, Chairman. I am Jonathan Porritt, I am the Chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, which is the Government's principal advisory body on all sustainable development issues, including, obviously, energy issues, and on my left is Sara Eppel, who is the Commission's Director of Policy. Q108 Chairman: In paragraph 4.1 of your commentary Is Nuclear The Answer, you write, "Acting on the assumption that the current Review ... is indeed a genuinely impartial process, dispassionately reviewing the evidence available to Ministers, (including our own research) rather than rationalising a pre-determined decision with a tokenistic consultation exercise thrown in for good measure, we strongly recommend...". Do you think that assumption is still valid? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I hope so. I am less confident that it is as valid as I was some time ago, and I think the way in which the Government is handling the process around the Energy Review is not clever. It is allowing an awful lot of people to assume that that assumption was wrong and that this is, indeed, an exercise in rubber-stamping decisions that have been taken at a higher level without the proper scrutiny of all the evidence being brought forward in the right kind of way. It is still important for us, the Sustainable Development Commission, to press for a process that is properly transparent, is as rigorous as I think the general public and MPs will require it to be and, should there be any falling short on that score, then the Government will be its own worst enemy because of it. Q109 Chairman: It is worth recording, is it not, that the Prime Minister's comments at the CBI dinner last week referred to nuclear power, renewables and energy efficiency as all being aggressively on the agenda, and he has been quoted in isolation in relation to nuclear power? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Which is equally wrong. To be absolutely fair to the way in which that quote was offered to the CBI, those three things were offered in equal measure. It is pretty startling, of course, for many people to imagine that energy efficiency and renewables need to be put back on a government agenda with a vengeance. Everyone assumed that was the purpose of the 2003 Energy White Paper, and to have the Prime Minister acknowledging that perhaps there was not as much purpose behind the process since 2003 is very disturbing, and I think the phraseology around "with a vengeance" has more to do with bad American films than with proper government. Q110 Chairman: You still feel it is worth having this evidence session? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Definitely, because I know there are an awful lot of people out there who are seriously interested in the evidence, and the Commission feels it has made an important contribution to that in the way that we have surfaced arguments for and against a nuclear contribution to our future energy supply. Q111 Chairman: What the Committee is seeking to do, and, frankly, there is not agreement around this table, I think, about nuclear power yet, that may emerge later in our process, is to identify all the issues and try to understand the facts. I have to say, I found your document The role of nuclear power in a low carbon economy, the position paper, a remarkably useful source, and I congratulate you on it. Can we start ticking off some of the issues. One of things I would like to get your verbal comments on is the carbon status of nuclear. It is one of the issues that is often raised. You have in this document said how difficult it is in many senses to see the end costs - decommissioning and waste-disposal - but how significant do you think that those issues are in relation to the construction and fuel cycle issues and what would you yourself describe as the carbon status of nuclear power? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We spent a lot of time looking at this, because it has been matter of considerable concern to us that protagonists of the nuclear option choose, in our opinion inaccurately, to describe nuclear as "zero carbon" as a source of electricity. That is either deliberately misleading or just ignorant, because it is not zero carbon. We have suggested all the way through that this should be described as a low carbon source of electricity generation, because when you do track the carbon emissions released directly and indirectly through the fuel cycle all the way from the mining of uranium through to waste-disposal and decommissioning, it is clear that there are substantial quantities of CO2 emitted in that process. However, we would have no objection to people continuing to describe nuclear as a low-carbon way of generating electricity, because that is actually what it is, especially when compared directly to the fossil fuel sources which it will be substituted for. Q112 Chairman: Four point four tonnes of carbon for new build nuclear power, compared with 243 for coal and 97 for gas? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Indeed; those are the figures that we quoted in our research. Q113 Chairman: You are saying low carbon but not zero carbon, effectively? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes. Q114 Roger Berry: Nuclear is being presented by its protagonists as being a major option in terms of tackling climate change. Your estimates of the effect of replacing existing nuclear power stations and that replacement of nuclear power stations, as it happens, was the way the Prime Minister phrased that option at the CBI meeting? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes. Q115 Roger Berry: Replacement would, you argue, displace four per cent of carbon-dioxide emissions. Given the target is that we displace 60 per cent by 2050, would you care to comment on how significant nuclear might be in achieving that objective, even if everything else was non-problematic? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Given the scale of this challenge, I do not think anybody should look at any contribution and dismiss it just because it is small. Actually, we are going to need to be doing so many things to meet those targets that you have to have a very strong rationale to choose to forgo any contribution that might be made to those targets. The fact that it is much lower than people think it to be, and the way you hear the protagonists talk about the contribution to abating climate change is, in our opinion, again misleading and unhelpful in this debate, although it is considerably lower than you might imagine, it is still significant, and to pretend that it is not does not, in my opinion, help to provide a balanced argument about the strengths that nuclear has to offer in this debate. As you can see, the four per cent is small, because people forget that we are only talking here about eight per cent of this country's total energy needs. It makes, therefore, no impact whatsoever on transportation issues, on use of heat in our economy, in our houses, and it only touches that part of electricity generation through a ten gigawatt problem replacing the existing nuclear power programme with a new power programme of that scale, that is 18, 19 per cent of electricity generation today. So, almost by definition, it is going to be a lot smaller than people think it is. Q116 Roger Berry: As you say, nevertheless, any contribution to the use of carbon emissions has got to be seriously considered, as, indeed, presumably the time-scale in which this displacement of carbon emissions can be secured. Obviously, there is a lead time before new nuclear power stations could come on-line, typically about ten years in total. To what extent do we need to make reductions in carbon emissions now, before, obviously, nuclear build can be possible, in order to make a significant contribution to reduce the impact on the environment? How urgent is it, from your point of view, to make significant carbon-reducing actions earlier on rather than later? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think for us that was an enormous concern. Having acknowledged that a new nuclear programme could make an important contribution to this, you then have to look at the reasons why that contribution may not warrant all the disadvantages and the risks that come with any nuclear programme. In that respect the timing of this is absolutely critical, because even if you take the most ambitious and optimistic assessment for when we might start generating electricity through a new programme, and I think the most optimistic estimates that we saw were 2017, 2018, pretty much at the earliest, that period of time between where we are now and the very earliest where the first substitute new reactor would come on stream is precisely the time when we need to be making these massive contributions on CO2 abatement and investment in renewables, combined heat and power and so on. Then, if you look at the build rate of, say, a gigawatt a year over the next ten years, which it would need to be, you are not maximising, you are not getting the full benefit of a ten gigawatt replacement programme until well into the middle of the 2020s - 2025, 2027, whatever it might be. So, again, frankly, if we have not done what we need to do by 2020 around these investments in energy efficiency, renewables, CHP, clean-up use of fossil fuels, in our opinion, it is probably not going to make much difference how much nuclear you bring forward at that stage, because if the rest of the world is as dilatory about investments in those things as we would be by then, it is going to be a pretty grim picture that we are facing at that stage. Q117 Mr Clapham: Sir Jonathan, given what you have just said about the impact on the climate of carbon emissions and bearing in mind the enormous output from China, America, India, did you look at whether, for example, clean coal technology with the new boilers that Mitsui Babcock are producing, which has one on carbon capture, would have been an alternative that might just impact onto the climate scene much quicker than, for example, the nuclear option or, indeed, bringing on renewables, which we must do anyway? