There's more to coalitions than mathematics

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For those of us who favour independence for Wales, yesterday’s opinion poll showing increased support for both Plaid and the Green Party is clearly good news. The fact that the larger of those parties has declared that independence is not on the agenda for the next Senedd term, even if there is a majority in favour amongst Senedd members, takes a little of the sheen off; although, in practical terms, getting to that point as a result of the sheer difficulties of persuading London to allow a referendum is little different from getting to that point by not trying. Nevertheless the apparent willingness of a full 50% of the population to vote for independence-supporting parties is a dramatic turnaround in Welsh politics. It’s a huge step forward, which would have been hard to believe just a few years ago.

It is, of course, just one poll, and things could change between now and May. I’ll admit that, after having spent the 40 years from 1971 heavily involved in Welsh politics, the idea that the Labour Party could really be relegated to equal fourth place on 10% of the vote is still a little hard to believe, no matter how many polls suggest it, and no matter how attractive it might be as an outcome. Previous polls had suggested that a Plaid-led government was the likeliest result in the new Senedd, as long as Labour either participated in some way or at least acquiesced, but this latest poll suggests the possibility of a Plaid/Green coalition without Labour’s involvement – a much more significant break with the past.

Certainly, there is a strong policy crossover between those two parties, probably stronger than that between Labour and Plaid, if policy statements can be taken at face value. That crossover is not total, however, and there is a danger in performing simplistic mathematics to predict a government without considering the differences as well as the similarities. One of the most obvious areas of potential difficulty, it seems to me, is over energy policy. A pragmatic approach to politics has sometimes led Plaid politicians to oppose new nuclear power stations only in the places that no-one wants to build them, whilst supporting wind and solar projects only in the places that no-one wants to build them.

The stand-out question in this context is whether a Plaid/Green government would be for or against Wylfa Newydd? Energy policy itself is not a devolved matter; to the probable relief of both parties, the next Welsh Government won’t have to take the yes/no decision on the project, so perhaps the parties would be able to come up with some sort of fudge. That might be more difficult if the First Minister himself takes a clear view in favour, and there are a host of other ancillary decisions which could either facilitate or frustrate the project where Welsh ministers might well need to take a position. The implications of new nuclear power for a future independent government are significant either way. I’m sure that I’m not the only voter who will be wondering, when it comes to putting the cross on that paper in May, whether I’m voting for or against expansion of nuclear power in Wales – and at the moment, we don’t have that certainty.

Words, not action

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For as long as most of us can remember – at least the last 60 years or so – nuclear fusion reactors have been the great promise for the future, and they’ve always been just 20-30 years in the future. Based on experience to date, and the problems still to be overcome, I will confidently predict that, 20-30 years from now, operating fusion reactors will still be just 20-30 years away. Only in the land of make-believe (otherwise known as Global Britain) would local authorities be putting time and effort into bidding to host a power plant which we don’t yet know how to build and which is unlikely to be built for at least half a century. In the meantime, the only type of nuclear power generation which we do know how to build and operate is the fission reactor, and any realistic talk of expanding nuclear power production is inevitably going to be based on that technology. And whilst there has long been talk of alternatives to uranium and plutonium (such as thorium), switching to a different technology would itself add time and cost to the development of the first power stations.

When nuclear energy generation started in the 1950s, the promise was that the electricity would be ‘too cheap to meter’, a forecast which has been proved spectacularly wrong. As things stand, I don’t believe that there is a single nuclear power project, anywhere in the world, which is not both much-delayed and running hopelessly over budget; pinning the hopes for future energy generation on this technology looks like a triumph of hope over experience and reality (which is at least, I suppose, a good match for the PM’s natural temperament). To add to the uncertainty, the UK government seems to be pinning its hopes on building a new type of reactor, or Small Modular Reactors as they are known. Whilst it would be unfair to refer to this as an entirely untested technology, it is nevertheless true that there is only one such reactor actually operating in the world today. And – ooh, look, it’s Russian. I’m sure that they’ll be willing to share their experience to help us free ourselves of dependence on Russian fossil fuels. They’ll probably see it as an opportunity to sell us their uranium instead. Even with the best will in the world, and a great deal of luck, the idea that these power plants will be rolling off a production line somewhere within the next few years is credible only to those who believe in unicorns and the benefits of Brexit. Which brings us, of course, to the current UK government. Today’s announcement of what it refers to as an ‘energy strategy’ (a title chosen, presumably, because it is neither a workable strategy and nor will it generate much electricity anytime soon) talks of there being 6 or 7 new power stations operating by 2050 – by the time the sunlight hits those uplands, it will have been filtered through so many sky-borne pies as to leave us in almost total darkness.

Even if the timescales were remotely achievable, and even if the unsolved problems of dealing with the radioactive waste could be solved (I assume that Ynys Môn council will be volunteering to host at least its share of the waste for a few thousand years in the meantime, given its enthusiasm for the technology), the proposals put forward today would still be, at the very best, a long-term solution to an immediate problem. And a very costly solution at that. It’s a huge missed opportunity; there are plenty of other quick and effective things which the UK and Europe could and should do to bring to an immediate end the dependence on Russian fossil fuels, including more energy-saving measures.

