Clause 12 - General duties when carrying out functions
Energy Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Mr Laurence Robertson (Shadow Minister, Economic Affairs; Tewkesbury, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 55, in
clause 12, page 9, line 44, at end insert—
'(e) the need to preserve, where desirable, the possibility of the future use of the site for nuclear generation.'.
We come to the nitty-gritty of what decommissioning means. I shall speak to the amendment for a few minutes. Amendments Nos. 56 and 57 are linked to it to an extent, so if I say what I need to on this amendment, there will be no need to go into huge detail on those.
The amendment would apply when the NDA was carrying out its functions, and this matter depends on where one comes from on the nuclear issue. We would not claim to be pro- or anti-nuclear, just as we would not claim to be pro- or anti-wind. We consider each energy source on its merits and consider what is necessary for security of supply, which we discussed in great detail during the first sitting. I tabled the amendment for several reasons, including, in part, security of supply, to which I shall return in a moment,
but also because decisions are needed long before any crisis that we might reach with security of supply. Particularly in the nuclear industry, it is necessary and very important to plan for the long term.
I have spoken before about the contribution that the nuclear industry makes to electricity generation—about 22 per cent. of our electricity. I got my figures wrong when I first spoke about this, but over the next 20 years to 2023 or 2024, that 22 per cent. will be reduced to just 2 per cent., which is a significant fall in electricity generated from nuclear sources. That bothers me for the reasons that I gave a few moments ago, when I spoke about employment opportunities at, for example, Sellafield. It also bothers me from the point of view of security of supply, because where will the missing 20 per cent. come from?
If we manage to bring on renewables to the extent that they can replace the entire 20 per cent., that will be a good achievement and I hope we can do that. However, it is looking increasingly unlikely that we will be able to do so. Even if we succeeded, we would not have advanced at all in terms of the effect of carbon emissions on the environment, which is a serious consideration.
Let us say that we increase the contribution of renewables to 20 per cent. by 2020, which is the Government's target. Just imagine how good the carbon savings would be if we also had a nuclear industry producing at the current level—in other words, if more than 40 per cent. of our electricity was produced from carbon-free sources. That would be a tremendous advancement for the environment and for security of supply, because our reliance on gas from faraway places such as Russia would be greatly reduced. We should take that issue very seriously.
Just this week, two things have perhaps made us look at the nuclear industry slightly differently. The first is the article by the scientist James Lovelock that appeared in Monday's edition of The Independent. He says that a nuclear industry will be essential if we are to achieve the carbon savings that we need and avoid the problems of global warming, which he rightly identifies as extremely serious and probably more urgent than was previously realised. Given that he is a celebrated green, his proposals and views are very interesting. He calls on the green lobby to drop its opposition to nuclear power. He recognises that there are risks associated with it, but says that if we are serious about reducing global warming, which we need to do more urgently than was previously thought, we must embrace nuclear power as a main energy source.
That was interesting, but even more interesting were the comments of the former Energy Minister, the right hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who said it was ''a self-evident nonsense'' for the UK to run down its nuclear capacity while there is an unprecedented emphasis on the need to reduce carbon emissions. He went on to say:
''Nuclear power is our only significant source of non-carbon electricity. It is the bird in the hand, yet the green lobby wants to shoot it.''
That was a significant contribution from someone who is not on our Benches. We need to take those two warnings seriously.
The second interesting thing that has happened this week is that China has decided that it has a problem with security of supply. It is considering building four new reactors. I have already mentioned concerns about security of supply in Finland, which I visited in December. The Finns are building a fifth reactor. They have not found the waste issue too difficult to deal with; they have been imaginative about solving the problem, and are using a simple process to do so. We could have dealt with the problem equally efficiently.
I do not want to stray too far from my overall point, which is that the NDA ought to have security of electricity supply in mind when carrying out its duties, and should do everything possible to preserve the possibility of using the site for nuclear generation in future.