Iain Murray: Waste of energy

Iain Murray is Vice-Chairman of the new Washington DC branch of Conservatives Abroad and a Senior Fellow in International Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Both the Conservative Party and Her Majesty’s Government have issued reviews of their energy policies in the last two weeks.  Curiously, neither actually address energy policy directly.  Instead it is viewed as a consequence of other polices, in this case, environmental ones. Yet energy policy is actually a bedrock of what should be, alongside the defence of the realm, one of the two main priorities of any responsible government: economic policy.  This curious entrenchment of misplaced priorities results in a perverse approach to energy policy.

Both the Tory and Government reviews start from one principle: that the United Kingdom must reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  The justification for this is concern over the possible effects of climate change.  Yet the United Kingdom is a minor player in the emissions game, contributing just 2 percent of global carbon emissions.  Even cutting that to zero would have no measurable effect on global temperature, or on the purported effects of man-made global warming.  If the rest of the world is going to carry on emitting these gases, both the UK and the rest of the world will reap the consequences.

Thus is illustrated in the first misplaced priority.  If one wishes to reduce the growth in global temperature by reducing emissions, one must treat this not as an energy issue, but as a foreign policy issue.  Nor is it an area where Britain can “show a lead.”  Britain is, it needs to be repeated, a minor player in the emissions game.  This is not like the UK stamping out the slave trade in the 19th century.  The scale of emissions reductions that would need to be implemented by the US, China and India dwarfs anything the UK could achieve.  Even Germany is demonstrating that emissions reduction is difficult for it is attempting to exempt new coal-fired power stations from European emissions regulations.

What this means is that the world is slowly but surely rejecting the preferred emissions reduction approach of the two energy reviews and the Kyoto Protocol.  All other western European nations will have severe difficulty meeting their Kyoto targets and, as a result, they are moving away from emissions reduction policies.  The Emissions Trading Scheme, intended to enable industry to profit from emissions reductions, has crashed as a result of European politicians failing to match their rhetoric with actions.  By giving generous emissions allowances to their industries, they have removed the incentive to reduce.

The reasons why they would do so are obvious.  Energy use is a vital contributor to economic growth.  The link is so strong that one can predict quite accurately the effects of a reduction in energy use, or a growth in the expense of energy, on an economy.  Forecasts from the International Council for Capital Formation indicate that, for instance, Germany can expect to lose 1,800,000 jobs by 2010 if it adheres to its Kyoto protocol commitments.  The UK would lose 1 million jobs.  Already, the effects of the UK’s attempts to meet its commitments can be seen on the economy.  A couple of weeks ago, for example, the kaolin processor Imerys said that it would cut 800 jobs next year as a result of high energy prices.  Michael Grubb, head of the Carbon Trust quango, even admitted last month, “In the future, European companies may decide to make big investments abroad, say in Brazil, because Europe is too expensive.  There is an option of driving energy- intensive industries out of Europe.”  The Europeans have decided not to let that happen.

If the rest of the world is not going to follow the UK’s lead, then, both energy reviews are merely sacrificing British jobs and growth for no benefit.  The world will continue to warm, and Britain will actually be less well placed to meet the possible effects of such warming because the nation as a whole will be poorer.  Individual households, for instance, will have less money to spend on air conditioning, which will in turn be more expensive because of the more expensive electricity generating techniques.  Companies will have less capital and find it more expensive to build infrastructure improvements, such as will be needed in the water industry.  And governments, local and national, will find it more difficult to fund projects such as sea defences and a replacement to the Thames Barrier (which will be needed even without further warming as London is slowly sinking).

Which brings us to the second misplaced priority: if we accept that the UK has a duty to the developing world in respect of the supposed damaging impact of climate change as the first industrialised nation, then that duty is better discharged in helping the developing nations than by restricting energy use at home.  A richer-but-warmer world is better off than a poorer-but-cooler world, as Indur Goklany has shown.  To that extent, climate change is not an energy issue, but an overseas development issue.

How could the UK help?  For a start it could work with its Commonwealth partners India and Bangladesh on improving sea defenses now against the threat of rising sea levels.  Sea levels aren’t going to rise by 20 feet, as Al Gore suggests in his global warming movie, but those countries are particularly susceptible to even small rises in sea level.  It could also work with African Commonwealth partners to combat the rise in vector-borne diseases like malaria, which have actually been re-emerging primarily because of factors like movement of populations rather than climate change, but which global warming could exacerbate.  If diseases like malaria were extinguished now, however, no amount of global warming would make them a threat again.  Yet even anti-malaria programs require first and foremost an upgrading of Africa’s infrastructure to ensure their long-term viability.  For that reason, improving the continent’s economic resilience is itself a valuable contribution to fighting the effects of environmental change.

