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Are we powerless to avoid blackouts as 'energy crunch' looms this winter?
History, like fashion, comes in cycles and for a while now Britain seems to have seen a return to all that was bad about the 1970s.
Unemployment has begun to creep upwards, struggling businesses are considering three- or four-day weeks, the national debt is mounting and any light at the end of the tunnel may have just been snuffed out by predictions of power cuts.
Following hot of the heels of the credit crunch, experts are warning Britain is facing an energy crunch. If proved right the recent rise in gas and electricity prices will seem a mere head cold compared to the double pneumonia of a country plagued by blackouts.
"I'm old enough to remember the three-day week of the 1970s and my children doing their homework by candlelight," says energy expert Professor Ian Fells, who has spent the last eight years trying to convince the Government of the realities of an energy crisis. "Everyone said that situation could never happen again, but it could and it will if nothing is done.
"It feels as though we are sliding slow motion into a train crash. If we have blackouts, which is a distinct possibility, it effects everything. Our economy will dwindle to nothing, the stock exchange will be suspended, our hospitals would shut down.
"In the past people have accused me of exaggerating the situation, but the figures are the Government's own and the time for burying heads in the sand is long gone."
It was back in September that Professor Fells' report, commissioned by Sheffield-based industrialist Andrew Cook, highlighted in stark terms the "fearful void" in energy policy. Over the next decade many nuclear and coal-fired power plants will be decommissioned and no one as yet seems to have worked out how to compensate for the short-fall.
Then Energy Secretary John Hutton, described the report as overstating the risks and underplaying the work which was already taking place to shore up the country's energy supply.
However, if Prof Fell felt like a lone voice, this wasn't to last. In the three months since the report's publication, support has been growing, culminating last Friday when a House of Commons committee admitted that without immediate action the country could be blighted by power cuts.
"We first raised the issue in 2000, when we said plans really needed to be in place within two years," says Prof Fells, of energy consultants Fells Associates, based in the North East.
"However, about the same time, the climate change lobby really started to determine Government thinking. The following year a White Paper was published which said the situation wasn't as bad as had been feared. It concluded that we didn't need any more nuclear plants and any loss could be made up through the use of renewables.
"Suddenly in 2007 there was a total U-turn. Another White Paper indicated that actually the Government was in favour of a new fleet of nuclear power stations. The current UK energy policy is not fit for purpose and, because of all these delays, there is still no comprehensive plan to address the short-term short-fall.
"It's all very well to say we need new nuclear power stations, but implementing that is really rather difficult."
By 2020 the country will have lost generating capacity equivalent to a third of current electricity demand, and while there has been much publicity and support for the rise in renewable fuels, the figures don't yet seem to stack up.
According to Prof Fells, the UK is supposed to generate 10 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, but the figure currently stands at just six per cent.
With the Government already pumping 1bn into the field in subsidies, some have begun to question whether in these straitened times it is value for money.
"Many coal-fired power stations are coming to the end of their lives," he says. "Eggborough was built in 1966, the first phase of Drax opened in 1974 and while it is possible to keep these sites going, like keeping an old car on the road, it's very expensive.
"It's not just the maintenance side of things, but if they exceed stringent European Union regulations on emissions they are hit with heavy fines. Renewable energy has become a bit of a buzz word, but the balance seems to have become skewed.
"Yes they are an important part of the energy mix, but we are already failing to meet the targets and it's simply unrealistic to think they will be able to fulfil all our future energy needs."
Inevitably Prof Fells and his supporters have attracted the anger of environmentalists, who have been lobbying the Government against the building of any new coal-fired power stations. Much of their efforts have been centred on plans by Eon for a new plant in Kent which would provide energy for 1.5m homes. Campaigners, who have signed petitions in their thousands, claim the company is guilty of putting profits before people, and the Government now appears split over whether to approve the plan.
"This is exactly the kind of dithering behaviour which has got us into this current mess," adds Prof Fells.
"The Government doesn't seem able to make up their minds and it beggars belief that the people involved with making these very important decisions have no experience of the industry. Although coal is polluting, it is something over which we have greater control.
"Currently the default position is to build gas-fired power stations. The problem is that 50 per cent of the gas we import comes from Russia and the Middle East, both of which are politically unstable and, while the price is variable, it is going up.
"Basically we would be putting ourselves in hock to politically unstable suppliers and surely no one can think that is a satisfactory outcome.
"Improved technology would mean new coal fired plants could reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. It may not be an ideal solution, but in terms of security of supply and cost it's the best idea we have. At the moment, energy has to take priority over climate change."
As an interim solution, Prof Fell has also suggested laying electricity transmission lines to Norway, Germany and Denmark, but with the National Grid having already issued short-fall warnings it may be a case of too little too late.
"Hard decisions need to be taken and they need to be taken now," he says.
"There is no point thinking we will be saved by wind power or some other such alternative. I'm looking out of my window now and it's totally calm, there is not even a light breeze. The other day I checked and wind power provided 0.01 per cent of the UK's electricity needs, that's fine if you have a back-up, but soon we could be in a position of having to rely on unreliable and erratic sources
"The real danger year will be 2014, but if we have a prolonged cold snap through January and February then we could reach crisis point much sooner."
It's the kind of shock headline that Greenpeace is used to hearing and one which they unsurprisingly have little time for. "All over the world, jobs are being created in the renewable energy sector, but Britain has been left behind for too long by the negative white flag approach to climate change," says the organisation's chief scientist, Doug Parr.
"Professor Fells has a long-standing love affair with the technologies of the 20th-century, but as time goes by, his fetish for coal and nuclear power looks increasingly naive."
Sadly, if no one can decide on the best way forward, we might all be stuck in the dark ages.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
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Cloudy
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