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Britain’s pro nuclear National Policy Statement on Energy is outdated and must be reviewed

In deciding when to review part of a national policy statement the Secretary of State must consider whether there has been a significant change in circumstances. If there has been a significant change in circumstances on which the policy regarding the need for new nuclear power stations was based; and if those changes were not anticipated at the time then the policy should be reviewed.

TASC concludes that the case for a review of EN-1 is unanswerable

National Policy Statement on Energy  NuClear News No 88 Sept 16 The government has a legal duty under section 6 of the 2008 Planning Act to review the National Policy Statement (NPS) on Energy, according to lawyers Leigh Day, because of dramatically changed circumstances over the last five years since the national policy statements enshrining the nuclear element were first published.

A report by Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) underlines the government’s duty to undertake a review and demonstrates why new nuclear has to be written out of the government’s energy policy.

The sections of the Overarching NPS on Energy (EN-1) which the TASC report says show the policy needs to be reviewed are section 3.5.1 to 3.5.11.

Section 3.5.8, for instance claims that:

“…nuclear power is economically competitive with other forms of generating technology (including the lowest cost renewable technologies) and new nuclear is likely to become the least expensive form of low carbon electricity generation.

” Section 3.5.9 says:

“…it is important that new nuclear power stations are constructed and start generating as soon as possible and significantly earlier than 2025.”

It is also worth noting that section 2.2.22 says:

“Looking further ahead, the 2050 pathways show that the need to electrify large parts of the industrial and domestic heat and transport sectors could double demand for electricity over the next forty years.”

Section 3.3.14 says:

“As a result of this electrification of demand, total electricity consumption (measured in terawatt hours over a year) could double by 2050. Depending on the choice of how electricity is supplied, the total capacity of electricity generation (measured in GW) may need to more than double to be robust to all weather conditions. In some outer most circumstances, for example if there was very strong electrification of energy demand and a high level of dependence on intermittent electricity generation, then the capacity of electricity generation could need to triple. The Government therefore anticipates a substantial amount of new generation will be needed.”

The TASC report argues that a basic assessment of electricity demand up to 2050 was not carried out before the final NPS was published. This was admitted by the Government in October 2009. Nor was an assessment made of the potential for energy efficiency, which the Government itself regards as more cost effective. It would have made more sense to assess the potential for the cheapest option – energy efficiency – before deciding how much energy we need to generate.

An Energy Efficiency Strategy was finally published in November 2012, after the National Policy Statement on Energy was approved by Parliament. The Ministerial Foreword to the Strategy says energy efficiency could save the equivalent to the energy generated by 22 power stations through socially cost effective investment in energy efficiency.

Thus, the policies and decisions regarding the need for new-supply side infrastructure were made before a full assessment had been carried out of the potential for demand-side measures that the government itself agreed constituted ‘one over-arching simple truth: the cheapest energy we all have to pay for is the energy we do not use’.

Britain is consuming 17% less energy than it was in 1998, (1) and 15% less in 2014 than in 2000. (2) When Hinkley Point C was first mooted by the government in 2006, official projections were that today’s electricity consumption levels would be more than 25% higher than they currently are. Despite our GDP having increased by 18% over the decade, demand for electricity has consistently fallen year on year, largely due to far more efficient usage. (3)

Installing energy efficiency could be £12 billion cheaper than the construction of Hinkley Point C according to consultants Utilitywise. The cost of implementing energy efficiency measures is estimated to be less than £6 billion, while the construction of the new nuclear plant Hinkley Point C is expected to cost around £18 billion. Utilitywise has called this cost an “unnecessary expense” and highlighted the opportunities to reduce energy consumption through efficiency.

Edie 1st Aug 2016 http://www.edie.net/news/6/Energy-efficiency-would-be-cheaper-thanHinkley/30645/

A crash programme to replace all the lights in the UK with LEDs could cut electricity bills, and cut peak electricity demand by about 8GW, a saving of about 15% of all power consumption.

Ecologist 8th June 2016 http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2987760/the_urgent_case_for_an_mass_s witch_to_led_lighting.html

In deciding when to review part of a national policy statement the Secretary of State must consider whether there has been a significant change in circumstances. If there has been a significant change in circumstances on which the policy regarding the need for new nuclear power stations was based; and if those changes were not anticipated at the time then the policy should be reviewed.

TASC argues that the data upon which the original policy was based has changed so fundamentally over the last few years that a review of the NPS as expressed in EN1 is obligatory under Section 6 of the 2008 Planning Act. All government targets can be met without the nuclear component and TASC urges the Secretary of State to re-examine the policy and amend it to remove controversial, costly, dangerous and politically toxic nuclear power from the mix……….

TASC has drawn up a number of pathways, using the very latest 2014 DECC evidence. These showed how ‘demand-side-led’ pathways more successfully achieve government policy objectives than all the government pathways, all of which involved more nuclear power stations……….

The potential for energy saving – seen as an important contribution to energy security – was not fully assessed by the Government until November 2012 when its Energy Efficiency strategy was published, after EN-1 had been presented to, and approved by, Parliament in June/July 2011. TASC’s pathways lead to greater energy savings than the government’s pathways which all involve new nuclear power.

TASC’s pathways equally successfully achieve the government’s energy policy objective of ensuring a diversity of supply sources, and in some cases more successfully, than do policies involving a nuclear component………

All TASC’s pathways would cost the country less than any of the government pathways.

TASC’s pathways achieve reductions in CO2 emissions more successfully than the Government’s pathways.

TASC concludes that the case for a review of EN-1 is unanswerable http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo88.pdf

September 10, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY, politics, UK