Tony Blair is giving a big speech tonight to representatives of British industry and is taking the opportunity to less-than-subtly hint that nuclear power is back on the agenda. The reaction from green groups has been predictably critical and it’s certainly easy to be cynical about whether or not the Energy Review was a done-deal from day one.
The Number 10 website has a few key slides (PDF) to back up the speech and quite rightly they should scare a prime minister into action. There is going to be a large supply side gap once aging nuclear plants close and increased dependence on foreign gas supplies isn’t a great idea either. But this gap could much smaller, if not zero, if more effort was placed on the demand side. Instead the graphs show a ‘if we build it, they will come’ type logic, suggesting that demand will be x and policy must build appropriate supply.
Indeed, only after nuclear and renewables does Blair’s speech mention even energy efficiency – this is completely backwards. Demand side should come first. For example, projects like the 40% House show that the energy and carbon gaps can be all but closed through the use of existing energy-efficiency and microgeneration technologies. Whether or not government still decides to replace existing nuclear power stations is a valid question (which will probably get completely lost in the upcoming media furore), but it should only be considered after a serious effort to reduce demand. After all, “waste not, want not”.
Edit: A great interview at the Guardian with an ex-minister about the importance of demand side management and some great insight into the government’s poor grip on the economics of nuclear:
“The reality is that economically the risks are great and the returns are low. No private-sector company is going to take on the long-term risks, the costs of decommissioning, the storage, reprocessing and the responsibility for the waste.”
