Date published: 2008/10/01
The Cambridge Energy Forum sponsored a "debate" tonight about the "energy problem". So we in the UK want cheap and "carbon free" energy, so how do we get there. There were three speakers, Candida Whitmill (some consultant or other), Fiona Harvey (environment correspondent for the Financial Times) and David Mackay (physics professor in Cambridge). They each spoke for about ten minutes, and then after a break there was over an hour of discussion with the audience.
Candida Whitmill was co-author of a recent report which suggested that power cuts were imminent in the medium term in Britain. She argued that security of supply is even more important than climate change.
Fiona Harvey dismissed that. And her main point was that there is plenty of money waiting to pile into renewable energy. The real problem holding back Britain was the planning system. Basically, Britain spends far too long discussing things and not enough time actually doing anything. Well, she is totally correct, but unfortunately the current planning system works to the benefit of the academic middle class (e.g. so-called environmentalists and other NGOs) because it means they can stop pretty much any big project for years and years, if not forever. No government has yet been willing to take away the power from these control freaks. And unfortunately the government does not properly compensate people who lose out from infrastructure developments, but if less money were wasted on lawyers and consultants blathering incessantly, then this money could instead be used to compensate the losers.
David Mackay has written a book on energy and his main point was to suggest one way Britain could meet its energy demand in 2050 in a low-carbon way.
As is to be expected in any such event in Cambridge, the audience was packed full of the academic middle class. But surprisingly, most of the questions and discussion more or less made some sense. Needless to say, in such a short time nothing substantive could really be discussed.
The one issue that not only divided the speakers (Whitmill and Harvey) but also some in the audience was the question of whether the lights would indeed go out in Britain in the medium term (because old power plants are going to be wound down and new ones are not opening up fast enough). It's always amazing when two experts can completely disagree on something like that. We shall find out.
One of the Cambridge hi-tech luminaries suggested that high oil and gas prices were a good thing, because it would mean people would consume less, so there would be fewer carbon emissions. Well, this kind of argument is dumb on several levels. The first problem with this argument is that high oil and gas prices will mean that more coal will be used to produce power, perhaps not in the EU, but certainly in China and elsewhere, and coal is far worse than oil and gas for carbon emissions. And the second problem with this argument is that it is only ever made by rich people (e.g. the academic middle class), who of course are responsible for far more carbon emissions than most other people. The average British citizen is not going to be persuaded by the rich to back reductions in carbon emissions with the line that "yes, we are going to make you poorer, a lot poorer, don't expect to ever have the lifestyle that we have". This is where almost all the so-called environmentalists fall down.
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