David Dundas: Our energy future

David Dundas is a Lichfield City Councillor, Managing Director of Lion Industries and an active member of CPF.  He has a science degree from St Andrews and an early career as a field service engineer in the oil industry that finally took him to Brussels, where he worked for Texaco Europe.  He stayed on in Belgium for 22 years, working for several American companies including Dow Corning in their Energy department, and for a time, was a consultant to the European Commission on toxic waste disposal.

A realistic energy policy should be central to any government's plans, for reliable energy at reasonable cost is vital to our future.  Whilst there has been much talk about the important subject of climate change that is threatening our environment, this has sidelined the equally important subject of the security of our energy supplies.  Since the industrial revolution, we have had control of our energy supplies, first with coal, then oil and gas, but these are either running out, or in the case of coal, have been abandoned as a largely unacceptable source of energy.

We all want to save the planet from climate change, but there is a great risk that we will be swept along by popular dogma, at the expense of reasoned thought.  It is important that the Conservative Party adopts a realistic energy policy that combines energy security with technologies to quickly combat climate change.

On climate change, it can be argued that this has been accelerated by the misguided actions of  arious green parties around the world, in particular here in Europe.  For example: in Germany, the Green Party has been largely responsible for the closure of nuclear power stations which have been replaced by gas fired power stations, fuelled by Russian gas.  The Russians, in their rush to sell ever increasing amounts of gas to western countries, including the UK, to earn valuable foreign currency, are now expanding their nuclear electricity generation, to release their gas for sale to the west.  This has effectively moved the nuclear power stations from Germany to Russia. If we replace our aging nuclear power stations with gas fired ones, fuelled by Russian gas, we will be doing the same.  Are Russian nuclear power stations preferable to our own?

In any event, we must progressively reduce the burning of all fossil fuels as quickly as possible, to halt the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, which on a geological time scale, has been rising very fast.  Failure to do this will have catastrophic results which are already starting to show.  Whilst we can generate more electricity from wind and capture the sun's energy to heat our buildings, these sources are minute compared with the present generation of electricity from fossil fuels, which are increasingly imported as ours run out.  There is no way that the alternative sources of energy can realistically replace electricity from fossil fuels in a sufficiently short space of time, or ever, to halt the rise in CO2.

We need our energy sources to be at home for strategic reasons, and they need to produce as little CO2 as possible.   I am therefore arguing in favour of nuclear power stations, whilst recognising that fission nuclear power has significant drawbacks in terms of the long term disposal of radioactive waste.  If all our power stations were converted to nuclear, the production of CO2 would be a fraction of what it is today.  Many other types of fossil fuel burning equipment, such as central heating systems, busses and private vehicles operating in towns, could be converted to electric power.  The remaining carbon burning machines that would be difficult to convert to electric power, such as aircraft, cars for long distances and road freight, could ultimately be fuelled by renewable sources such as ethanol and biodiesel, which are carbon neutral, but these fuels would probably have to be imported from hotter countries, diluting our energy independence.

Ultimately, the holy grail of energy production has to be fusion nuclear power, which is essentially clean with an abundant fuel supply from sea water, unlike the present dirty fission process.  Unfortunately, insufficient funds have been directed into research on fusion power, but it is heartening that a new 13 billion Euro, fusion energy research initiative with the acronym ITER, located near Marseille, has been recently agreed between China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA.  It has a predicted time scale of 30 years before viable commercial fusion power can be produced, so even if it works, we are going to have to wait a very long time before fusion energy can drive commercial power stations.  In the meantime, fission nuclear power is a far better environmental risk, than the escalating level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect that it produces.

In a recent speech at Chatham House, Dr. Liam Fox has underlined in great detail, the precarious security of our energy supplies, calling for international military and political cooperation to guard them.  Whilst this may need to be an important part of our short term strategy, it does not address the underlying problem, that the whole world must start the process of switching away from burning any fossil fuel.  The additional cost of military protection of our energy supply routes advocated by Dr. Fox may well be far greater than any extra cost of conventional nuclear over fossil fuel power.

Whilst it may be fashionable and possibly vote gathering, to go along with the anti-nuclear lobby, Conservatives should not follow them blindly, but show leadership in the recognition that the conversion of our electric power generation from fossil fuels to nuclear, is the only realistic way to secure our energy independence and the future health of our planet.

