A Pragmatic Energy policy for the UK - Foreword
At the suggestion of one of the many people in Copeland who know a great deal about energy policy I have been re-reading the study by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, "A Pragmatic Energy policy for the UK." It is a paper that every politician or person interested in the future of Britain's energy supplies should read. We ignore the warnings it makes at our peril.
This powerful, well-argued document is available on the internet as a pdf file here.
It was commissioned by Andrew Cooke CBE, chairman of Cooke Holdings, who wrote a foreword explaining why he commissioned the paper, which reads as follows
"WHY I HAVE COMMISSIONED THIS REPORT
I am an industrialist. The company I own makes special steel parts for all manner of machines. It employs 800 people and spends millions of pounds a year on electricity and gas to power the furnaces which make and process the steel.
I am also the father of four children aged between 12 and 19.
In the course of my business life I have learned a lot about the electricity and gas industries. I have battled with them frequently over price and supply conditions. But at least I always knew that the energy was there. Availability and security of supply were assured.
The position has now changed. The UK’s nuclear and coal stations are old. The supply of North Sea gas to the gas-fired stations, which have partially replaced them, is running out. We are increasingly dependent on gas from Russia and other unstable parts of the world. But oil and gas themselves are becoming scarce commodities. The less we have for such things as cars and lorries, cooking and central heating, the more we will need electricity. And we won’t be able to rely on gas to generate that electricity.
A fearful void opens up. We need more electricity, yet increasingly we lack the means to generate it. This threat is not for some time in the distant future, when we are all dead. If nothing is done, within 5 years the UK could be beset by chronic power cuts, with electricity scarce, uncertain and even more expensive than today.
Without a reliable electricity supply, it is impossible to live life as we do. Businesses and families are disrupted. The safe and certain civilisation we take for granted evaporates almost overnight. Should electricity supplies dry up, or become rationed, or intolerably expensive, our accustomed life-style will cease.
I am dismayed at Government blindness to the realities of this situation. It will take decades to construct the necessary quantity of nuclear stations just to replace those which are reaching the end of their lives. Wind only works when the wind is blowing. None of the measures which have been announced recently will be of the slightest use in the short and medium term.
It is because the UK does not have one that I have felt compelled to finance a policy which addresses this “energy gap”. Professor Fells is an internationally respected academic and engineer whose speciality is energy. He shares my concerns and fears. So we have teamed up to produce a pragmatic policy for the UK. I have nothing special to gain personally from this, save the peace of mind which comes from responding to the cry “something must be done” by actually doing something, and the hope that by drawing attention to the danger we face and putting forward solutions, present and future generations of British people will continue to enjoy the undisrupted benefits of our electricity-dependent civilisation.
Andrew Cooke."
This powerful, well-argued document is available on the internet as a pdf file here.
It was commissioned by Andrew Cooke CBE, chairman of Cooke Holdings, who wrote a foreword explaining why he commissioned the paper, which reads as follows
"WHY I HAVE COMMISSIONED THIS REPORT
I am an industrialist. The company I own makes special steel parts for all manner of machines. It employs 800 people and spends millions of pounds a year on electricity and gas to power the furnaces which make and process the steel.
I am also the father of four children aged between 12 and 19.
In the course of my business life I have learned a lot about the electricity and gas industries. I have battled with them frequently over price and supply conditions. But at least I always knew that the energy was there. Availability and security of supply were assured.
The position has now changed. The UK’s nuclear and coal stations are old. The supply of North Sea gas to the gas-fired stations, which have partially replaced them, is running out. We are increasingly dependent on gas from Russia and other unstable parts of the world. But oil and gas themselves are becoming scarce commodities. The less we have for such things as cars and lorries, cooking and central heating, the more we will need electricity. And we won’t be able to rely on gas to generate that electricity.
A fearful void opens up. We need more electricity, yet increasingly we lack the means to generate it. This threat is not for some time in the distant future, when we are all dead. If nothing is done, within 5 years the UK could be beset by chronic power cuts, with electricity scarce, uncertain and even more expensive than today.
Without a reliable electricity supply, it is impossible to live life as we do. Businesses and families are disrupted. The safe and certain civilisation we take for granted evaporates almost overnight. Should electricity supplies dry up, or become rationed, or intolerably expensive, our accustomed life-style will cease.
I am dismayed at Government blindness to the realities of this situation. It will take decades to construct the necessary quantity of nuclear stations just to replace those which are reaching the end of their lives. Wind only works when the wind is blowing. None of the measures which have been announced recently will be of the slightest use in the short and medium term.
It is because the UK does not have one that I have felt compelled to finance a policy which addresses this “energy gap”. Professor Fells is an internationally respected academic and engineer whose speciality is energy. He shares my concerns and fears. So we have teamed up to produce a pragmatic policy for the UK. I have nothing special to gain personally from this, save the peace of mind which comes from responding to the cry “something must be done” by actually doing something, and the hope that by drawing attention to the danger we face and putting forward solutions, present and future generations of British people will continue to enjoy the undisrupted benefits of our electricity-dependent civilisation.
Andrew Cooke."
Comments
Look at the date on the post. My original article was written three years before your comment, almost to the day. That article, and the paper "A pragmatic energy policy for the UK," were both written while the last government was in office. So to suggest that either can be quoted as a critique of the coalition government which has since taken over is, to coin a phrase, most illogical.
The present government is committed to trying to move forward on energy policy, to build new power stations including nuclear ones, and reverse the decade of neglect under the previous Labour administration.
If you are saying that we need to move faster I agree with you.
If you are claiming there is the tiniest particle of evidence that a UKIP government, if by some immensely unlikely pattern of events one were elected, would know how to build nuclear power plants faster than the present government, then I would be fascinated to hear what you think that evidence is.