I’ve got Vertigo

Poking around on the web the other day, I found the excellent Vertigo Wordpress theme. I was going to make up my own stylesheet (a recent upgrade borked the old templates) but frankly, this looks great and took all of ten minutes to install and tweak. Hats off to you, Mr Gardner.

Nuclear gets go ahead?

In what’s been Whitehall’s worst kept secret of late, the Government today gave the nod to a new round of nuclear power stations. Sort of…

See, the Government’s not actually going to build the stations themselves. The Minister, John Hutton, emphasised this in his statement to the Commons saying:

“It will be for energy companies, not the Government, to fund, develop and build new nuclear power stations. That will include meeting the full costs of decommissioning and each operator’s full share of the waste management costs. The Bill includes provisions to ensure that, and transparency in the operation of the arrangements will be essential.”

But how exactly is Government going to square the circle? There hasn’t been any sort of formal prohibition on nuclear in recent years so one must conclude that the lack of new build to date has simply been the consequence of unfavourable economics. Indeed the analysis of the more than 2700 responses to the nuclear consultation concluded that:

“There is some agreement, by both supporters and opponents of nuclear power, that a new generation of nuclear power stations is unlikely without some degree of public subsidy either for new build or waste management and decommissioning.”

So how exactly is this new Bill – without providing any subsidies – magically going to kick-start a new generation of British nuclear stations? Many of the “facilitating actions” noted so far seem unlikely to be enough (e.g. helping nuclear through planning processes). Energy analysts are therefore going to be busy in the coming days, trying to figure out how the Bill repackages funds in the likely form of guarantees or assurances (e.g. on the price of carbon, limiting waste liability).

The situation for Government is precarious. Today they’ve made a clear statement that nuclear must stand on its own two feet and everyone will now be looking to ensure that this happens. This could create delays, leading to an uncertain investment environment. With rising interest in nuclear from other nations and a limited pool of skilled workers and equipment, private companies may well decide to go elsewhere, leaving the UK with rising carbon emissions and a potentially large gap between supply and demand.

More recent comment on the nuclear debate can be found here, here, here, and especially here.

Edit: Today’s Guardian has some commentary on where the secret subsidies are likely to go.