Comments

[Yet Another Anon]

A realistic assessment, although developing Renewable Energy Sources has to be a priority not just because many are low or zero producers of Greenhouse Gases but also because Non-Renewables by definition have a finite lifespan and at some point will run out.

In addition costs of new Nuclear Build and research into Renewables should not fall on taxation but rather be raised by charging for use of power - raising power prices to consumers will also ration use by encouraging people to make more efficent use and avoid wasting power.

[Renny]

Nuclear is no long term solution. At current rates of use it is estimated that there is enough urainium for another 40 years energy production.

We need to change the way we use our energy - use less of it but what we use use more efficently.

[Yet Another Anon]

In fact Global Warming is now an inevitability, at best I see levels of emissions of Greenhouse Gases starting to stabilise over decades and temperatures continuing to rise even for some time after it has levelled off, if emissions levelled off next year temperatures globally would continue rising until they reached a level sustained by that level of gases, in future centuries probably there will be the beginnings of a slow fluctuating downward trend but politicians elected for 4 or 5 years with limited careers will always tend to avoid doing anything which threatens their continuity in office and this will tend to militate against the public interest and there will be spells of complacency and some states failing to take any interest in keeping down emissions.

[Don Jameson]

Interesting point about effectively dumping UK nuclear stations in Russia in return for Russian gas exports. Also explains the Russian-Iranian axis on domestic nuclear to boost forex income.

[john]

A very interesting piece.

I'm sorry to say, that the last Conservative governments energy policies do not give me much faith in their abilities.

In 1979 the incoming Conservative Government scrapped the Gas Gathering Scheme. The scheme proposed by the then BG chairman Sir Dennis Rooke, involved linking the North Sea oilfields and relaying the associated gas to shore. The then energy minister Leon Brittain (where he now) called it a waste of time and money, clever one Leon.

The next energy minister, David Howell was then responsible for raising the price of domestic gas, by 9% above the rate of inflation (the gas levy) for four years. The £400 million per year that this handed to the treasury, was not used to improve our energy transmission system, but given away in tax cuts.

The botched privitisation of both Gas & Electricity, perfectly acceptable to allow a free market for customers to have choice in energy purchase. The transmission system should have remained under government control. By allowing foreign companies, particularly those that are state owned or controlled, to buy into our energy system, is placing this country in a very precarious position.

Unfortunately the present government has done nothing to correct the disasterous decisions taken in the 80's and 90's. Decisions which I believe this country, will one day pay a very heavy price for.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

This article is very well constructed and the argument is presented well but I'm afraid to say I disagree with pretty much all of it.

Apart from a perfunctory mention of renewables, this article almost completely ignores the three core tenets which should form the basis of our future energy strategy:

- energy conservation;
- micro-generation;
- clean, renewable energy.

[Mark]

A well thought-out piece. It is a bizarre twist of the debate that many of those who are most desperate for a solution to the climate change problem are also virulently against nuclear, despite it being the best hope. In comparison, David Dundas is to be commended for his pragmatism.

In defence and foreign policy terms, it is much more sensible to have as much of our power as possible sourced in the UK rather than be sitting at the end of a pipe line on which Putin controls the stopcock. If we want to do that without burning fossil fuels, nuclear has to be a part of the approach taken.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"In defence and foreign policy terms, it is much more sensible to have as much of our power as possible sourced in the UK rather than be sitting at the end of a pipe line on which Putin controls the stopcock."

And where do you suppose the raw materials for nuclear power generation come from?

[James Hellyer]

Canada, the US, South Africa, Australia... Not necessarily the Russian Federation, in other words.

And using an economic resource model, sources closer to home would later become viable.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"Canada, the US, South Africa, Australia... Not necessarily the Russian Federation, in other words."

Not necessarily, no. I'm sure the fact that the bedrocks of stability in central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will inevitably undercut the price of uranium extracted in the countries you name is a welcome sign that we will be able to rely on a secure and stable supply too.

[David Dundas]

Not sure if I am allowed to reply to a post, but here goes, mainly a response to Daniel Vince-Arthur:

I could write a book about energy policy but that won't catch the attention of readers of this site, so I had to be brief. I am very aware of energy conservation, renewables and clean energy, but they hav'nt a hope of taking the place of power stations burning fossil fuels, but they can help. My message is: convert all fossil fuel burning to electric power and the rest to biofuels. On your clean energy, that is likely to be nuclear fusion, one day

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree David.