The list goes on.  Britain could help improve access to water, increase resistance to famine and preserve biodiversity by helping Commonwealth partners improve their agricultural techniques.  Indeed, if one believes that the Commonwealth has any value, then Britain could find a significant role for itself in that partnership of nations by helping the younger nations increase their resilience to environmental changes.  Working with those countries to liberalise and modernise their economies while aiding in technology transfer to ensure that rapid growth is less environmentally damaging than it was in the developed world would be a massive boon.  To start with, a new Commonwealth agreement modeled on the USA’s Asia-Pacific Partnership, enthusiastically entered into by India, would also be a great help in reinvigorating the Commonwealth structure.

What this means is that climate change should not be thought of as first and foremost a domestic energy issue.  Climate change is not in itself reason to cover England’s green and pleasant land with dark satanic windmills.  Quite the reverse, in fact: if Britain is to contribute effectively to helping the world adapt to environmental change – whether natural or man-made – it must have a secure base of affordable and reliable energy that will help contribute to the economic growth that will underpin such outreach.

So, when the Tories assert that it is time to “give green energy a chance,” one must ask whether green energy can supply that secure base.  A survey of the potential for advanced technologies to reduce carbon emissions was undertaken by Hoffert et al of New York University and published in Science magazine in November 2002.  This cold, hard look at the science found that biomass “has too low a power density...for biofuels to contribute significantly to climate stabilization.”  Solar energy, even in sun rich America, would require a massive area of land (220,000 km2) to provide the emissions-free energy needed, but all the photovoltaic cells made from 1982 to 1998 combined would only cover an area of 3 km2. 

Wind power, more suited to windy Britain, also suffers the same problem of being an “intermittent dispersed source unsuited to baseload without transmission, storage and power conditioning.”  Hoffert et al do not spend much time on the subject, which tells us much of its real potential for reducing carbon emissions.  For more on its impracticality, we can look at a study by the German government released in February 2005.  It concluded, “Instead of spending billions on building new wind turbines, the emphasis should be on making houses more energy efficient.”  Klaus Lippold MP told the Guardian, “The problem with wind farms is that you have to build them in places where you don’t need electricity. The electricity then has to be moved somewhere else. There is growing resistance in Germany to wind farms, not least because of the disastrous effect on our landscape.”  Another study found that, in order to provide enough power to create the hydrogen needed for hydrogen fuel cells to replace petrol engines in the UK, we would need to build 100,000 new wind turbines, which would cover an area the size of Wales.

Green energy, therefore, while certainly having a role to play, is not a magic bullet.  It cannot cope with energy demands of the scale required to support a growing economy.  That is why Hoffert et al also look at increasing energy efficiency, technologies to remove or sequester carbon and at nuclear fission and fusion.  Indeed, they find that “available reactor technology can provide CO2 emission-free electric power,” although they warn that uranium reserves do not make this a long-term solution.  Nuclear fusion, however, could provide emission-free power “longer than any source other than the sun” but will require considerable research and development.

That is why the Government is right and the Conservative Party wrong in their relative assessments of the role of nuclear power.  If concern about emissions is to drive energy policy, nuclear power cannot be ruled out or relegated to “last resort” status.  The Tory policy cannot hope to meet the demands of a growing economy, especially if there is an intention to replace petrol engines with hydrogen fuel cells in the medium to long-term future.  HMG has also been sensible in its refusal to contemplate subsidies for nuclear power.  The nuclear industry has repeatedly said publicly that it no longer requires subsidies and the government is right to ask them to put their money where their mouth is. 

It is also worth pointing out that fossil fuel technology is advancing rapidly, so much that hydrocarbons are worth considering as part of a clean energy mix.  As Professor Mark Jaccard says in “Sustainable Fossil Fuels,” one of the best overviews of the problem available, “Viewed according to their quality and quantity, and the technological potential to use them differently than we currently do, fossil fuels can play a key role over this century and beyond as we pursue an enduring, benign and affordable energy system.”

The best energy policy for the United Kingdom and for our role in the world would be to recognise that the central government responsibility of ensuring economic growth requires an expansion and retrenchment of energy supply sources.  Secondary to this should come a desire to minimise carbon emissions by a variety of methods: elimination and sequestration of emissions from fossil fuel use, expansion of nuclear power, use of renewables where effective and improved household efficiency.  Subsidies to fossil fuel use should be eliminated and no subsidies introduced to try to favor inefficient energy generation methods that will just become drags on the economy.  As a result of the improved economic growth a sensible energy policy will bring, the UK could then revamp its development policies to help developing countries with whom the UK has a special link improve their resiliency to environmental change.