There are a number of possible reasons for the failure to act now. One of them is the attempt to minimise the pain felt domestically; but all of the so-called ‘crippling’ sanctions on Russia will have little impact whilst European countries continue to pay Russia billions for oil and gas. Trying to stop the war ‘painlessly’ is a recipe for the continuation of the slaughter. Another is the continued insistence on competition rather than collaboration as a guiding principle. Germany drags its feet over cancelling gas contracts, the UK has been slow to impose penalties which would impact its financial sector; both are looking after their own interests rather than working together. Sharing available resources – and the pain involved in a reduction in availability – would be much more effective.

But I can’t help but wonder whether there isn’t another, more Johnsonian, element to the publication of today’s ‘strategy’. His whole career is littered with the remnants of grand and expensive plans, announced to a great fanfare, which solve nothing in the short term but can be talked up incessantly for a year or two before being quietly abandoned before they start to cost serious money. Being seen to ‘act’ (i.e. talk) now is a way of doing nothing in the end. It’s his whole modus operandi – why would he change now?

Managing our legacy

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Yesterday’s Western Mail contained an outline of the processes involved in decommissioning a nuclear power station.  I can’t find the story online, but it doesn’t really matter – with a few changes of verb tense, it was identical to this story published in the same paper in December last year.  (As I commented yesterday in relation to another issue, I suppose it saves on the cost of journalism.)

The article itself set out the steps which need to be taken to decommission a nuclear power station, in a process which is planned to take a total of 90 years.  In the case of Trawsfynydd, we’re already more than 20 years through the process – only another 70 to go.  In the case of Wylfa, we’re just starting; almost all of the people born this year in Wales will be dead before the job is finished, to put things in a human perspective.

Wylfa 2, if it is ever built, is scheduled to produce electricity for 60 years before its own 90 year decommissioning process starts.  According to the plans, the company which runs the site for those 60 productive years will be paying for the 90 years’ decommissioning process at the end of that.  I doubt it – that’s not the way capitalism works.  The belief that any profit-driven company will put enough money aside over six decades to fund an essentially unknowable cost over the following nine decades strikes me as being akin to believing in fairies.

But worse still is that no-one knows what to do with the waste recovered in the decommissioning process.  As the report to which I linked above puts it: “Meanwhile, everyone is crossing their fingers and hoping that someone will find a safe place to bury it before [the 2040s]”.  Yes, that’s right – it depends on a vague hope that someone will come up with a solution which has eluded us for the past 50 years.

We can’t do much other than hope for a solution in relation to the nuclear stations which were built so optimistically in the 1950s and 1960s.  We’re stuck with the legacy of nuclear waste bequeathed to us by those who took the decisions at the time.  We can do something, though, about the legacy that we leave to our great, great, great, great, great grandchildren in relation to Wylfa B.  We could resolve not to leave them the same legacy that was left to us, by not building the plant in the first place.

What is it about coal?

Tweet Jeremy Corbyn isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, to peddle the idea that we should seek to restart the dormant coal industry in order to exploit the massive reserves which still exist underground.  It’s sad - on energy policy, at least, he was doing quite well up to that point, but now he’s blown it.

Like others who’ve put forward similar proposals in the past, he’s intelligent enough to know full well that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology which has never been successfully scaled up to that which would be required for large scale deployment.  Perhaps one day it will be, although I doubt it.  It’s not just the technological issues of capturing enough of the carbon; it’s also the issue of what to do with it afterwards.  Pumping it underground is the usual proposal, but the long term security of that is very much an open question.

In the meantime, the ‘promise’ of CCS, in some form, at some future date, is used by apologists for the coal industry as a way of justifying continuing – or in Corbyn’s case, apparently, accelerating – the use of the dirtiest fuel of all.  He, like some others, seems to be seduced by the attraction of the coal industry.

There are of course those who simply don’t accept that any element of climate change is in any way man-made, and I can understand why anyone taking that view might see coal as a cheap option, whilst not really caring whether CCS ever does come to fruition.  But Corbyn and others on the ‘left’ don’t seem to be in that category. 

Instead, the ‘left’ seems at times to have a romantic attachment to the idea of a coal industry, bound up with an appreciation of the sense of community which surrounded pits, and the radicalism which often grew from those communities.  I can see the attraction of those aspects of the mining industry of the past – but I can’t escape the import of those last three words, ‘of the past’.

In community terms – even if not in environmental terms, or health terms – many places in Wales might still be more vibrant and confident if the mining industry had not been decimated.  The main drivers for that decimation were economics and breaking the power of the unions; the environmental advantages of moving away from coal were entirely accidental to the government of the day – but those environmental advantages are not ones which we should just ignore and throw away.

The past can often look better than it was – particularly to those who didn’t live in it – but it’s not a place to which we can return.  Rebuilding our shattered communities is no small task; the destruction wrought upon them during the 1980s in particular has left a terrible legacy.  But the way to do it is by looking to a cleaner future, not trying to go back to the past.

The only environmentally safe coal is coal which is left unburnt in the ground.  Failure to recognise that is to seek to build hope around a false promise.

