Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): It is always a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), whose speeches as Chairman of the Select Committee are wide-ranging, extremely well informed, sound, honest and frank. I want to concentrate on a narrower point, and I will not necessarily come to the same conclusions as he did.
On the day on which the Stern report on the colossal economic costs of global economic warming is published, it must be stated at the outset that the subject of our debate—the security of energy supply which, as we all accept, is crucial—is only half of the debate. The other half is the need to do absolutely everything in our power to prevent climate change and mitigate its effects. Fortunately, the direction of the policies needed to meet both objectives is the same. Approximately 40 per cent. of the UK’s primary energy supplies come from gas; 33 per cent. from oil; 17 per cent. from coal; only 8 per cent. from nuclear; and just 2 per cent. from renewables and other sources. That position is not sustainable in the long term. According to a broad consensus of expert opinion, global oil supply will peak, if it has not already done so, in the next five to 10 years, but demand, driven by frenetic growth in China, India and other major developing countries such as Brazil, will result in rising prices, probably in excess of $100 a barrel within a few years. Sharp price hikes will be caused by international events, whether war or terrorism, and by an increasing shortage of spare refinery capacity.
Furthermore, UK production of North sea oil has long since peaked, and is fast declining at a rate of between 4 and 6 per cent. a year. We are once again in the uncomfortable position of being net importers of oil. We therefore need, as far as possible—I accept that things will not happen quickly—to reduce our dependence on oil, which is a major, if not the major, source of greenhouse gas emissions. Similar considerations apply to gas. Gas prices will certainly remain high, and will steadily rise in the medium to long term. We are net importers, too, of gas which, as has often been said, comes from relatively political unstable countries such as Russia, Algeria, Libya and Iran, so it is not sensible or prudent to allow our dependence on them to increase. Again, we should seek to reduce our dependence on gas wherever possible.
Coal, by contrast, is an indigenous energy source, and significant supplies will be available in the UK for several decades if not centuries. However, of all the fossil fuels, coal produces the most greenhouse gas emissions, because it is virtually pure carbon. There are two ways in which we can address that, which is beginning to happen. One is by equipping coal stations with fuel gas desulphurisation to meet the requirements of the EU large combustion plant directive. My understanding is that some three quarters of coal power stations are now being equipped with such plant. The other technique—my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) spoke forcefully about this—is the development of new carbon capture and storage. Unquestionably, that technology has promising potential, but it has to be said that, as yet, there is no proven prototype in existence. The essential requirement is that the carbon can be stored indefinitely. That is an exacting and demanding requirement, but we should certainly seek to develop that technology.
Those limitations, in various forms, on the utilisation of fossil fuels have led the Government to conclude that a new round of nuclear build is therefore necessary to fill the gap as the Magnox and AGR reactors are steadily phased out and the nuclear contribution to electricity generation is reduced, as we are repeatedly told, from about 20 per cent. now to, it is alleged, some 7 per cent. in 2020 or shortly after.
That argument is flawed on a number of counts. First, the so-called gap is likely to be far less than is alleged. In September of last year, British Energy reviewed the Dungeness B nuclear power station and I understand that it is now investing to extend the life of the power station by 10 years. British Energy is also reviewing six other nuclear power stations for exactly the same purpose. Undoubtedly, some of those will be closed, but it is a reasonable expectation that a number will be invested in to give them some further extension of their life. Similarly, fitting desulphurisation plants to coal station chimneys will also reduce the gap significantly.
Secondly, nuclear plants—on this point, I disagree with the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire; this is a contentious issue—have well recognised disadvantages that are difficult to remedy. In its report at the time of the first energy White Paper three years ago, the performance and innovation unit—the No. 10 strategic unit—calculated that, on its best estimate, by 2020 nuclear would be about twice as expensive as wind power. I am not saying whether that is right or wrong. I am saying that that was its calculation.
There is also the unresolved problem of what to do with the huge and mounting piles of nuclear waste. It is reckoned that, by the end of this century, there will be as much as half a million tonnes of some of the most toxic intermediate and high level waste. In relation to CoRWM, it is true that the problem is more political than technical, but to say that it is political does not get over the problem. The question is, where is the waste going to be stored? Governments from both parties have repeatedly tried to resolve the problem, but it remains, at least at the moment, as insoluble as ever.
The cost of decommissioning and waste management for existing nuclear plants, let alone new ones if we go down that route, is already calculated by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to be more than £75 billion. That is a colossal figure. It is about 7 per cent. of our gross national product.
Peter Luff rose—
Mr. Meacher: I will gladly give way, but I am simply quoting the statement given by Sir Anthony Cleaver, who is the chair of the NDA. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene on that figure, he may.