For conservatives especially, it is important to remember that the modern economy depends on energy use.  We cannot go back to the Wordsworthian rural idyll.  Ramping back energy use means leaving many to freeze in the dark.  That is neither a message worth sharing with the world nor one that reflects conservative precepts.  As I write this, Environment Minister David Milliband has just suggested that households should have individual carbon rations, complete with a debit card that checks off your allowance of emissions every time you spend money.  Ultimately, that is the road down which emissions reduction theory leads us: the Environment Ministry in control of the economy.

Comments

[Donal Blaney]

Iain's article is far-sighted and thoughtful. He highlights the way in which our current generation of political leaders are too easily swayed by leftist activist groups and bien pensant thinking as exemplified by the BBC and Grauniad. Embracing such an agenda would show that the Party was thinking more broadly about a key issue and that we are acting as a government in waiting, rather than part of a cosy consensus that does nothing to protect our country's energy needs (which as Iain shows are fundamental to our national interest).

[Peter Franklin]

Iain, what do you believe to be an acceptable limit for the historically unprecedented rise in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide?

[Peter Franklin]

Donal Blaney: "He highlights the way in which our current generation of political leaders are too easily swayed by leftist activist groups and bien pensant thinking as exemplified by the BBC and Grauniad."

Donal, these are cheap remarks. Conservatives including Margaret Thatcher, John McCain, Michael Howard, John Gummer, OLiver Letwin and Peter Ainsworth take the views they do because they have examined the evidence and made up their own minds.

These are intelligent and principled people, and though you may disagree with them, you had better be sure that you are at least as well informed as they are before portraying them as the dupes of the Guardian.

[Donal Blaney]

I am not saying they are dupes of the Guardian, Peter (and I dispute your list of people who you say are principled and intelligent). However the power of the BBC and the Guardian have ensured that there has not been a proper energy policy developed that is actually in our national interest and I think Iain has made a very valid contribution to an issue that is all too often overlooked.

[Peter Franklin]

On the contrary, Donal, the BBC etc have been singularly unsuccessful in loosening the stranglehold of the energy dinosaurs on Government policy - not that the media dinosaurs have an interest in trying too hard.

[Sean]

This is a very, very good article that clearly lays out the economic and social arguments for an energy policy that is based off commonsense. By engaging with our friends and allies in the Commonwealth, Britain can do a lot more than what is currently happening. I fear that this message will be lost in a sea of "carbon emission" hysteria.

[Graham Clark]

"Nuclear fusion, however, could provide emission-free power “longer than any source other than the sun” but will require considerable research and development."

I watched a fascinating programme on "The Sun" broadcast on BBC4 earlier this week.

If I understood this programme correctly, high temperatures and pressures at the sun's core provide the conditions in which hydrogen nuclei protons fuse together (they don't want to do so as they are both positively charged) to make helium. Each helium nucleus is slightly lighter than the combined mass of the four protons from which it is made. The small amount of mass lost in the fusion process produces a huge amount of energy.

This was demonstrated by Einstein in his famous equation e = mc², where e = energy, m = mass, and c = the speed of light, which is 670,616,629 mph.

The sun's fusion process was first recreated in the hydrogen bomb, which is effectively a bag of hydrogen squeezed until it releases its energy.

Controlled nuclear fusion was first achieved in a machine called ZETA (Zero Energy Toroidal Assembly) at what is now known as the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire in 1958.

In the same laboratories today, gas plasma is being squeezed and heated to over 100mn°C, several times the sun's core temperature, by being bombarded by a stream of fast neutrons. Unfortunately, this fusion process, which lasts for just one second, uses more energy than it creates.

However (and I now turn in part to UKAEA's website as "The Sun" was a bit short on detail), ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is under construction at Cardache in France. This is the first fusion device designed to achieve sustained burn, in pulses of over 500 seconds, and thereby become self-heating and produce up to 10 times as much energy as it consumes.

The first fusion power station may, though, be 50 years away.

Paragraphs 39 and 40 of the "Global Energy Security" document adopted by the G8 leaders at their meeting in St Petersburg last weekend state -

"39. We will take measures to develop other promising technologies including construction of advanced electricity networks, superconductivity, nanotechnology, including nanobiotech, etc. We welcome recent initialing ITER agreement by the participating countries and take this opportunity to encourage R&D programs on fusion energy within its framework.

40. We shall facilitate closer ties between fundamental and applied research to promote the earliest economically viable market entry of these technologies."

"A couple of weeks ago, for example, the kaolin processor Imerys said that it would cut 800 jobs next year as a result of high energy prices. Michael Grubb, head of the Carbon Trust quango, even admitted last month, “In the future, European companies may decide to make big investments abroad, say in Brazil, because Europe is too expensive. There is an option of driving energy- intensive industries out of Europe.”

Spot on. Imerys will stop manufacturing glossy paper coating material around St Austell and instead focus on the production of paper filler clay. Its production capacity of coating material in Brazil will be expanded accordingly.

