News

The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser.

19 November 2009

Over the next two decades we will need to replace around a third of our electricity generating capacity if we are to continue to meet demand and unless we make much greater use of renewable energy we will struggle to reduce carbon emissions, as part of our commitment to tackling climate change.

We will also need to create more gas storage infrastructure. The existing planning system for major infrastructure is cumbersome, complicated and costly, and simply isn’t up to this challenge and that’s why the Labour Government is reforming the development consent regime for major infrastructure.

The Planning Act 2008 delivers the framework for a more efficient, transparent and accessible planning system, with sustainable development at the heart of this new regime and last week the Government published the first draft National Policy Statements for energy – which is now out for consultation.

A Framework for the Development of Clean Coal has also been published setting out the most environmentally ambitious set of coal conditions of any country in the world. It means that there will be no new coal fired plant without Carbon Capture and Storage commitments which will lead to a long term transition to clean coal.

This part of our energy strategy has been praised by Greenpeace, the Trade Unions, The Green Alliance and the industry but Mr Cameron’s Conservatives – who have no plausible energy policy – are opposing this and the other elements of our strategy.

Britain already has more offshore wind capacity than any country in the world and last year wind energy provided electricity for more than two million homes.

The opposition claims to be a supporter of renewable energy but across the country Tory MPs routinely queue up to campaign against wind power – or what Mr Cameron himself described as ‘bird blenders’.

We have also spelled out our future strategy for nuclear generation and published a provisional list of possible sites for new nuclear power stations.

During the eighties I used to campaign with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth against the expansion of nuclear power and in Dover I used to turn out to demonstrate against the importation of nuclear waste through the port and through the town and I still have my reservations about safety and sustainability.

There have been too many serious nuclear accidents in different parts of the world and no one has yet come up with a safe way of storing nuclear waste over the longer term. That said, I appreciate the fact that nuclear is a virtually carbon free industry and that it achieves the sort of energy independence that gas, oil and coal fail to provide.

The new Energy Act will enable the industry to come forward with plans to build and operate new nuclear power stations as part of the UK’s strategy for a secure, diverse, low carbon energy mix but the Kent site at Dungeness does not feature on the provisional list of approved locations. On the job front this is not good news – but it might allow us to sleep a little easier in our beds.