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We did look at that. We have some nervousness about the use of the phrase "clean coal", just as we do about "zero-carbon nuclear", because the idea of coal ever being strictly clean in a real sense is a big leap of the imagination, which is why we talk about cleaner use of fossil fuels. There is not any doubt in our mind that we need to be pressing very hard on further research and development around aspects of cleaner use of coal and gas in particular, including carbon capture and storage. There are some very important advantages to be gained if we could press for a CCS (carbon capture and storage) component in any energy mix, and we have talked about those advantages in our report but, at the same time, we felt it was important to flag up that we are a long way from knowing enough about that technology and about what the implications are going to be for the world before simply plumping for this as being the way out of the climate change trap, as it were. I hope that we reflected the balance of the views of the commissioners there, which was, "Yes, we have got to get on with this", and we ought to be making, in our opinion, more investments into the prototypes necessary to look at this and into some of the research and development opportunities, and governments should be getting behind that as well as the private sector. There is much more money coming now from the private sector, but it is important for government as well, because that will certainly be part of the mix. It allows us to emit or use fossil fuels to a greater extent than we would otherwise be permitted to use them, because we are getting that fraction of fossil fuel usage without the carbon externality, if it all works. So, it is clearly part of the picture but, again, caution about excessively exaggerated claims too early in the piece, and it comes at a cost. Our figures estimate it anywhere between £30-100 a tonne of carbon abated and sequestered. When you start adding that to your generation costs, you are beginning to look at a pretty steep disincentive for CCS at that level. Q118 Mr Clapham: Returning to the questions on nuclear waste, the waste costs and decommissioning costs are very, very substantial, and you do make the point in your report that the new reactors will not produce as much waste. Nevertheless, I understand that the waste that will be produced will be of a higher level of radioactivity, and that means that it has to be dealt with in an altogether different way than the high volume of medium and low risk that is currently generated. There is bound to be, therefore, a greater cost with the new generators or the new design generators that have been looked at, but do you feel that the waste management issue is one that must be dealt with and understood before we are able to move, if there is a desire to move, with a nuclear programme? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Indeed. We have argued very strongly that the Government's existing formal policy in this area that there should be no further investment in nuclear power unless and until there is a clear resolution to the issue of disposal of nuclear waste is the correct policy. I do not see that clear resolution being available to this Government at the moment. The Quorum Report has indicated something which I suspect most people probably were aware of already, which is that the only safe, or the safest, route to disposal of high-level nuclear waste is a deep burial depository, and the other thing that they told us is that that is going to come at a very considerable cost. If you look at the estimates in Finland and Sweden, for instance, you can see just how big that cost is. So, that is existing government policy, and I believe the Government ought to remain true to that policy until it has followed through on the Quorum interim report and a final report later this summer and has then started to negotiate with the UK electorate, with citizens in the UK, what this actually means for people in the UK. How are we going to do it moving from the recommendations that we need a deep depository for this to a decision as to where that is going to go in what timescale at what cost is a very different thing. We would argue strongly that there should be no decision about any new nuclear programme until all of those issues are fully resolved and have every reason to believe that was government policy. Q119 Mr Clapham: Given that you have referred to it as being a substantial cost, could you put a figure on that? Did you look at what the costs may well be of a deep depository? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We only surfaced the costs as we could get them from the work that is being done at the moment in Sweden and in Finland; and I think we did come up with an estimate in the end, but I am blowed if I can remember what it was. I am really sorry. We looked a bit more at the decommissioning costs, of course. The information that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has released into the public domain recently gives us a bit of a firmer steer on that, and we are obviously talking there of up to 70 billion, in their own figures, for decommissioning across the entire nuclear state, of course, some of which is not civil nuclear power, it is the non-generating bit of the nuclear estate, and so we know that decommissioning is going to earn a huge amount of money. It has to be said that when the economists get onto these huge figures, these tens of billions of pounds, and they persuade you that these can be discounted out over the lifetime of the reactor - so you need to factor it in per kilowatt hour, and then you look at the additional extra bit on the per kilowatt hour cost, and then it comes down to something that looks very reassuringly small - we are pretty suspicious about some of the techniques that are used to persuade the public that these are not that substantive a set of additional costs, and, as you will have seen throughout our report on the economics of nuclear power, advised very considerable caution indeed about accepting anybody's estimates as to what a new generation, new reactor design is likely to cost in the future, and I am sure we will come back to that. Q120 Mr Clapham: The figures that you referred to that you have just put your hand on, is there any chance of us being provided with those? It would help in the debate. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Of course. Absolutely. Q121 Mr Clapham: Thank you. Turning again to our scientific base, do you feel we have got the capacity to deal, on the one hand, with decommissioning and waste and, on the other hand, with new build? Sir Jonathan Porritt: One of the big issues that we surfaced in doing this research was the issue about capacity, and even very enthusiastic advocates for nuclear acknowledge that there are some extremely serious capacity issues. As I understand it, those capacity issues are already being felt with the new reactor in Finland where they are finding it difficult to recruit in the numbers of qualified staff that they need to carry out different functions in their construction programme. If you think about what a ten gigawatt replacement programme would look like and the capacity needed to do that, coupled with a commitment to engage in the decommissioning challenge that we face in this country and move forward on a waste-management strategy rather than just allow the problem, as it were, to fester, just sitting there without any idea what we are going to do about it, this is a huge set of skills which would be required for the UK Government to move forward on all three fronts at the same time. Q122 Mr Hoyle: Is there any circumstance, Sir Jonathan, in which you might see yourself supporting nuclear power in the UK? Sir Jonathan Porritt: What we have said, and we have tried to be absolutely upfront about this, is that we are advisers to the UK Government and did not feel it was appropriate for us to make judgments about whether nuclear might be appropriate to other governments elsewhere in the world, and on one occasion we somewhat jokingly said that were I the Chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission in France, the job of persuading the French President that they did not need any more nuclear power but could simply decommission all their existing reactors and move to alternatives in France, that would be a pretty steep advocacy challenge, if I could put it like that. We also looked at what is necessary in China, in India, and we acknowledge that different circumstances in different countries may well persuade the governments of those countries that nuclear is an important part of their mix. That is a long preamble to us saying that we have done the detailed analysis on the issues here in the UK and came out, at the end of that analysis, strongly of the opinion that new nuclear was not necessary for the UK to meet its over-arching energy objectives. Can I imagine any set of