Hinkley C and one of privatisations little ironies...

On Tuesday Ed Davey gave the official go-ahead for Hinkley C, a 3260MW nuclear plant that will be located in Somerset. The news wasn't much of a surprise, and the reaction was even less surprising - dismay from Caroline Lucas and the Green's, and perhaps some justifiable apprehension about how this might impact on the development of the renewables industry. Most people, including myself, greeted the news, if not exactly with delight, then with a fair amount of satisfaction.

 To those who think that renewables alone will lead us out of our energy crisis, I offer you a choice between gas and coal or nuclear power? If your answer to this question is coal or gas then you have some peculiar priorities, but do not imagine that you can pick neither. At present, the only renewable technologies that are commercially viable in this country are solar panels and wind turbines. The problem with these technologies is their reliance on weather conditions. This is not to denigrate renewables - the institute for Public Policy Research produced an excellent report demonstrating their effectiveness at lowering emissions - but it does mean that this intermittency must be guarded against with 'back up' energy. Currently this comes in the form of either gas or coal-fired plants. New nuclear power will likely take some of the coal out of this equation, removing huge quantities of CO2 that would otherwise have been pumped into the atmosphere.

You can argue all you want that nuclear is costly, but in my opinion the expense is worth it. As long as tidal and other forms of hydropower remain works in progress, nuclear is our best hope at substantially reducing our emissions.  Facts is facts: nuclear is a carbon free solution.

As ever, I fear that the real reason for rejecting nuclear power on the part of some environmentalists is far more cultural than scientific or economic. Of course nuclear carries some risks, but history demonstrates that these risks have been vastly inflated by rhetoric and imagination, rather then real life disaster.

There was one thing, however, that struck me as being a little odd in Davey's speech; his decision to make the announcement before the strike price had been agreed with EDF. Of course, this is likely to feed speculation that the project will be even more expensive than first predicted, but it also reminds us of the fact that we are almost wholly in the hands of foreign companies as we attempt to dramatically transform our means of producing power. In a wonderful article, James Meek describes the irony of the Thatcher government of the 1980s selling off large swathes of our energy grid, under the auspices of small state, market liberalisation, only to have these assets bought by foreign, often state-owned corporations. As well as making British energy subject to the decisions of German and French ministers, privatisation also had the effect of disposing of any industry expertise that Britain once possessed. When the Central Generating Electricity Board was broken up and sold off, with it went Britain's capacity to design and build its own nuclear power stations. One can't help but wonder how much better placed we might be as a nation to respond to the challenge of climate change had we been able to keep this expertise. Is it not also a little chastening to Osborne & Co that the past actions of his party have led directly to a situation in which her majesty's ministers must negotiate with an arm of the French state over the future of British energy? I thought this lot weren't prepared to dance to the European tune.