How sincere are they?

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Yesterday’s announcement by Plaid that it would seek to produce 100% of Wales’ electricity needs from renewable sources within 20 years sets a clear and achievable target which I’d entirely support.  Coupled with proposals for reducing demand, it sets the scene for an approach to energy in Wales which will help to decarbonise our economy as well as creating jobs in a more sustainable economy.  There is nothing in the announcement by Llŷr Gruffydd with which I would disagree, and if the party is serious about it, it would draw a very clear line between Plaid and the other parties currently represented in the Assembly on the issue of energy.

There is inevitably, however, a question about the extent to which the policy is credible.  Is it one supported by the party as a whole, or only by its energy spokesperson and friends?  If we vote for Plaid Cymru candidates, are we voting for this policy, or are we voting for whatever the individual candidates say, which may well be very different from the stated policy?

There are two large holes in the party’s credibility on this issue, and there was nothing in yesterday’s statement which gave me any confidence that the party intends to plug those holes.

The first and most obvious is Wylfa B.  How can anyone who is planning to generate 100% of Wales’ electricity requirement from entirely renewable resources support the building of a new nuclear reactor in Wales, particularly if such a reactor is likely to meet Wales’ electricity needs anyway?  It makes absolutely no sense at all.

And the second is that making use of renewables includes more use of wind energy, yet Plaid politicians are often prominent in opposing wind energy schemes wherever they’re proposed.  Supporting something ‘in principle’ and then opposing it in practice doesn’t make for credibility.  And I’m not even sure that many of them support it in principle.  I’ve certainly heard some of Plaid’s elected members repeating the lies and half truths of anti-wind campaigners.

It frequently sounds as if the party is in favour of wind turbines only where no-one wants to build them and against nuclear power schemes only where no-one wants to build them – the latter being a point I made in the party’s 2010 conference.  Simply announcing a new policy does nothing to bridge that yawning credibility gap.

I’d be delighted to be able to vote for the policy announced yesterday – and in some parts of Wales, voting for the Plaid candidate might amount to the same thing.  But in wide swathes of Wales, voting for the Plaid candidate would be, effectively, a vote against the policy the party announced yesterday.  For sure, all parties have problems at times with individuals who disagree with the party line on a particular issue.  But in this case, the problem is much more fundamental and widespread than that, to the extent that claiming that ‘the party’ has a policy is rendered meaningless.

Taking a step backwards

Tweet It was disappointing, although hardly surprising, to see that Plaid have watered down the party’s opposition to the building of new nuclear power stations in the election manifesto.  I don’t actually know whether Plaid has changed its policy on nuclear energy; I only know that the policy appearing in its General Election manifesto isn’t the one that the party held when I was involved.  Perhaps it has been formally changed with the consent and involvement of the members; perhaps those writing the manifesto have simply decided to ignore the formal policy in favour of a rather more honest statement of the party’s position.  But “We continue to oppose the building of nuclear power plants in new locations” is a step back from opposition to any new nuclear build, which was the party’s formal position until very recently.

It is, of course, more honest than claiming to oppose something which a number of the party’s candidates and elected members are actually campaigning for (although it’s still not as honest as stating the party’s actual de facto policy on energy, which is that individual elected members and candidates are free to take any stance they like).  Gareth Hughes was rather less than entirely kind to me in his report on the last Plaid conference which I attended in 2010, when he reported that I had suggested that Plaid was in danger of opposing nuclear power stations only on those sites where no-one wanted to build them.  My comment was intended as a criticism, not as a suggestion for future policy; but since, as far as I am aware, no-one is suggesting that any new nuclear power stations should be built in entirely new locations, it now seems to have become formal party policy.

Does it matter?  At one level, then of course, the question of how Wales meets its needs for electricity is a mere question of detail; it’s not a core nationalist issue.  And a party which first and foremost seeks support for independence could probably avoid having definitive policies on a whole range of issues.  (Although there is a question to be answered about its impact on the asset and liability balance sheet if independence is ever achieved.)

But that isn’t the stance which Plaid has taken.  And in an election where it has clearly been attempting to promulgate the message that there’s no need to vote for the Green Party in Wales because Plaid is already filling that slot, the absence of a coherent energy policy makes that claim untenable.  In addition, building a new nuclear station in Wales renders much of the renewable capacity which the party’s manifesto also claims to support irrelevant other than as a means of exporting electricity; it has nothing to do with meeting Wales’ needs.

And the biggest hole of all in the resulting policy is that on nuclear waste.  Nobody supporting the building of new nuclear power stations can, with any honesty or credibility, oppose the siting of the waste storage and treatment facilities which are an inevitable concomitant. 

There's more to fracking than safety

Tweet I feel a certain amount of ambivalence about the opposition to fracking being expressed by some politicians in Wales.  Personally, I’m opposed to fracking.  We really shouldn’t be seeking new sources of fossil fuels at all; we should instead be seeking a renewables-based future.  But in the absence of a clear plan to achieve that, our economy has become increasingly dependent on gas.  Both the availability and the price of that gas have been impacted by fracking in America, and even if the gas we use isn’t directly produced by fracking, it would not be so readily available on world markets were it not for fracking.  It seems to me that a willingness to go on using gas whilst refusing to exploit domestic resources is a less than honest position to take.  It’s like saying that we’re OK with the environmental damage as long as it’s happening somewhere else.