Peter Luff: I recognise that figure as the cost for the NDA—my Committee actually thinks that it will rise. Although the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, I understand that that figure includes the cost of addressing all the earlier military experimentation. It is the cost of dealing with the total nuclear waste legacy, not just that from power stations.
Mr. Meacher: That is absolutely true. The two figures cannot be readily disentangled. The figure that I cited includes the cost of dealing with the early stages of military nuclear development in the 1950s and 1960s. However, even if we do not know the exact cost of dealing with civil nuclear waste, it is still absolutely enormous, and that is quite apart from any consideration of the associated serious terrorism risk. It is true that gas and oil pipelines are probably an even greater hazard, but one cannot deny that nuclear is a target. Moreover, although it is absolutely true that nuclear plants do not generate CO2 when they are operating, the mining of uranium, the milling of the ore and the enrichment, as well as the 10-year building programme of a £2 billion nuclear plant, generate significant CO2 emissions.
Peter Luff indicated dissent.
Mr. Meacher: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that is widely viewed to be the case.
Peter Luff: That is the one canard in this whole debate that we should not allow to stand on record. There is a consensus—the view is shared by Sir Jonathon Porritt, for example, who gave evidence to the Select Committee—that nuclear power is definitely a low-carbon source of electricity generation. It might have disadvantages related to security and proliferation, but it is a low-carbon source. The right hon. Gentleman does not do his argument much credit by recycling that rather tired old point.
Mr. Meacher: The hon. Gentleman took what I said incorrectly. Nuclear is undoubtedly a low-carbon source compared with oil and coal. However, it is often claimed that it is a carbon-neutral or nil-carbon source, but that is not quite true either. The carbon contribution of nuclear reactors is something like 4 to8 per cent., although I agree that that figure is considerably less than that for other fossil fuels.
There is also a question over the supply of uranium. The UK has no indigenous uranium resources. Due to the enormous demand that is being exerted by China and India, which propose to build 30 or 40 nuclear reactors in the next 20 to 30 years, the supply of uranium might turn out over that time scale to be as insecure and uncertain as that of oil and gas today. One cannot expect that uranium will be readily available indefinitely.
My third critical consideration, which the Government unaccountably seem to ignore, or at least do not give the attention that it is due, is that there are good reasons for believing that renewables can readily fill the gap without the large downsides of nuclear. Let me give what I hope will be powerful support to that view. Research has been carried out by AEA Technology, which is the former research arm of the Atomic Energy Authority, so one might expect it to have a pro-nuclear perspective. It announced three months ago that 40 wind farms sited off East Anglia’s coast could provide a quarter of the UK’s total electricity requirements. The report said that the offshore turbines could create the same amount of electricity as 30 conventional power stations. From my point of view, AEA Technology is an unbiased source, so I think that it makes a powerful statement.
If the Government are going to be serious about the role of renewables in their response to the Stern report, they should give a much higher priority to developing such proposals. Renewables provide only a pathetic4 per cent. of the electricity generated in the UK, whereas the average figure is in the order of 25 per cent. in nearly all other European countries. It is all very well for the Government to say that they have a target of20 per cent.—hoorah, that is wonderful; all power to their elbow—but as we have made such little progress in the past 10 years, it is difficult to credit that we will reach a target that is five times greater than the current position in the next 15 years. I hope and pray that the Government are right, but they will require much more muscular programmes of support than we have seen up to now.
Mr. Blizzard: I wonder whether the report to which my right hon. Friend referred was “Sea Wind East”. Nobody would be happier than I if such a capacity could be generated off the coast of East Anglia, not least because of the employment prospects for my constituents. We want as big a slice of that as possible, but I do not know many people who believe that we could do that much. We could do a lot and we need to do more, but I am not sure we could do that much.
Mr. Meacher: I do not think I was referring to “Sea Wind East”, but I will discuss the matter with my hon. Friend afterwards and show him my source. In arguing whether or not such a goal is possible, the key point is what Germany, Denmark and Spain have done. They are the leaders in wind power. Because of our offshore location, we have far greater wind power capacity in the UK than probably the whole of the rest of Europe put together. We are using only a minute amount of it.
Finally, microgeneration is probably the most promising new technology. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that by 2050 it could provide 30 to 40 per cent.—I am quoting the trust’s figures—of the UK’s electricity needs and help to reduce carbon emissions by some 15 per cent. a year. But that will not happen without a major Government programme of incentives. A major and rapid expansion of renewables, including microgeneration, plus, as other hon. Members have said and I endorse, a major targeted programme of energy conservation to counter the prodigious waste of energy in both the industrial and the domestic sector, is the only assured long-term route to energy security on the scale required, and at the same time it can meet the UK’s commitment to a 60 per cent. reduction at least in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is a bottom line requirement.