Today's "Cornish Guardian" highlights the appalling scale of job losses which the county is facing.

"As Cornwall continues to assess the implications of the hundreds of job losses announced by Imerys, the Cornish Guardian is this week calling on the Government to provide more support for the communities affected. We have spoken to MP Matthew Taylor (Liberal Democrat, Truro & St Austell), Restormel Borough Council chief executive Gareth Pinwell and council leader Tim Jones, who are backing our campaign to get the Government to give more help - both financially and practically - to the areas which will feel the impact of the clay company's changes.

Mr Taylor said: "I have had meetings with Imerys and they do seem to be very set on the changes that they are making. I will be working with them to see if there is any way in which the numbers of jobs which will be cut can be minimised, but we are going to have to look at the situation with the view that whatever happens there will be substantial job losses."

He said the main aim now was for pressure to be put on the Government to make St Austell and the clay communities a priority area for support from it as well as from regional bodies and from Europe.

He said the Government should also be urged to reconsider the decision to put on hold until 2016 plans to fund the A391 link road which will connect St Austell to the A30.

Mr Taylor said: "The Government offered support to Longbridge when the MG Rover factory announced it was closing - the impact of the Imerys changes here will be worse than what happened there. One thousand jobs in Birmingham isn't a lot, but the same amount here is enormous.

"I have looked at it and three per cent of all jobs will go through Imerys and I expect that to double through the companies which support and supply the company in the local area so that is six per cent of all jobs being lost.

"When you add that to the jobs lost through the closure of RAF St Mawgan next year, we are heading towards one in 10 jobs in the community being lost."

Mr Taylor said the current priority area is Camborne, Redruth and Pool, but there was an urgent need for St Austell to be given the same status.

He said: "We need to get priority for St Austell and we need to make the Government understand just how big an issue this is down here."

Restormel leader Tim Jones and regeneration portfolio holder Annette Egerton echoed Mr Taylor's thoughts in a letter they sent this week to the Prime Minister and to industry minister Margaret Hodge in which they ask for urgent dialogue on the situation.

The letter states that the council is keen to work with the Prime Minister to create the strongest possible future for the people affected and the economy of the Restormel area.

Cllr Egerton said: "There are several key issues which we need to raise at national level, including the need for special assistance for Restormel as a result of this recent announcement and it is imperative that the upgraded A391 road to serve the area of Restormel is given the utmost priority as it is an essential piece of infrastructure to secure the long-term regeneration of the area."

The Cornish Guardian is this week launching a campaign which will give you, the readers, the chance to have your say and press the Government to take action on this issue.

With this article is a form which can be signed and sent back to us. We will ensure every completed form is sent directly to the Prime Minister and that Mrs Hodge also receives a copy.

We will continue to follow the efforts of the Area Action Force and put pressure on those who can help influence the decisions which will shape the future of our communities."

[Matt Wright]

Intersting article. We do need to think more clearly about energy. Security of supply is also important. We are an island pretty much sitting on coal - lots and lots of it! Yet we think about coal in an old fashioned way. Our Party more than any should lock onto what we could do and the new clean coal technologies. These include well tested technologies that can gasify coal underground and tap it off and even sequestrate the CO back down afterwards! Pilot plants are running. Time for Conservatives to get serious and ahead of the game because wind farms don't work and nuclear still has many issues to be sorted and a new programme is a long way off even if we started now,

Cllr Matt Wright

[David Dundas]

I agree with Ian Murray's opening paragraphs where he points to the apparent lack of concern for global warming by present leaders, but they are flexing their muscles for an election and most of the population are not especially concerned by GW so it is not an election topic. More's the pity.

Where I start to disagree with Ian is in some of the detail and suggest a look at my article on nuclear power posted here earlier in the year at http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2006/07/david_dundas_ou.html

The most significant omission Ian, is any mention of heat pumps as a way to heat our buildings. Did you know that for every single kW to power them you get back 4 kW of energy, which can be cooling in summer or heating in winter. Apparently over half of Swedish homes are heated with heat pumps. All this makes John Gummer's statement in his Quality of Life Report, a bit daft when he warned the Heating and Ventillation industry that Conservatives are proposing to ban air conditioning in commercial buildings from 2010. An air conditioning unit is a one-way heat pump, but the right design can be used for heating as well.

You seem to forget that fuel cells to power vehicles need electrical energy to produce their fuel. One way or another it is clear that we need to consume most of our energy via electricity not generated by burning fossil fuels. Whilst wind, solar etc can make a big contribution, there is no way that they can replace fossil fuels alone, only nuclear can do it and time is running out fast. Our politicians need to get off the pot now, and ensure that new nuclear power stations are built very quickly.