The decision of the Assembly last week to call for a moratorium until the safety of the technique is proved has been hailed as some sort of success.  I fear that they are celebrating too soon.  Calling a temporary halt to something for a reason which can be overcome is not the same as stopping it completely.

I would have thought that AMs would have learnt something from the debacle of the M4 relief road.  During the One Wales period, there were plenty of people calling for the plan to be scrapped entirely on environmental grounds.  But caution prevailed, and it was, instead, shelved on narrow cost grounds.  It was obvious – or should have been – at the time that the cost objection could be overcome, and that the scheme could and would then be resurrected.  And it duly came to pass.

Back to fracking, and the comparison is simply this: if it can be shown that fracking can be undertaken at an acceptably low level of risk (and nothing is ever entirely risk-free), then the objection is removed and fracking is back on the agenda.  Those opposing fracking may believe that the safety arguments are strong enough, but I’m not convinced.  Certainly there have been problems in the US, and I wouldn’t want to dismiss them out of hand, but as the technology matures and more experience is gained, I’m sure that those who stand to make their fortunes from fracking will be able to produce adequate evidence that it can, in most circumstances and locations, be undertaken safely.

So if we really want to stop fracking, we have to reject in principle the exploitation of further fossil fuel resources, rather than reject one technique on narrow grounds at a point in time.  And we can only do that if we have a plan to stop using fossil fuels and move to a renewables-based future.

And that highlights another problem.  Some of the politicians opposing fracking also oppose every plan which comes forward for renewable energy; others support new nuclear build.  Their position seems to have nothing to do with putting forward a coherent renewable energy policy, and little really to do with the safety of a particular technique – it’s all about jumping on populist bandwagons in their own electoral interests.  We need rather more long term thinking than that.

Journalistic licence

Tweet Last Friday’s Western Mail contained this little story which included the paragraph:

John Dixon, who was Plaid Cymru’s chair from 2002 to 2010, told Wales Eye the fresh controversy showed the party’s policy on nuclear energy was incoherent.  He said: “On nuclear energy, whether the party is for or against depends on who you speak to.”

It’s obviously based on this posting on Wales Eye, from the 27^th June.  However, the Wales Eye story doesn’t actually say either that this was something which I had “told Wales Eye”, or that it was in response to the “fresh controversy”; both those little fictions (or should we say “journalistic embellishments”?) are entirely the property of the Western Mail.  I don’t know who runs Wales Eye, but as far as I’m aware, I’ve never had any communication whatsoever with those running the blog; and certainly didn’t speak to them or anyone else about this story.  Apart from anything else, I was out of the country at the time.

The words attributed to me, though, are undoubtedly mine.  They’re lifted from this blog posting in July last year, but I’d have needed to be very prescient to comment on a trip to Japan almost a year before it happened.

Does it matter?  After all, the comments were made on a blog which is in the public arena even if not particularly widely read.  And I haven’t changed my mind about what I wrote a year ago.  Whilst Plaid’s de jure policy is to support renewables and oppose nuclear energy, the party’s de facto policy is that its members are free to take whatever stance that they wish on energy policy – and no party taking that position can claim to have an honest or coherent energy policy.

Context is important though.  The story in which the quotes were used was really nothing to do with energy policy at all.  It was about two other matters entirely – one overt, the other less so.

The overt focus of the story was a criticism by a Labour politician of a Plaid politician for accepting hospitality from a company which is seeking to gain and maintain political support for its proposed development.  The words which came to my mind were pot, kettle, and black.  A brief glance through the register of interests of AMs or MPs will reveal that many of our elected members – of all parties – are only too happy to accept the generous hospitality of companies in many fields.  Only the politically naïve could believe that the companies concerned spend money in this way with no ulterior motive in mind.  I’d prefer that our elected representatives maintained a greater distance from capitalists on the make, but I have no great expectation that that will happen any time soon.

The less overt aspect of this story was the quote from a “senior Plaid Cymru figure”, which was clearly a knife aimed at the back of Rhun ap Iorwerth.  This sort of unattributable briefing has become a pernicious problem for the party since the establishment of the Assembly, and owes more to internal personal rivalries and ambitions that it does to a debate about energy policy or any concern for the future of Wales.  It’s one of the less savoury practices which some party members have learned from observing New Labour in action.

So, whilst I don’t and can’t object to either Wales Eye or the Western Mail quoting selectively from this blog, it strikes me as unprofessional to present an old quote on an issue of policy as though it were a quote on either the question of accepting hospitality or an intervention in the internal rivalries of a party.

Windy Tories

Tweet It was always understood that the subsidy regime for the wind power industry was intended to create the conditions for the industry to mature, and that, when it was sufficiently mature, the subsidies would be reduced or removed.  And that’s not a policy with which I would particularly quarrel per se.

