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30.10.2001 The Guardian - Out of thin air
John Vidal asks the renewable energy industries how they would spend the money currently used to finance nuclear power

Some time in the next few months the government will decide whether to allow the next generation of nuclear power in Britain. It will be contentious, especially with new security considerations, but the industry has said it wants six new power stations which they would hope to build on existing sites. At a very conservative estimate, on today's prices, a new generation of six 600MW nuclear stations generating 3,600MW of electricity a year would cost about £6bn. But could Britain do without nuclear power, and if so what would be the political and social costs and benefits?

We asked Britain's renewable and energy-efficient industries what they could do for the same money, and to consider the wider implications of being charged with taking up the near 20% of power that Britain now gets from nuclear energy, as well as the expected growth in demand. We offered wind, solar and combined heat and power a nominal £1bn each, spread over 10 years, and we then further "invested" £500m into wave power and fuel cells - two power generation sources expected to have a major impact in the future. On top of that we offered £500m towards energy saving. This compares with the government's commitment to "stimulate the market in renewables" to over £1bn a year, but only to spend £250m on development of renewables over the next three years.

The wind industry, though in line for £39m in offshore wind development grants, said that they did not need money to expand massively to take the place of nuclear. "The market, the technology and the understanding of the environmental benefits are there already," says Nick Goodall, chief executive of the British Wind Energy association which represents more than 160 companies now generating wind on shore and off. "Wind energy is already the cheapest fuel in Britain. All we would need to expand is for local planning decisions to reflect national policy, and a removal of the government-imposed artificially high cost of wind power."

Goodall says that major companies are now drawing up plans for 500MW wind farms, (almost as large as the expected new nuclear plants) and that 117 new on- and off-shore farms will be built in the next year. "Oil and gas companies are starting to diversify. We've never had so much interest," he says. But he would like to see the national grid strengthened and better access given to it for smaller companies whose wind farms are in remote places. This, he says, might cost £100m. He sees no reason why wind could not provide up to 20% of all Britain's energy needs within 10 years.

Wind power today is where solar would like to be in 10 years' time. Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century, Britain's largest "solar solutions" company, says £1bn invested in photo-voltaic (PV) electricity would kickstart the British industry, build a manufacturing base which would have infinite export potential, and could, within 10 years, provide 1,000MW of electricity for the same price as nuclear today. Right now, with only £16m development money from the government, Leggett foresees only 10MW of solar power in Britain in four years' time.

Yet two of the largest companies in the world, Shell and BP, are both investing heavily in solar, though not in Britain. "They say the government needs to move from sending signals to stimulating real demand," says Leggett. "They think a 30MW per year market, or 15,000 roofs per year, would be needed before manufacturing could be justified in the UK. "Solar is job-rich," he says. "Every manufacturing job is estimated to lead to five jobs downstream." Rather than retro-fit roofs, he would like to see the 2.5m new homes and tens of thousands of new business premises expected to be built in the next 10 years equipped with solar power. "The average home takes about 2MW, so this investment could easily provide for 500,000 homes," he says.

Combined heat and power (CHP), an old energy-efficient technology which converts mainly gas directly into electricity to heat and power groups of buildings, is forecast by the government to expand considerably over the next decade."If £1bn was invested in the industry it would have a dramatic effect on British energy supply and could take its share to 30% of all electricity generation," says David Green, chief executive of the CHP association.

Last week the government announced a scheme to install 6,000 micro-CHP plants in poor households. British Gas suggests that 1m to 3m households could be using micro-CHP within 10 years. There would be massive energy savings, with social benefits, and new factories could be built on old nuclear sites.

But there are other nascent technologies that are widely predicted to play a major part in moving the world from a dependence on oil, nuclear eneregy and coal to a truly sustainable electricity generating industry over the next 50 years. Wave power has perhaps the greatest global potential of all. In the UK alone it is estimated that the recoverable energy resource exceeds all electricity demand. "A £500m investment over some years would put us into a different sphere because we could build larger generators, and greatly cut down on costs. We could produce about 750MW of power for £500m," says David Langston of Wavegen in Inverness.

The other nascent industry with the potential to change the way we live is fuel cells. Several thousand companies are working on the technology which potentially could power everything from mobile phones to cars and homes. It is run on hydrogen, with next to no pollutants, no carbon monoxide, and is as cheap as electricity today. Efficient energy saving could be the easiest way to avoid building nuclear plants. Eoin Lees, chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust, says Britain could save 12.5% of the power it uses in its homes by 2010 at no extra cost (in fact, with a paper profit of £150 for every ton of carbon saved). Simple measures like ensuring energy companies waste less, stimulating community environment projects, tackling fuel poverty in homes, and tightening the screw on domestic appliance makers would all make a difference.

The back of the envelope balance sheet therefore runs as follows: money offered to renewables: £4.5bn. Money accepted: £3.1bn. Total MW generated: at least 5,000MW. Between them, the industries consulted believed that they could also employ the numbers - and more - who would be made redundant from Britain's nuclear plants. To put it in perspective, said one renewable industry leader, the £4.5bn it would cost Britain to truly embrace sustainable energy is "less than two months' spending on education and the equivalent of about 600 cruise missiles".
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited