Can’t buck the market? The market can certainly buck us

Alex Doherty — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:44:56 +0000

IN THE course of just one day, the most right wing American administration in living memory calls on the United States Congress for billions of dollars to bail out the country’s financial system, the Portuguese launch the world’s first wave power plant and British Energy is subject to a French takeover. So we no longer have any ownership of our energy infrastructure.

There are a lot of clichés we hear from politicians these days. Three of my favourites are: “We will learn the lessons”, “The family have been informed” and “Ownership does not matter”.

The last one is a catchphrase of Business Secretary John Hutton. We never hear it when politicians are talking about housing, of course. Forcing people to buy houses they could not afford is the main cause of the current economic mess.

And “Ownership does not matter” is not a phrase you hear from people who actually own things, such as Warren Buffet and Lakshi Mittel – or the French, for that matter. They will now have a constant stream of profits from their British energy business. Every time we turn on the lights, cash will stream across the channel.

The Business Secretary says this is good for Britain. He has persuaded a foreign firm with some intellectual property to take over and run yet another faltering British industry. So now we will get four new French nuclear power stations.

The modern British economy is a bit like the tennis at Wimbledon. Although Britain never wins the big prizes, we put on a good show. Most of the prize money goes overseas, but if we are lucky we get to stand on a hill and watch the action on a big screen.

In this Alice in Wonderland world, the British are the winners. The French have cheaper energy than us because they foolishly failed to embrace the market and instead invested in their energy industry for the long term. Now they have a product they can export across the world and reap the rewards. Just how silly is that?

Meanwhile, the global energy giants we put our faith in are refusing to invest in British renewables. As private firms, they see more lucrative investments in existing energy sources elsewhere. To most observers, this country is facing a looming energy gap. Because of our obsession with not bucking the market, we stand a good chance of being bucked by it.

Portugal has no indigenous carbon energy sources and yet it has managed to obtain more half its energy from renewables. Locked into free-market dogma, progress in Britain has been pitiful.

We can begin to turn this around when the Energy Bill comes back to the House of Commons. MPs can give renewables the support they need with some preferential help as regards tariffs in order to encourage investment,

But we need to go much further. The current global crisis in the banking sector shows the limits of regulation. When oil was discovered in the North Sea, it was soon realised that it was going to be a long-term and risky business bringing it to shore. A public sector business, the British National Oil Corporation, was established to undertake this challenge. If we are now to take on the challenge of developing a serious renewable energy industry, particularly in the capital-intensive wave and tide power arena, we will need a similar public sector champion: a British national renewables corporation.

Unlike the wind, you can set your watch by the tides around Britain’s coast. If the Portuguese can harness wave power, so can we. With a global shortage of credit, we cannot wait for the private sector to come to the rescue.

Banks are being saved by “nationalisation” in the United States and now our nuclear industry is being “nationalised” by the French. If we want a significant renewables sector, its early stage of development will require a large-scale public sector solution. It will be a better long-term investment than Northern Rock. And this time we will have to do it ourselves.

Nick Matthews teaches at Coventry University

Good, But Not Good Enough

The Staff — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:44:27 +0000

from zerocarbonbritain:

Energy Secretary John Huttton MP has announced a massive drive for offshore wind power, providing all the electricity for Britain’s homes by 2020.

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) applauds the government for recognising the urgency of climate change and the potential of offshore wind farms in Britain’s future energy mix.

In its zerocarbonbritain report released earlier this year, CAT detailed how the UK could generate all its energy from renewable sources by 2027, meeting around 50% of this demand with offshore wind farms.

This would require approximately 140 offshore wind farms the size of the 1GW London Array spread out around our 8,000 mile coastline. This is more than four times the Government’s proposed 33GW from offshore wind.

Zerocarbonbritain details the policies and technologies that could reduce our emissions from fossil fuels to zero within 20 years. The report demonstrated how we could reduce our energy use by 50% through energy efficiency measures, then deploying a wide range of renewable energy technologies to meet the reduced demand.

“Crucially, we need to reduce our energy demand significantly in the first place,” CAT Engineering Consultant David Hood said. “The government plans to produce 20% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020 – but if we used energy more efficiently, we could produce around 40% of our total energy needs from renewables by this date, en route to becoming 100% renewable by 2027.

“Reaching zero carbon emissions is now clearly a scientific necessity; this report shows that doing so is technically possible – it now needs to become socially and politically thinkable,” he said.

On top of the offshore energy provision, approximately 30% of electricity would come from marine technologies such as tidal and wave power, and the rest from a mix of biomass-fuelled combined heat and power (CHP), building-integrated photovoltaic panels, onshore wind turbines and hydroelectric schemes. Heat could come from CHP, solar thermal, ground-source heat pumps, biomass and efficient electric systems.

Balancing a completely renewably-powered is the biggest engineering challenge for a fossil fuel-free Britain – but there are many emerging technologies detailed in the report which can solve this problem.

Following the success of zerocarbonbritain, CAT (in collaboration with the Public Interest Research Centre) is planning a Europe-wide zero-carbon energy strategy, mapping out a pathway to show how the entire EU could rapidly decarbonise – watch this space for zerocarboneurope!

renewables | ukwatch.net

Can’t buck the market? The market can certainly buck us

Good, But Not Good Enough