The Prime Minister yesterday issued a rallying call to the world to respond
urgently to the increasing threat of greenhouse gases which are transforming the
climate of our planet. But with Britain leading the way in
Climate change has undoubtedly become an increasingly vivid reality in the public's consciousness, both through Hollywood blockbuster movies and a greater awareness of severe weather events. Political leaders, including Tony Blair, call it one the greatest challenges facing the planet. Now that we're all "on the same page", it is probably a good point to start making some of the difficult decisions about how we are going to tackle it.
The Kyoto Protocol is an important first step in mobilising international action. But even the longest journey starts with a first step. And actions taken now have disproportionately more effect than those taken later. The protocol set the industrialised countries targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared with their 1990 levels. Britain is on target to meet its commitment of a 12.5 per cent cut by 2012. However, looking to the future, we need to be aiming for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions of about 60 per cent by the middle of this century to avoid the worst- case scenarios for climate change. Yet Britain's emissions actually rose by 1.5 per cent between 2002 and 2003.
Many of us want to believe in the promise of largely benign renewable energies, such as wind and solar, to satisfy completely our seemingly insatiable appetite for energy at low cost to the environment. But now, when there is so much at stake in averting a climate crisis, is not the time to retreat into wishful thinking.
Renewable energies are currently nowhere near being ready to step up to fulfilling a major proportion of our energy needs. Most experts agree that even the British target of generating 10 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010 is, although an admirable aspiration, already very ambitious. And to illustrate this challenge we must realise that renewable sources accounted for just three per cent of electricity in 2002.
Nuclear power is an unpopular child of the energy family - and giving it any attention is often seen as a snub to the more palatable choices of wind, wave and solar. But we should not be afraid to point out that, as an energy source, it is relatively "climate-friendly", producing virtually no carbon dioxide in the production of energy, and, as such, should be given serious consideration.
Keeping the nuclear option open should not be seen as a trade- off with support for renewable energy. Britain must do a better job of reaching its targets for renewables and reducing the wasteful use of energy. And there is security in a diversity of supply.
In the short to medium term, it is difficult to see how we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels without the help of nuclear power. Britain currently relies on nuclear power to generate about a quarter of our electricity. However, since all nuclear power stations are scheduled to reach the ends of their lives within the next 30 years, it is not clear how the Government intends to make up this shortfall.
Unless the rate of development of both renewables and energy- efficiency measures seriously steps up to bridge the loss of capacity resulting from the phasing out of nuclear power, Britain will become more reliant on fossil fuels, which is inconsistent with an overall aim of drastically reducing our carbon-dioxide emissions. In fact, according to the Government's own estimates, we will be more dependent on fossil fuels to generate electricity in 2010 than we were in 1995.
With many power stations reaching the end of their lives in the next few years, our nuclear-energy capacity in 2015 will be about half what it is today on current projections. Given that it takes about 10 years from the commissioning of a nuclear power station to it providing electricity, Britain would need to start building significant nuclear capacity, taking full advantage of the technical advances that have taken place elsewhere in the world while we have turned our backs on this technology. And we need to start now just to ensure the status quo in the future. Endlessly postponing a decision today is as good as saying no to nuclear power tomorrow.
Clearly, any plans to build any new nuclear power stations must be accompanied by a strategy for dealing with the long-term storage and disposal of the radioactive waste that they will produce. Britain must have a solution to the long-term storage and disposal of existing radioactive waste, much of which was a product of the civil and military nuclear programmes of the 1950s, and new waste from the operation and decommissioning of the present generation of nuclear power stations. However, we do not necessarily need to have this solution before making a decision about the building of new nuclear power stations.
If we are to tackle the ominous spectre of climate change, we must seriously consider all the options open to us and - whether we are from the political, scientific or environmental communities - not fight shy of making and defending difficult decisions.
Lord May of Oxford is president of the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, and was chief scientific adviser to the Government 1995-2000
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