Whether the industry has actually got to that point or not is another matter.  I don’t believe that it has, but I accept that others may interpret things differently; and it’s not a question which has a simple yes/no answer - it's inevitably a matter of opinion, not fact.  It is, though, a question which doesn’t even seem to have been asked before the Tories announced their latest policy on abolishing subsidies if they win the next election.  The announcement seems to have little to do with energy policy as such, and everything to do with what they think will be popular amongst their target electorate.

The closest that they come to serious consideration of energy policy in the announcement is to declare that, if all currently consented turbines are built, agreed EU targets will have been achieved.  That’s one of those statements by politicians which is ‘true’, but completely misses the point.  The objective of using renewable sources is to reduce carbon emissions, not simply to achieve a negotiated EU target which is, by its nature, inadequate to achieve the necessary level of carbon reduction; but as so often happens, the target seems to be being treated as an end in itself.  Achievement of the agreed target is obscuring the objective which the target was meant to promote. It's a common problem with a target-based approach.

I don’t doubt that the abolition of the subsidies to onshore wind will be welcomed by shire Tories, in Wales as in England, who want all the benefits of clean electricity produced ‘somewhere else’.  But the subsidies (and massive ones at that) paid to keep the cost of producing energy from fossil fuels low will continue unabated – basically because the subsidies are not so visible to the end consumer, and the environmental costs of production are elsewhere.  They are effectively proposing to switch the balance of support to more carbon-intensive sources of electricity.

Time will tell whether this is really the election-winning strategy that they hope; but it is certainly not much of a carbon reduction strategy.

(As an aside, it’s interesting to note that, having declined to devolve planning control over wind turbines to the Assembly in the interests of maintaining a ‘national’ strategy for EnglandandWales, they are also proposing to devolve all control over all wind projects to local authorities.  There’s nothing like consistency in politics – and this is indeed nothing like consistency.)

Keeping Wales tidy

Tweet Back in the 1970s, one wag produced a poster which read ‘Keep Wales Tidy – Dump your rubbish in England’.  It was intended to be humorous, although the extent to which it actually raises a smile probably depends on your sense of humour.  I didn’t think, though, that anyone actually took it seriously.  Perhaps I was wrong on that after all.

The question of Wylfa B and nuclear waste is one that I’ve referred to before.  One of the problems that supporters of Wylfa B have is that the construction of a new nuclear power station will inevitably lead to the production of more nuclear waste.  We can’t have new nuclear stations without generating more waste, and that waste has to be stored and handled somewhere.

Trying to wash their hands of any responsibility for the consequences of their support for a new nuclear station means that supporters of Wylfa B are following the advice of that spoof poster – keeping Wales clean by demanding that someone else takes our rubbish.  But wanting the (alleged) benefits with none of the downsides is an irresponsible and selfish approach; hardly the sort of approach which would make an independent Wales a good world citizen.

My nationalism is based on wanting to see Wales taking her place in the world, taking our own decisions, and accepting both the consequences and the responsibility for them.  There’s something very odd to me about nationalists seeking to avoid responsibility for the consequences of the policies they espouse. 

I remember hearing Gwynfor arguing that Wales will be free when the people of Wales start thinking and acting as a free people.  Assuming that someone else will deal with our problems on our behalf falls more than a little short on that score.

Poles and trenches

Tweet An issue much troubling many people in this part of the world at the moment is the proposal for an overhead line to connect the Brechfa wind farms to the National Grid.  The final line is yet to be identified, but some broad corridors have been painted on maps as a basis for consultation.

As owners of land (to wit, a house and garden) which sits squarely in the centre of one of these corridors, we were invited to a session organised by Western Power Distribution recently for them to explain the proposals.  Whilst it was helpful to see the lines on a larger scale map, there really wasn’t a lot to be said.

To be honest I’m not particularly exercised either way about the prospect of a few extra telegraph poles with wires strung between them crossing the field in front of the house, and I don’t really understand the demand from some quarters for the entire route to be placed underground.  It would be visually better of course, and perhaps in some sections of the route which are particularly sensitive scenically it’s worth doing that.  But the disruption of digging a deep trench through the area is not to be lightly dismissed either.

Some of the opposition seems to be more about fighting yesterday’s battles rather than about the line itself; a sort of rear-guard action against the wind farms.  Making it impossible to connect them to the grid would certainly undermine the rationale for building them, but it’s a false hope and a misplaced campaign.

Some of the political opposition is less than honest as well; politicians who claim to be in favour of renewable energy and against fuel poverty doing their best to block renewable energy projects and increase the cost of the energy from those which are approved.

And there’s no small dishonesty either in the claims being made by some that putting the cables underground would cost no more than putting them overhead.  I don’t know who’s doing their sums or where they get their figures.  Western Power Distribution claim that the costs are £150,000 per kilometre for an overhead line and £986,000 per kilometre for an underground cable - six times as much.  It’s possible – of course – that they’ve exaggerated the difference a little, but the difference doesn’t go away just by asserting that it doesn’t exist.  And it isn’t just the installation cost which is different; digging up cables for repairs and renewal costs more than patching any overhead line.

