Rt. Hon. Michael Mates
Contribution To “Off The Fence”
All of a sudden energy is in the news. You will have noticed that your energy bills have risen - in fact they have gone up by an average of £127 in the last two years. That’s a problem for all of us but a real hardship for some.
At the same time as energy has been getting more expensive, the supply is getting less reliable. The current dispute between Russia and Ukraine may seem far away and, with Britain still getting most of our gas from the North Sea or Norway, not our problem. But it is a warning of things to come. As North Sea supplies of natural gas run out, we shall become more and more dependent on imported gas for our basic energy needs.
Under the Government’s present policies 70 per cent of energy is expected to come from gas by 2020 and 90 per cent of that gas will be imported. As Russia is the world’s largest gas producer, we will of necessity be one of their customers. Securing our energy needs is one of the most important tasks facing Britain today.
As if those challenges were not enough, we must cope with the consequences of climate change. As Chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Science and Technology Committee I have been looking at the evidence of climate change and it is frightening. Global sea levels rose by one to two millimetres a year during the twentieth century. A rise of one to two metres in a hundred years sounds like a small amount but large parts of the world are vulnerable to flooding and land erosion with only a slight further increase in sea levels. The summer and autumn arctic sea ice has thinned by 40 per cent in recent decades. Here in Britain, usage of the Thames Barrier has increased from once every two years in the 1980s to around six times a year in the last five years.
The Government has set a target of reducing the UK’s emissions of carbon dioxide – the most important contributor to global warming – by 60 per cent by about the year 2050. This is an ambitious target at a time when the lowest carbon producing system of electricity generation – nuclear – which currently produces only 9 per cent of our energy needs, is due to be phased out altogether. We must reduce our CO2 emissions – the world’s survival depends on countries doing this – but it will not be easy.
Britain needs a new energy policy. The Government ducked the challenge in its White Paper on energy because it did not want to cause a political upset by suggesting an expansion of nuclear power before the General Election. But, as the Prime Minister has now admitted, the issue of nuclear power cannot be ignored. Providing the very real problems of safety and waste disposal can be successfully tackled, nuclear energy has to be part of the solution to the energy and climate challenges Britain faces.