circumstances in which nuclear would be necessary in the UK? It is difficult, because there are those who say that if we continue to prevaricate on efficiency, renewables, CHP and so on, we might see a gap opening up so precipitously in front of us that we would by default have to bring in nuclear as the only means of bridging the gap. The truth is that that gap will only open up over time and, once we are aware of how big the gap is, because of our inaction on all of those different areas, it would be too late for nuclear to make the contribution that it would be required to make at that stage. It is difficult for me, as Chairman of the Commission, to see those set of circumstances, but I have to reflect the views of the Commission, the commissioners here, because some commissioners did not come out with an outright: "No, it is not appropriate for the UK", they came out with a statement saying, "This is not appropriate for the UK now, in the knowledge that we have about the challenge that we face today", but also said that there might be a set of circumstances in the future where they would be persuaded that nuclear was a necessary part of the mix. Q123 Mr Hoyle: There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy here, because we are quite happy to take nuclear power from France, which is 60 miles way (the nearest reactor), and I do not see how we balance that off either when we talk about prices. Yet, at the same time, we are encouraging the inter-connector, which was meant to operate both ways. It certainly works one way, and that is about sending nuclear power to the UK - nuclear electric generation - and to the Channel Islands, which are totally dependent. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes, and we flag that in our report. The one thing that I hope we have really succeeded in doing is saying that this argument is not helped by people who ignore the realities of our current situation or are so passionately pro or anti that they obscure the degree to which we are currently dependent on nuclear, not just our own but on that that comes from France, and on the very substantial consequences of opting to remain non-nuclear for the future. We have said time after time, if government decides that it can meet these challenges without nuclear, it is still an absolutely huge challenge to achieve the carbon savings and the security of supply issues without nuclear. It is a massive challenge. We have not tried to undersell that at any point; we have tried to be very upfront about how big an issue that is going to be for the Government. Q124 Chairman: You state at page 19, paragraph 3.22 of your main position paper, "The UK's renewable resources are some of the best in the world, and could provide all the UK's electricity over the longer term." Is that the view of the Commission? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes, it is, but I have to qualify it instantly by saying that it could only meet all of our electricity needs at a very considerable financial burden. The research papers that we looked at in this respect are able to demonstrate the theoretical capacity for nuclear, the realistic capacity, if you like, in terms of when you start factoring in some of the issues regarding siting, planning, grid connections and so on, and then, thirdly, is it realistic financially as well as realistic in all those logistical and infrastructure terms, and so on? When you factor in financial realism, which is obviously to be a very important point for the taxpayers of this country, then the figure falls away from a theoretical 100 per cent resource back to something much closer to the figures that we have quoted there, which is around 65 per cent of total electricity generation at the moment; but even that (and we do make this point very clear) comes at a considerably higher cost than people are paying for their electricity today. Q125 Chairman: This commendably objective paper The role of nuclear power in a low carbon economy is a bit different from your interpretation of it, it is a little more journalistic in its style, and I note that the Commission has broadly seven environmentalists, five people I cannot quite define, two industrialists, and the vote at the end on alternative positions to nuclear power seems roughly to reflect the composition of the Commission. Did you just reinforce your own prejudices during the conduct of the inquiry? Did anyone change their minds on important issues? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I must, first of all, correct a misapprehension about the make-up of the Sustainable Development Commission. We do not have seven environmentalists actually. In fact, some people have criticised the Commission for not having enough environmentalists as fully paid up environmentalists, because most of our commissioners, in fact, reflect different sectors, whether it is education, or health, or concerns about work issues, economic issues, and so on. It is true that two of the business people on the Commission felt that nuclear would be a necessary part of the mix for the UK in the future; two other business people on the Commission did not. I would not want you to paint all of our business representatives on the Commission into the pro-nuclear box and all these kind of zealous greenies into the anti-nuclear box, because it really was not quite like that. We did not carry out a before and after exercise, as in vote now and 15 months later vote again, but I can genuinely reassure you that a lot of commissioners, if they were sitting next to me here, would tell you that a lot of their views about nuclear power changed during the course of this inquiry, because, as the research emerged and as we were able to dig deeper into some of these things, what is inevitably a set of prejudices that you bring with you to any engagement in a debate of this kind were tested very hard indeed, and I can speak for that personally. I was pretty convinced before we started this inquiry that the issue about availability of uranium, so resource issues around uranium as well as resource issues around oil and gas in the future, was a massively problematic issue for the nuclear industry to have to cope with. The research we did indicated that that is not really the case; that actually if you look at availability of supplies over the next few decades, it is likely that those supplies will be sufficient for considerable expansion in the global nuclear industry. That comes with two caveats: (1) is the uranium that is being brought on there of a high enough grade to ensure that you are not emitting vast amounts of carbon by having to purify, enrich that uranium to the level that is required for burning in a reactor, and (2) we do not really know because there has not been a lot of prospecting for uranium over the last 20 years and those countries that have already very advanced uranium mining facilities have not needed to expand those facilities very much because the nuclear industry has basically been on hold. But it is true that, if you talk to the Australian Government, or the Canadian Government, let alone the Government of Kazakhstan, you will hear some extremely optimistic assessments of availability of high-grade ore for the foreseeable future. So, that issue for me changed as we researched, and I think genuinely the secretariat would confirm that individual commissioners pretty much all changed certain positions as we went through the process. Q126 Chairman: As Jeremy Paxman would have said, "Well anticipated, Porritt", because that was one of my questions for you later on uranium supply, but you have dealt with that one. Thank you very much. Is it fair to say that what swung it for many of you is your enthusiasm for microgeneration - and we look forward to your report on microgeneration, which you are due to produce shortly - which argues against a centralised grid. The trouble with nuclear is it locks you into a centralised grid for the foreseeable future? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We spent a lot of time analysing and then reflecting on a number of different opportunity costs, areas of opportunity cost, if you pursued a nuclear replacement programme. Some of those opportunity costs would come forward in terms of straight availability of capital to invest in renewables at the same time as investing in a major new nuclear programme; some of the opportunity cost comes in flexibility in terms of the lock-in factor, but if you go for a ten gigawatt nuclear programme, let alone a 20 gigawatt programme, you are pretty much locked into the infrastructure needed to deliver that electricity into our economy, into the grid, for the next 50 years. What that almost certainly means is that the necessary investment in upgrading our grid in this country would be geared to a very, in our opinion, old approach to electricity distribution through a central grid-based system. At that point we did look at the opportunity costs of lock-in. We looked at what would happen if we could not bring forward more opportunities through decentralised energy systems which we believed were going to work much better, for a host of different reasons, and I think you probably do not want to go into those today, but we did feel that if you pre-empted the possibility of major new investments in decentralised energy supply and use systems, then that would cost this country very severely in terms of the opportunity costs for the future. Q127 Chairman: But similar considerations would apply to new build in coal with carbon capture and storage as well? Sir Jonathan Porritt: It does, indeed, if you are going for a very large plant. The one area where it does not really apply is for smaller scale gas-fired plants, particularly if you are talking about combined heat and power for use in inner city areas where you can take the heat and use that for district heating schemes of that kind; but then you have got much more flexibility, because plant size can come right down from the massive plants that we are talking about at the moment. Q128 Miss Kirkbride: You mentioned a minute ago security of supply, not just with regard to uranium, which is a slightly different issue, but, obviously, given that so much of our supply is based on fossil fuels at the moment, which we use to supply ourselves but which will now have to come from other parts of the world which are politically challenging, I just wondered where that was factored into your deliberations on nuclear: because no matter what progress we make on renewables, albeit the 100 per cent progress that you are talking about looks like a long way off, whatever progress we make on being more efficient, we are still going to have to burn fossil fuels for a very long time, are we not, and they are going to be coming from places that we are not very comfortable with. Is that right? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I feel quite comfortable about Norway personally. I do not think our security of supply is massively threatened by Norway and Norway's investment in new infrastructure is going to be hugely significant for us over at least the next 30-40 years. When we talk about security of supply around gas, people instantly leap to President Putin and Russia, but that is not actually the full picture in terms of the places from which we resource this gas, and, do not forget, as we move towards diversified sourcing, we will have more coming into this country by other means, not necessarily dependent on the pipelines through to Russia, so it is not quite as grim a picture as us with Putin's hand around our neck in the way that is sometimes portrayed. However, I am not going to disagree with the broad thrust of your argument because it is true that, even if we got really serious about efficiency and did what many experts believe is now possible, which is to reduce total energy consumption in this country by 50 per cent over the course of the next 20-25 years, and even if we began to bring renewables forward at scale, made sure that all those off-shore wind farms were coming on stream in the time period allowed for, that we had a really serious biomass programme in this country instead of a pathetic imitation of a serious programme that we have got at the moment, if we really got serious about microgeneration and all the rest of it, it still does not totally account for all the energy that we need in the interim period; so, yes, we will continue to use fossil fuels. Our estimate was that the amount that we would need if we did all of those things is at a scale where we would not be imperilled by having to depend on just one supply in all circumstances and, therefore, causing considerable anxiety if for geopolitical reasons that monopoly supplier chose to punish the UK by either charging more or discontinuing supply in those circumstances. Q129 Miss Kirkbride: Is your 50 per cent reduction of energy use compatible with economic growth? Where does economic growth fit into the 50 per cent reduction? Sir Jonathan Porritt: It is certainly compatible in our mind with economic growth, because we are persuaded that the only way in which nation states are going to be able to grow their economies in the future is if they achieve these massive increases in energy and resource efficiency. I do not know where this Committee sits on this issue, but we will see further oscillation in the price of fossil fuels, there is no question about that, but, whichever way you cut it, we are never going to go back to fossil fuels and where they were two or three years ago ever, and I do not think any body in the industry thinks that we will either. We are looking at an increased cost for industry, an increased cost for the private consumer from energy consumption, which means that the smarter we get about reducing energy use, the better off we will be, both in competitive terms for the economy as a whole and, in personal terms, for our use of energy in our homes, our cars, if we have cars, and so on. Our read is that far from energy efficiency being a threat to competitiveness, we would argue precisely the opposite, which is those countries that get serious about energy resource efficiency will be the most competitive countries in the future and those that do not will be punished for that failure to accept a new reality about energy supply and cost. Q130 Miss Kirkbride: Where does the fuel reprocessing argument feature in your deliberations and the UK's approach to that? Sir Jonathan Porritt: The issue about reprocessing is obviously a very big one, because it goes to the heart of the volumes of nuclear waste that we would have to deal with. The assumption that we have made in our assessment of waste arising from a replacement programme are based on a simultaneous assumption that reprocessing would cease. There may be some who disagree with that and think that we will continue with a reprocessing industry in the UK. We genuinely think that is very unlikely, for cost reasons alone, and, therefore, made the assumption that we would not have reprocessing. Without reprocessing spent fuel needs to be classified as high-level nuclear waste, which means that the volumes of nuclear waste which would then need to be disposed of through a new nuclear programme rise substantially, and I think the figures we gave were that they would rise by at least 300 per cent as a consequence of spent fuel needing to be disposed of as high-level waste. That is a very big issue for a waste management strategy for this country, and that is why when we say that, if the Government claims they have got a clear resolution to nuclear waste issues in this country, you look at a question like that - are we going to continue with reprocessing or are we not? - and it has a massive bearing on the costs of a nuclear power programme and on some of the liabilities going forward in the future, those liabilities either being borne by a private sector generator or company, whatever it might be, or being borne by the taxpayer through a government decision. Those are massive issues that do need to be looked at as part and parcel of this approach to a proper waste management strategy. Q131 Miss Kirkbride: Why are we not going to do it any more? You said cost. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Because the economics of reprocessing are extremely parlous. Many people in the nuclear industry do not believe that they are really viable in any serious sense. We have had huge difficulties technically, as you know, with our reprocessing plant here in the UK and, unless something dramatically different was to materialise in the use of that technology, it does not seem to us that it is going to be a viable part, if we have one, of a nuclear supply chain. Q132 Dr Wright: In terms of the environmental landscape issues and in terms of what the Government would desire, i.e. to use some of the existing nuclear power station sites to upgrade and probably renew, they are all mainly on the coastline, and, obviously, with coastal erosion and sea-level rises there is risk to that particular element. If this is going to be a case and the Government have to revisit the criteria that is going to be laid down, would this pose a significant risk to the Government to try to fast-track some of the planning processes and obviously extend the time that it is going to take to build the nuclear power stations? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think there are two issues there. One is whether or not we are going to face a set of new considerations because of climate change and increased sea-level affecting existing nuclear sites, many of which are, indeed, on our costs. We did not do a detailed appraisal of what the increased risk would be at those sites, and what would happen if you simply went for the existing sites would certainly need to be part of any strategic consideration. I cannot comment with authority on that from the research that we did ourselves, but it is pretty clear that some of those sites are going to be very vulnerable and would probably not be available to government for a new nuclear reactor on the same site as where the existing reactors are today. That, I think, is a very big issue which would have to be addressed head-on. The second point, which was more about whether or not the Government is trying to short-cut planning and consenting processes, licensing processes, to get approval for a new reactor programme faster than would otherwise be the case, is a hugely significant concern that we have, because we are of the opinion that, were government to be seen to be short-circuiting the proper planning and licensing processes for an expedited route to a new nuclear programme, nothing could be more calculated to raise public concern and anger than that single decision. That does not mean to say that we are automatically saying that every planning process has to be as long as the Sizewell B process, whatever it might be. The planning process needs to be as thorough and rigorous as it needs to be to ensure that the right decision is taken with the right degree of public assurance. A fast-track sounds to me like the wrong kind of approach to that; so we would both need a national process, and we are completely convinced on the Commission that you would still need to go for a local planning inquiry for any particular site earmarked for a new reactor. We do not believe that you could do without that. Q133 Dr Wright: In terms of the question of the wind turbines, quite clearly they cause an element of concern, certainly when you talk about land-based turbines. Up in Cumbria, for instance, an application was turned down and on the east coast, in my constituency, we have the largest off-shore wind farm and no objections to that. It certainly has a nice impact as far as I am concerned. However, I can understand that there are going to be significant concerns for a mass of wind turbines through the countryside and will cause concern as well as far as planning is concerned. Do you not consider that wind turbines are going to cause problems for the Government as well, in terms of landscape issues? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes. We acknowledge that this is a matter of considerable concern. If you look at the actual figures regarding planning applications and the percentage of applications that are going through the system, it certainly ought to be of concern to the DTI and to government because a very large number are still being turned down. We have, therefore, always argued that it is going to be more politically acceptable for government to source more of its wind off-shore than on-shore, simply because the controversies associated with off-shore applications and licenses are less than the controversies associated with on-shore, although there are still big issues with the off-shore planning process as well. The downside to that, of course, is that off-shore wind is considerably more expensive than on-shore wind, which is why we remain committed to a substantial and ambitious on-shore wind programme as a critical part of our overall renewable energy mix and are less tolerant of some of those protectionist voices than others are. When we are accosted by people saying what a blot on the landscape it might be, we are tempted to remind them that if climate change turns out to be as grave an issue as many people believe it to be anyway, the impact on their view and the impact on biodiversity in the UK will be so irrelevant to them that they will barely believe that they made such points at the time that do make them. I suppose we are talking about proportionality. If climate change is as serious as we are now told it is by our Chief Scientist and by most independent experts, then excessively sensitive concerns about landscape are inimical to a sustainable energy system for the UK. Q134 Mr Hoyle: I am interested in turbines. Obviously - you are quite right - people believe the environmental impact is too great on land, the argument being that we ought to go for more off-shore. What worries me is not so much that, but what percentage of the time are they actually generating, because there is obviously a down-time when there are so many out of a fleet, or whatever, but also low wind causes a problem but high wind is a great problem where they cannot generate electricity either. How efficient are they in reality? Is it 50 per cent of the time, 40 per cent, 80 per cent? I am not quite sure. Nobody has actually given us a figure on down-time. Sir Jonathan Porritt: We would very happily send you the report that we did on wind power last year, which does give detailed answers to those questions about intermittency, about reliability and all the rest of it, because it is a very important issue and not one to be brushed aside, but nothing like as big a block on including wind as a major component, the foundation for renewable energy strategy as people sometimes make out, and (a tiny aside) the public opinion against wind power is noisy, brash and all over the place, but if you actually look at the surveys of people who live in the vicinity of wind farms, therefore are most immediately connected with them, you will see incredibly strong levels of public support for wind farms anywhere in the UK that has got a wind farm in that vicinity; so we should not get this out of proportion either. Q135 Chairman: Do you believe the opposition to wind farms is actually fuelled actively by the nuclear lobby as well? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I have no evidence to that effect, but I cannot deny that such a suspicion has passed through my mind. Q136 Chairman: If you write in it will be adopted here certainly. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Almost as guardedly as I have just expressed my answer to you, Chairman. Q137 Anne Moffat: I certainly find that public support where there are nuclear power stations is very pro-nuclear power stations. The same thing could apply if we had a power station in our constituency, Stromness and East Lothian. I want to go back to planning. You seem to be answering our questions very comprehensively before we get the chance to ask them, so rather than wait, I thought I would jump in now. I am sure you are aware of the political dimension of devolution in Scotland and how they have power over planning permission for any new build for nuclear. How do you think that is going to affect the process. Do you think we should be UK-wide imposing new build nuclear in Scotland and Wales if Scotland and Wales do not want it? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Obviously an enormously sensitive issue. We did not go into this in depth in our report, but, as we understood it, the actual decision about this is not a devolved power, as such, but Scotland clearly would have a power, through section 36 of the relevant Act, to ensure that no nuclear power stations were built in Scotland. That obviously makes the politics, the party politics, around nuclear power pretty sensitive. I am not sure I am the best person to comment on that in reality. We feel that the arguments that have been raised about nuclear, whether it is in England, Wales or Scotland, are the same and to a certain extent there are particular national issues vis-à-vis Wales and Scotland over and above the issues regarding the UK as a whole, but, by and large, the arguments either for or against are the same. Q138 Anne Moffat: The electricity generation, the percentage, is far higher in Scotland than it is in the UK. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Of course. Indeed. Q139 Anne Moffat: The other thing I wanted to ask you about was a point you make in your paper about your contributions in engaging with the public. Do you think that we have engaged adequately with the public on the Energy Review or do you think we need to do an awful lot more, certainly in terms of new build nuclear? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Our engagement with the DTI at the moment around the Energy Review is not just about the substance of the decision about what the right mix is for the long-term energy needs of this country, but it is very much about that issue about process. There is a school of thought inside DTI which would have you believe that the consultation around this Energy Review is sufficient in itself to persuade the general public that the debate has been adequately thought through and adequately had in this country. We fundamentally disagree with that. The consultation processes around this Energy Review have been extremely partial in many respects, selected audiences, small groups of people. By definition they have not touched the general public in the way that you would expect a consultation engagement process actually to do, and there are massive concerns in our mind if the Government says, "We have done all the consultation as well as the analysis, and so we are moving straight to a decision." One of the strongest recommendations we have made to the Prime Minister around this issue is that, even if they come to a conclusion that they are minded to bring forward a replacement nuclear programme of ten gigawatts, they should not move instantly to that as a firm decision, they should then engage with the general public about that intention as part and parcel of a much fuller engagement process. Q140 Anne Moffat: How would you envisage that process? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We have all sorts of ideas as to how that might be done, and indeed we have looked at some of the new techniques the Government itself is using, some of the consultations around health issues, for instance, around pensions, and so on. There are all sorts of ways in which the Government could have an extremely vibrant and active engagement with the general public, which we believe is a pre-condition for a responsible decision-making process in such a controversial area. Q141 Anne Moffat: Have you got stuff that you could give us on that? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes, indeed, we have. Q142 Anne Moffat: Finally, you mention security and the possibility of terrorist attacks. Do you want to say any more about that other than what is already in your paper? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Not really. We did look at that, because it is a very big issue, and it certainly looms much larger in people's minds than the politicians, I suspect, would like, but understandably it looms large in people's minds. Q143 Anne Moffat: Do you not see that there is a new build that we could build in more secure technology and whatever? Sir Jonathan Porritt: The interesting thing about the nuclear industry is that there has always been a trade-off between cost and safety, and, if you go back historically, you can see how public demand for and regulators' demand for increased safety barriers of different kinds inside the reactor design, inside the containment process, is the thing that led to accelerating costs for every single nuclear reactor. So, you have got a direct trade-off between safety features and cost, and the same is true if you are talking about securing the facility as a whole against the threat of nuclear attack. In order to give the level of security that people would expect, that will undoubtedly impact on cost, not just in terms of the construction but on-going security measures which would be necessary to ensure that every single nuclear facility in this country was properly protected against the threat of some terrorist incursion or other. That is an on-going cost, not a one-off cost in construction. There are many other ways that terrorists might choose to get into a nuclear reactor, other than flying a fully-laden jumbo jet into it, which is the only one that people can think of at the moment. I do not think that is sensible. Terrorists tend not to wait for permission to try something they have already tried in the past, and there will be all sorts of new ways in which they might seek to impact on any country's nuclear programme, through waste facilities, for instance, as well as the reactors, through the transport of nuclear fuel or nuclear waste, through a variety of different things, which I hope the security services in this country are fully focused on but they certainly raise pretty scary scenarios. Q144 Chairman: Your position is that a catastrophic incident to draw public attention often focuses on things like an airliner, and I notice what you say on page 14 of your summary document: "Modern reactor designs have substantial containment buildings which are unlikely to be breached even by crashing a commercial airliner." In other words, you dismiss - you do not dismiss, that is an exaggeration - you play down those fears. You are more concerned about the smaller more and unpredictable incidents? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Exactly. Q145 Roger Berry: Could you turn to the costs of nuclear power. Leaving aside waste, decommissioning, safety issues, and so on, what is interesting is that in your position paper you say that there is not sufficiently reliable information to be able to estimate what the costs of nuclear might be. Last week we had in the nuclear industry, who had various estimates of the costs, understandably a range of costs, but clearly, perhaps, to demonstrate that, in their view, nuclear was cheaper than the key alternatives. Why is it that the nuclear industry thinks it is possible to come up with estimates of costs for new build and your Commission thinks that is not possible? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I do not want to sound too cynical, but it may just be that they have a vested interest in demonstrating competitive and low cost for new nuclear build. The one thing that we said with absolute certainty in our paper on the cost of nuclear power is that you should take the opinions of the nuclear industry about future costs with bucket-loads of salt. The evidence shows that, historically, cost estimates from the industry have been subject to massive underestimates, inaccuracy of an astonishing kind consistently over a 40, 50-year period. You might be of a mind here to believe the nuclear industry has moved into a zone of completely impeccable authoritative costing estimates. I wish you well in that position. We are not of that opinion and, indeed, the research paper that we brought forward on cost says very, very clearly that until we can begin to get some more independent cost estimates into this discussion about the costs of nuclear power caveat emptor on anything coming from the nuclear industry is the first and most important rule. Q146 Roger Berry: To what extent is a part of the problem also that people tend to be talking about two main potential designs for new build that have yet to be produced? We are not buying off-the-shelf nuclear power stations, and that presumably makes the task of estimating cost that much more difficult? Sir Jonathan Porritt: It does, indeed. The industry actually does not deny that. It just says that they have already got the designs to the point where they can give a body such as yours an authoritative estimate of what those costs will entail. We are not persuaded by that argument. Q147 Roger Berry: However, are there not equally important cost uncertainties in relation to renewables, to achieving efficiencies, and so on and so forth? Is not the whole energy area full of real difficulties estimating true costs of various strategies? Sir Jonathan Porritt: There are uncertainties. Q148 Roger Berry: Wind farms, tidal power, whatever it might be? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Yes. It is funny that you should mention that one. There are, indeed, considerable uncertainties about many renewable technologies, and again it is foolish to underestimate those; but the truth is that when you look at the cost curves of maturing renewable technologies, particularly wind, you can get a greater degree of confidence about cost estimates for an industry like that than you could by looking at estimates for a completely new nuclear design. The other issue that renewables are not subject to in terms of costs uncertainty is all the extraneous elements, if you like, that need to be included in any proper costing of nuclear. I am not sure that any government would have a proper estimate of the costs of nuclear power until it had decided what it was going to do about the wastes arising from that generation process. That is a long way down the track. We do not know at the moment what the costs arising from a nuclear waste strategy of this kind are going to look like. They have clearly got to be included in the generating cost, the pence per kilowatt hour cost, of nuclear. Renewables do not suffer from that, because you can look at the decommissioning costs of a wind turbine right now, you can make that estimate right now, you can look out what is entailed in the afterlife of every renewable energy technology, and you do not have any factors as significant and as problematic as that. Q149 Roger Berry: Free marketeers would say the problem is carbon. You have a proper carbon pricing structure established by governments, there are no subsidies whatsoever to any form of energy source, let the market get on with it. Would that solve the problem? Sir Jonathan Porritt: It is a seductive position and it is not one that we necessarily dissent from in principle, because actually we do believe that market-based instruments for managing carbon in the economy is the right way to go, and we believe that trading systems is the best mechanism for getting to that point. The problem about moving from that position to the position that says that you should treat renewables and nuclear in exactly the same way is that we see nuclear as a highly developed technology over 50 years which has largely been supported through massive use of public money to bring on new technologies, new designs, whereas many renewables are still underdeveloped, still at a stage where large-scale public investment is warranted in terms of the public benefits which would flow from that investment in innovation downstream. So, it is a kind of apples and pears comparison at this stage, and it is not so much on the carbon issue that you should be seeking to distinguish public support for renewables verses public support for nuclear, it is much more on the innovation and the need to bring on technologies in the field of renewable technology in general in a way that probably will not happen without some public support or other. Chairman: I am going to bring Peter Bone in because you have moved to the territory that he wants to ask questions about. Q150 Mr Bone: Your gentle rubbishing of the nuclear industry's pricing I thought might be a little contradictory, due to the fact that it said it has established technologies and so, therefore, it would be a little bit easier to predict the cost. Can I go back to something the industry said to us in the evidence session, and it surprised me a little bit. It is to do with pounds, shillings and pence. It is about new build. They say they can do it without any taxpayer subsidy as long as you have a proper carbon-pricing policy. Are they right or wrong? Sir Jonathan Porritt: When you say the industry says that, which industry voice are you listening to because, as we understand it, there are contradictory opinions about the degree to which the generators, the nuclear industry, can bring forward a new programme without a subsidy? I have heard different voices in the industry say, on the one hand, "We will not be able to justify large-scale investments here without a guaranteed price over 40 years", which, by any standards, strikes me as a pretty strong pitch for a major subsidy of one kind or another and, on the other hand, I have heard some of the more bullish voices, particularly in the generating companies, saying, "No, if you look at what is happening in Finland, for instance, and you look at elsewhere in the world, we think we can bring forward a new programme without any subsidy whatsoever". Q151 Chairman: Last week the Nuclear Industry Association told us they needed four things from Government: a policy on waste; a planning policy to be clarified - I think these are the four - pre-licensing of reactors to simplify that issue; and certainty about carbon costs. With that they said they would need no public subsidy. That was the official view last week from the Nuclear Industry Association. Sir Jonathan Porritt: Certainty about the carbon costs, I do not suppose they elaborated on carbon cost? Q152 Mr Bone: I think I can give backup on this point. It is all right being free marketeers and private enterprises and all that, but then you want the guarantee for carbon pricing for about forty years, which really negates that. Can I move away from that. What would you see as an effective carbon Emissions Trading Scheme, and how would it operate? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We believe the European Emissions Trading Scheme is a good scheme, it has got off to a pretty rocky start, but nobody should be surprised that that start has been difficult for all sorts of reasons. The most important reason is that no trading scheme of that kind, which is basically a cap and trade scheme, will work properly until you get the cap in. The thing that has made all these prototypes work, all these models that are being used - there is a sulphur dioxide scheme in the United States and so on - is that the cap is transparent, it is mapped out over time, and people who therefore need to manage their carbon emissions can see precisely where the price will be going in terms of the available carbon credits at that time. Without a cap process, and without governments taking that very seriously through their national allocation plans, we do not believe the Emissions Trading Scheme can ever work properly. We would be extremely disturbed, as would the UK Government, were the current difficulties around the ETS and around the problems that have surfaced recently through very dodgy national allocation plans - let us be absolutely honest about it - to lead some people to say, "We can do without a trading scheme of this kind". It is really important on a global basis that the scheme which the European Union is experimenting with now can serve as a model for a post-2012 global trading scheme which we still believe is the best way to move the debate forward. Q153 Mr Bone: Can I move you on to something which I think your Commissioner said. If I am right, you have argued against the inclusion of nuclear within expanded Renewables Obligation because of the role Renewables Obligation plays in developing renewable technology. Is that right? Sir Jonathan Porritt: That is correct. That is how the Government has designed the Renewables Obligation at the moment. It is there to serve an innovation forcing function as well as support for renewables as a contribution to our total electricity mix. It is quite clearly there in the way the RO is designed. Q154 Mr Bone: Can you really argue that with onshore wind and, what I would call, biomass landfill gas which are the main beneficiaries? Would you really apply that vis-á -vis nuclear if we had an effective carbon pricing policy? Sir Jonathan Porritt: You might now at this stage. Do not forget that when the Renewables Obligation came in there was still a lot of uncertainty about even onshore wind. You may now have some reason to argue that is no longer technology and development, that is now proven mature technology. There are still major problems about offshore which still need to be worked through. There are major problems, of course, about interconnectors and getting the electricity from offshore onshore, but that is another issue. On the biomass thing, I would have to disagree with you. This is an industry which is fumbling towards any sense of what it can really deliver technologically. I am very involved as a board member of the South West Regional Development Agency, and we had a presentation a month or so ago. looking at the range of different technologies available in the area of biomass and bio-fuels. We are going to see some extraordinary experimentation, new development, new technologies and new ideas coming forward to meet this challenge, some of which will succeed, many of which will fail. From that perspective, it is not a mature industry, it is an industry where the need for new innovation, and new thoughts about technology, is still absolutely critical. Q155 Mr Bone: That is very interesting because in my constituency there are allegedly plans for a £30 million biomass plant with a wind farm as well. I am very interested to pursue that. Did you say bumbling or fumbling towards biomass? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Either will do. Q156 Chairman: This question of carbon trading to me is fascinating in the whole debate. Yes, the cost of nuclear is very important, but it is important for the renewables sector, for coal and for gas, everyone needs certainty in this area, do they not? Sir Jonathan Porritt: They do. Q157 Chairman: Be a politician for a minute rather than an environmentalist. What realistic prospect is there of getting Europe to agree on a long-term scheme, never mind the world? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I do not think you should be too downhearted about this. Q158 Chairman: Good. Sir Jonathan Porritt: I genuinely think Europe has got mandatory targets under the Kyoto Protocol. People forget that mandatory targets come with sanctions and we do not need them. The European Union has no other big picture mechanism for securing its Kyoto target other than the ETS. People in the Commission realise that we may not have got this off to the best possible start but we certainly better get it back on track now from 2008 onwards otherwise we are going to miss our targets by a mile. Chairman: I certainly strongly agree with these paragraphs you have in your document on this scheme. Q159 Mr Clapham: Sir Jonathan, can I go back to a point that you made when you and the Chairman were having a discussion about how nuclear might lock us into a situation where it would detract effort from being used elsewhere. Within that discussion it seemed that you were looking at both nuclear and the coal economy as being very centralised, very given to that locking mechanism, when indeed there is much more flexibility in the coal economy than, for example, there is in the nuclear generating economy. Once you generate electricity from a nuclear station it has to flow down the line. The thing about a coal station - and I am thinking here in terms of clean coal burn - is that it is much more flexible, and you can see that, for example, by looking at last winter where, although coal produced about 33 per cent of overall electricity in this country, throughout some of the peak periods in winter we were producing 50 per cent of our electricity from coal. It is a much more flexible option. It seems to me that if we are saying that nuclear would be too rigid, bearing in mind that as we move to renewables and the Government having set its targets for 20 per cent by 2020, we need the backup of a stable source of energy but one which is flexible. It seems that within that scenario coal fits the scene much better than nuclear, for example. Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think that is well argued. We may be mixing two interpretations of flexibility here. In terms of baseload generation, bringing it on and taking it off, as it were, at any one point, I think what you say about coal is absolutely right. I suppose what we are talking about in terms of flexibility is decentralised local area networks for electricity distribution, so much more for flexibility in the distance between the point of generation and the point of use. In that respect, coal is problematic because I do not know - you probably know the answer to this question - what the minimum size of a new coal-fired power station would be to make it viable. I would imagine, given all the logistics of getting the coal to the plant and all the rest of it, that you probably would not be looking at less than a gigawatt, which means it is not in the same category as gas where you can have much, much smaller generating facilities in the middle of cities, as they have in Copenhagen and elsewhere in Europe, because getting the gas to the plant is much easier and taking the heat from the plant out into the surrounding district makes a great deal more sense. The problem about the clean coal argument, if I may, is for coal to claim that it is going to be able to offer a clean option for the future of humankind, it is going to have to demonstrate that it can use all the heat which is generated in the combustion of the coal as well as the electricity. It has got to get average efficiencies up from 35 to 80 per cent per tonne which goes into a power station because without that any claim to cleanliness, let alone genuine sustainability, is deeply suspect. Q160 Mr Clapham: They are low at the present time, as you say, 35 per cent, but some of the new boilers would get it up towards 50 per cent. Sir Jonathan Porritt: You are still not using heat. Q161 Mr Clapham: Given the enormous problem that we face in China and India, the transfer of that technology would certainly be one that would help us reduce the carbon bubble around the world quicker. Sir Jonathan Porritt: I am not taking you on about this. I think there are very strong and important arguments to be raised about the potential use of coal in a more sustainable energy mix. They do pose massive technical and infrastructure issues which the industry is going to have to deal with to make that claim in a big, bold way. Q162 Mr Clapham: Coming back to my script, and looking at nuclear vis-á-vis renewables, is it really for you and I the or question? Has it got to be one or the other, or do you feel that one could have an economy which is much more diverse with nuclear coal, et cetera, and still have the stimulus to invest in new renewable energy? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Again, I think I have to be fair to the diversity of views on the Commission here. Some commissioners felt that it would be possible to have a both/and approach to this, renewables efficiency, CHP, and a nuclear programme coming forward simultaneously. The majority of commissioners felt that it was an either/or situation, not a both/and opportunity. The reason why they felt that was because we have studied with great interest the lack of attention that this Government has paid to securing a sustainable energy future for the UK over the last four years. We, amongst others, have commented very critically about the failure to follow through on the 2003 Energy White Paper. We are not persuaded that this is a Government which will have sufficient political skills, leadership skills, to keep the focus absolutely tightly on the Energy White Paper mix, as I prefer them described, and a new nuclear component. If I may end with one point which often gets left off here. Whatever the set of technologies we bring forward, for both the supply and demand end of it, a sustainable energy future depends upon far higher levels of engagement by ordinary citizens, by the people who, at the end of the day, use that energy for the services they require in their lives. We are very concerned about any scenario for the future which continues to leave people the passive recipients of energy that comes cruising down the wires, they do not have to give a second thought to where it comes from and they just get on and continue with their lives without any real interest in those whole issues. A sustainable energy future is one in which the individual citizen is going to be fully engaged in understanding the way in which that energy was generated, the way in which it is being used and the responsibilities that we have as individuals to minimise any environmental impact accruing from those two things. For that reason alone we felt nuclear would detract from that systematic engagement challenge of the general population. Q163 Mr Clapham: You see a decentralised system as being critical to engage the community? Sir Jonathan Porritt: It is absolutely critical. Q164 Chairman: What you want to do is turn off the nuclear option, have the threat of the lights going out, and then force people to focus on energy efficiency and micro-generation? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think that would be a very regrettable way of achieving higher levels of awareness, if you do not mind me saying. Indeed, since you are quizzing me a little bit on this one, we have said that in terms of our existing nuclear reactors it makes no sense to decommission them any earlier than they need to be decommissioned. If we can extend their life in a way that is both financially viable and absolutely safe from the perspective of the nuclear regulatory bodies, then it would be very bizarre to decommission prematurely rather than allow the full lifetime of that reactor to be worked through. We are not for precipitive un-thought out closure of the nuclear programme because we have some inherent belief that nuclear is wicked, we are for a rational approach to our existing nuclear programme and a rational decision-making process about whether or not we need a new nuclear programme. Q165 Chairman: Do you fear that the Government would relax if it took a nuclear option? Sir Jonathan Porritt: We do. Q166 Chairman: The issue of proliferation is a matter of great importance and one we should address. Given that there are widespread nuclear programmes elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US, India and Finland are beginning, is it something we should worry about? Is it a marginal issue or is it something we should be focused on as a Committee? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Again, we put ourselves in a difficult position here by restricting our comments primarily to the UK scene. That allowed us to say that the operating record of the nuclear industry in the UK is a good one in reality, and people need to accept that. There is no reason why it would not continue to be a good one with a new nuclear programme. However, you could not make the same optimistic assumptions about the operating record of nuclear power in some other countries. Therefore, from our perspective, the risks associated with a proliferation of nuclear technology around the world is an extremely important issue. We did not feel we were the right organisation to look into that. Q167 Chairman: Thank you. I understand that. What we are trying to do is bring all the issues together. We have a full checklist, and your document has gone a remarkable way in that direction and I am really very appreciative of it. An issue that worries me is global warming, the raising of seawater temperatures. We heard reports last summer that France had to turn off some of its nuclear reactors because it could not cool them and the water was too hot. Is that an issue we should be worried about? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I do not know. I do not think we looked at the specific issue about whether average water temperatures would rise so high that they could no longer carry out the basic water-cooling function. We did not look at it. I am sorry, Chairman, we have failed you on that score. Q168 Mr Wright: In November last year, you told our colleagues on the Environmental Audit Committee, "that it would be a catastrophe and extremely foolish" for the Government to take a position on nuclear prior to the actual results of the Energy Review. What are your views on the Prime Minister's recent pronouncements about the importance of nuclear power? Sir Jonathan Porritt: The Prime Minister stayed just the right side of the line as regards the position that the Government may be in. He did not say that the Government has made a decision yet, he very carefully fell short of doing that, and I am extremely glad that he did. I think many people would be outraged and so cynical about a government process if they felt that this was all just a sham. It is hugely important for this country that this is not a sham. The way in which this Energy Review is presented to the people of the UK and the way in which the Government processes it to make a decision are critically important parts of this whole very complicated and very controversial area of public policy. In our opinion, to play fast and loose with that would be genuinely scandalous. We are just, as it were, hanging on by our fingernails hoping that this is still a very genuine process. We will not be able to answer that question finally until we see the way the evidence is presented in the Energy Review. The issue about scrupulous balance in any recommendation brought forward is that that balance emerges from the evidence, not from a set of preconceptions or approaches. Q169 Mr Wright: At the present time you are quite happy with the due process being put through as it should be? Sir Jonathan Porritt: Quite happy is a difficult phrase for me to associate myself with completely because it might be misconstrued. We remain persuaded that the Government is taking this process seriously and the Prime Minister's mind is still sufficiently open to ensure that it is a genuine process. Q170 Chairman: Do you know what role the Deputy Prime Minister is playing in the Energy Review now? It is not clear to me, but maybe he is playing a role. Sir Jonathan Porritt: It is not clear to me either, Chairman. Q171 Chairman: Do you share my concern that the Government is quite thinly spread? We have an Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, who I have very high regard for, who I saw was debating Sunday trading during the Westminster Hall debate earlier. It used to be a whole Department of Energy, but now we have a part-time Energy Minister with just a change of Secretary of State and that is it. It is a bit worrying, is it not? Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think it would be fair to say that the resource which the DTI made available to carry out this review has been substantial. We have not seen any lack of official resource in terms of the analytical capabilities and all the rest of it. I do not think we would express concern that this is being done in a shoddy and improper way. I guess there will always be one Energy Minister who ultimately will be the fall guy for bringing forward the recommendations, first to the Secretary of State and then through to the Prime Minister. Certainly in the meetings we have had with Malcolm Wicks - I have to be honest about this - we have found very serious engagement, a considerable interest in the complexity of the issues, and an open-mindedness which has persuaded us that there is still a lot of thinking going on in the Department. We have not yet had a chance to meet the new Secretary of State. Q172 Chairman: That is a very constructive note on which to end the session. Is there anything else you wish to say, Sir Jonathan? Sir Jonathan Porritt: No, thank you. Q173 Chairman: Thank you very much. If anything strikes you after that you want to let us know about, please drop us a note. Sir Jonathan Porritt: I think we made a note of three things we are going to send you, so I will certainly make sure we do that. Chairman: We look forward to the Micro-Generation Report. Thank you.
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