Would I prefer that overhead lines never intruded on the view, anywhere?  Yes, naturally.  I want a nice clear view with no poles and wires.  But I also want affordable electricity when I need it, and I want it from renewable sources.  We can’t always have everything we want.

Subsidising coal, oil, and gas

Tweet This report is worth a read.  It’s not exactly recent (November 2013) but it’s one of those things that I’ve only just got around to reading.

One of the frequent refrains of the opponents of wind farms is that they wouldn’t be built if it weren’t for the subsidies.  Take away the subsidies and no one would ever build a wind farm again.  Like all good propaganda, it has the advantage of being true, as far as it goes.  It isn’t the whole truth though, and they get away with it only because the subsidies for renewable energy are more obvious than the subsidies for other forms of energy.

What this report highlights is that when the subject is looked at more comprehensively, it becomes clear that for every £1 spent to support renewable energy, £6 is spent on fossil fuel subsidies.  The total subsidy, just to the producers of fossil fuels (i.e. without counting consumer subsidies) amounted to some $523 billion worldwide in 2011.  The subsidies aren’t always obvious, and take many forms, some of which are set out in the report.  But the basic message is clear – we are paying more to subsidise fossil fuel then we are to subsidise renewable energy – it’s the complete reverse of the claims made by those opposing renewable energy schemes.

Now, of course, statistics can be selected and it’s important to compare like with like.  We also need to consider the state of development of different technologies.

So, for instance, the world uses much more fossil fuel than renewable energy; even if the subsidy per kilowatt hour were to be the same, one would therefore expect a higher total to go on fossil fuels than on renewables.  In fact, given that renewables is a newer and still developing technology, the subsidy per kilowatt hour is generally likely to be higher than in the case of fossil fuels.

That is not, however, enough to “prove” the point which the antis make.  Subsidies – any sort of subsidies – for fossil fuel encourage their continued use, and mean that renewable energy is competing with subsidised fossil fuel and that people are still being incentivised to continue using fossil fuel.  Take away those subsidies completely, and the requirement for any subsidy for developing new technologies reduces dramatically.

So why does it happen?  At its simplest, the governments paying subsidies are afraid of exposing us to reality when it comes to the cost of energy.  Energy represents such a large proportion of household and industrial costs that governments believe that paying the true cost would be an enormous price shock.  So they take all sorts of actions to reduce and/or hide the costs.  We still pay in the end of course through taxation.  We just delude ourselves.

It can’t continue indefinitely though.  Sooner or later we need to face up to the real cost of our demand for energy.  Perhaps then we’ll do what we really need to do, which is to reduce our demand rather than play games with the price.

Markets and unions

Tweet Last week, the UK Energy Minister described the new subsea electricity interconnector running from Scotland to the Wirral as “the perfect symbol of the UK’s single energy market”, accompanied with the now customary warnings to Scotland about how badly they’d lose out if they became independent.

Apparently, independence could mean that English consumers will simply take their electricity from Belgium and France instead.  Well, yes, of course they can get their electricity through other interconnectors, such as the one between the UK and France, the one to the Netherlands, or the ones to the different parts of Ireland.  Interconnectors between grids are rapidly becoming the European norm – and as should be obvious from the fact that the UK mainland already has four of them, three linking to other sovereign states, the existence of a single state is not a prerequisite by any means.

What’s driving the construction of these interconnectors has nothing to do with sovereignty; it has everything to do with increasing resilience of the supply network as more of our electricity comes from variable sources.  It’s an approach which reduces risk.

The trading of electricity across these cables isn’t driven by sovereignty issues either; it’s driven by a combination of market pricing and the obligation to reduce the carbon cost of electricity generation.

What the minister singularly failed to explain is how exactly independence for Scotland changes any of those factors.

Selling planning consents

Tweet Some of what Cameron said this week on fracking is surely indisputable.  It would undoubtedly create jobs, it would undoubtedly lead to major capital investment, and it would undoubtedly increase UK energy security.

His claim about lower energy bills is rather less certain, and has already been disputed by some of those involved in the industry. I don't doubt his sincerity in claiming that steps will be taken to try and ensure minimal direct environmental damage - although the extent to which any of us can be certain that there will not be damage is another question entirely.  He may turn out to be right, but I don’t currently share his apparent supreme confidence.

However, all of that is about the pros and cons at a practical and economic level; the point he did not make was that an all-out commitment to fracking commits us, effectively, to another century of dependence on fossil fuels.  Gas may be the cleanest (although I prefer the term “least dirty”) of the fossil fuels, but it is still a fossil fuel, and it still produces greenhouse gases.

We should also be concerned about the financial deal suggested this week, in which councils in England will get to keep the whole of the business rates from any fracking site (the Welsh Government has yet to decide whether to follow suit).  I can’t argue against the principle that local communities should gain from any such developments if they do go ahead – after all, I have argued in the past that the same should be true for windfarms.  But tying those benefits into the planning process is another matter entirely.

Some have already called it a “bribe”, and giving local authorities a direct financial incentive to grant planning consent certainly seems to be flying in the face of the (allegedly) quasi-judicial planning process.

