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Wednesday, 19 November 2008
As seen on TV...
I spent yesterday lunchtime shivering my extremities off and squinting into the sun on Blyth Quayside while being interviewed for BBC TV's Countryfile programme. The gist of the programme was the trade off between impacts of energy projects in local habitats vs the need to tackle global climate change. My argument was that it wasn't that simple - if climate change goes unchecked, the local habitats will suffer anyway.The previous interviewee was Prof Ian Fells, a well known media figure, who had recently written a policy paper on UK energy supply, which he had been discussing. The most controversial statement in this document is its first statement "Security of energy supply must now be seen as taking priority over everything else, even climate change." Interestingly the rest of report demonstrates a low carbon energy scenario based on nuclear which could go a long way to tackle climate change - in other words security vs climate is a false choice. I suspect this sentence is designed to grab the headlines.
The central thesis of the paper is to change everything to electrical energy (road transport and domestic heating included) and use nuclear plus the Severn barrage and a bit of wind to supply that electricity. But the issue of uranium reserves is not tackled - other estimates of the security of that supply suggest that they could run out in less than a decade under a high-nuclear scenario (eg Paul Mobbs in Energy Beyond Oil). Overall it is a good read, but very partisan - wind is described as 'highly subsidised' but the levels of subsidy to the nuclear industry not mentioned etc.
I made a few comments to this end, but I don't know if they'll make the final cut. The piece will go out on the morning of Sunday 30 November on BBC.
I made a few comments to this end, but I don't know if they'll make the final cut. The piece will go out on the morning of Sunday 30 November on BBC.
Labels: energy, nuclear, terra infirma, wind turbines
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:23
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