For decades, local councillors have been told that they must set aside any personal views about developments, avoid taking any view prior to hearing the report of the planning officers, and then judge planning applications purely on their merits as compared with agreed planning policies, almost as though they were in a court of law.  So – is it actually legal to offer local authorities a direct financial incentive to grant planning consent for a development which they would otherwise refuse?  I’m sure that it would not be if I tried it.

CO2, fracking, and fig leaves

Tweet Supporters of fracking – and the increased use of natural gas in general – frequently assert that burning gas produces fewer CO2 emissions than burning coal.  It’s one of those statements which is the truth and nothing but the truth - but it isn’t really the whole truth, particularly when presented in such a way as to suggest that it in any way “solves” the CO2 problem.

It isn’t emissions per se which cause the problem (or potential problem, for those still not entirely convinced).  It is, rather, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.  If the earth’s systems – or even man-made systems – could maintain that concentration at a stable level within the right range, we could burn all the coal we like, with complete impunity.  (Well, not quite of course – CO2 isn’t the only problem with coal, but for the sake of an argument, let’s suppose that it is the only thing to worry about the moment.)

But those systems cannot achieve that; and whilst there is still scope for some debate about the impact of an increase in CO2 levels, there are two facts which are not seriously disputed at all.  The first is that CO2 levels are rising; and the second is that burning fossil fuels by mankind is responsible for at least part of that increase.

We know that burning coal and oil adds to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  We also know that burning methane adds to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  It may add less, but it is still a net addition to atmospheric CO2. What those advocating fracking and a wider switch to gas are supporting is no more than slowing the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2.  It is not about stabilising that level, and they don’t always seem to understand that key difference themselves.

Is it better to increase the level slowly rather than quickly?  Well, yes – although I’d use the phrase ‘less bad’ rather than better.  And if the choice is limited to ‘bad’ or ‘not quite so bad’, then it makes sense to choose the ‘not quite so bad’.  What we must not do though is to allow people to frame the debate as if these were the only two options.  It’s a typical politician’s trick; but it diverts attention and discussion away from other options by effectively removing them from sight.

Ultimately, the argument for fracking comes down to it providing jobs and adding to GDP whilst being less damaging than coal.  It’s also a fig leaf behind which politicians who know that burning fossil fuels is a problem, but want to oppose wind farms, can hide.  But a renewables based energy policy will provide even more jobs and might actually start to address the real issue.  We need to keep that real alternative in plain sight.  And take away the fig leaf.

Parasitic Power Consumption

Tweet There was a letter in a recent edition of the Carmarthen Journal – from one of the usual suspects – claiming that wind farms are 'parasitic' users of power from the grid.  'Parasitic' is a word chosen to give a nice negative feel to it. Wind farms still need some electricity, he said, even when the wind isn’t blowing, and they can only get this from the grid – generated, of course, by other types of power stations, usually those using fossil fuel.  As far as it goes, it’s true, of course.  And it’s equally true, but never mentioned in such letters, that nuclear, coal, oil, and gas power stations need electricity – a great deal more electricity, as it happens – to power their offices etc. when those stations are not generating electricity.

So far, so factual.  The unique element about the claim in this particular letter, however, was that wind farms draw electricity from the grid to keep the blades turning, so that we won’t realise that they’re not generating electricity at the time.  The fact that some turbines can be seen turning on “windless” days is evidence, claimed the author, that the operators of wind farms reverse the turbines and use them as motors to turn the blades.  His final ‘proof’ of the claim was that a retired meter reader had told him so.  So now we know!

It’s not a new claim.  I’ve seen it made a number of times before, and the Internet makes it easy to repeat such claims - usually cross-referencing each other as evidence.  I don’t know how and where the claim originated, although that doesn’t seem to be important those repeating it.  It suits their argument, and the extent to which the claim is repeated makes it commonplace; that’s quite enough for them.

It’s not enough for me, though.  I want more than anecdotal repetition – but there is none to be found.  It should surprise me how many people are willing to believe that the companies really would keep the turbine blades turning on still days just to try and convince us that they are working when they aren’t, but somehow it doesn’t.  It’s akin to conspiracy theories, and much of the basis for most of those is the lack of trust (sadly not without justification) of officialdom in general.  It doesn’t help progress though.

A marketing ploy

Tweet Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices if Labour are elected in 2015 is likely to prove popular, even if the policy seems to be unravelling somewhat at present.  The squealing of the energy companies is likely to be more of a help to him than a hindrance.  Standing up to what is perceived to be an unpopular bunch of fat-cats is hardly an unpopular position to take.

I’m not sure how much of a promise it is though.  If elected in May 2015, and allowing a little time if legislation is required (and I rather suspect that it is) a freeze until the start of 2017 is about 18 months, slightly less than the 20 being bandied about.

Many of the energy companies already offer customers fixed price deals for periods of 12 months at a time – extending that from some customers to all customers and from 12 months to 18 months doesn’t look like the big deal both the energy companies and Miliband are making it out to be.  That’s particularly so if we consider the way in which they achieve their fixed prices.

The price per unit for fixed-price customers is set at the level which the energy companies believe that they can sustain over the period concerned.  As a result, that price may be higher than it needs to be at the start of that fixed period – and lower than it would otherwise be at the end.  “Fixing” prices is not something that they do generously out of the goodness of their hearts – it’s a marketing ploy which they calculate will not adversely affect their profitability over the long term.  By giving almost 2 years' notice of intent, Miliband has given them time to ensure that the base price, at the start of the fixed price period, will be where they think they need it to be. 

Paradoxically, the promise to guarantee no increases for a set period in the future may just encourage higher price increases in the interim.  They won’t do it as openly as that, of course; they will merely take into account future expectations when they calculate the next price increases.  From a business perspective, that's a rational and prudent approach.  From Labour’s point of view it may even be good politics – it’s Cameron who will be blamed for the high prices in the interim – but it isn’t necessarily good economics or good energy policy.

And even if the energy companies don’t simply implement a pre-emptive price increase in advance, they will recover their position after the freeze period.  The only thing of which we can be entirely certain is that, over the long term, a period of frozen prices will not affect their overall profitability – they’ll get our money from us somehow.

The reason given by Labour for this policy is the most depressing aspect of all this.  The “markets are broken” they claim, and the period of frozen prices will give them time to fix them before competition is allowed to run free again. The underlying assumptions are firstly that the markets can be fixed, and secondly that if the market operates properly all will be well.  Would that life were so simple.  Politicians who were serious about controlling energy prices would never expect the free market to deliver that policy for them.  Politicians who were serious about tackling the high profits and fat-cat culture of the energy companies wouldn’t just be talking about a very short-term price freeze.

For all the hype, Miliband’s statement ends up looking like the fixed-price deals on offer in any event from the energy companies – it’s a marketing ploy; no more no less.  The only difference is that he isn’t marketing anything useful – only himself and his party.

The problem isn't one person

Tweet It was entirely inevitable that holding a by-election in Ynys Môn would reopen Plaid’s self-inflicted wounds over energy policy.  However much party managers might wish that the debate could be postponed until after the by-election, it is the fact of the calling of the election which has reopened the question now.  And in the sense that Plaid, or rather its ex-leader, took the decision to force a snap election now, the date of that election is also self-inflicted.  One Welsh blog in particular has devoted some attention to the question over the last week or two, attracting the attention of the Western Mail’s fearless reporters as a result, who made another attempt to keep the story running this morning.

It is by now no great surprise to see Plaid’s "senior sources" turning their anonymous briefings on the member who supports the party’s policy rather than those who would undermine it for perceived electoral advantage, even if the supporter concerned made his comments more than a tad more personal than was entirely necessary to making the point.  But concentrating on what one candidate, whether current or past, thinks on one aspect of energy policy seems to me to be missing the deeper and more relevant points – firstly what is Plaid for, and secondly what is its energy policy?

Some have argued (Cai makes the point here) that whether or not a new nuclear power station is built is not a core nationalist issue, and it therefore doesn’t matter if some of Plaid’s members take a different view. If Plaid were to present itself as solely – or even primarily – a movement for the achievement of Welsh independence, then I’d agree that an awful lot of policy differences could be simply glossed over.  In that context it doesn’t really matter how we generate electricity, does it?

Well, actually, yes it does.

Perhaps the question of how we generate our electricity is not per se a core nationalist issue, but the economic consequences of such decisions are – or should be – very much nationalist issues.  What assets and liabilities Wales inherits at the point of independence is a vitally important question, and responsibility for decommissioning a nuclear power station, and for managing and disposing of nuclear waste, are two massive potential liabilities on the balance sheet.

The argument for independence may never have been primarily an economic one; but the argument against is very much so.  In that context, supporting Wylfa B – without even considering any of the other arguments for and against – gives a massive boost to the Unionist arguments about the alleged unaffordability of Independence.  Insofar as Wylfa B makes any sense at all, it does so only in the context of a continued union between Wales and England.  Nuclear energy makes more sense for large countries than for small ones.

But in any event, Plaid has long since stopped presenting itself as solely – or even primarily – a movement for the achievement of independence; it also seeks to present itself as a party of government.  And whilst I might not agree with those who have tried to push independence almost entirely off the agenda because they lack the imagination or the ability to do both of those things, I agree with the core assumption that a serious nationalist party which sees independence as a gradual process must be prepared to take responsibility in the short term.

Taking responsibility in the short term, however, requires a coherent and consistent policy platform on a range of issues, and as a minimum that has to include the key issues facing Wales and the world in general.  If we think that man-made climate change is one of those issues – and I do, and I’ve heard plenty of Plaid people saying that they do as well – then energy policy is a key element of any response.  And on that issue, Plaid has a serious problem of which the very public disagreement over Wylfa B is little more than a symptom.

If we imagine that a political earthquake were to take place at the next Assembly election and a majority Plaid government were to be elected, what would be that government’s energy policy?  In truth, we don’t know – it would depend entirely on which Plaid members were elected, not on how many of them.  Even if the party had a majority in the Assembly there can be no guarantee of unity over energy policy.  And as the period between 2007 and 2011 demonstrated, even what the manifesto says cannot necessarily be relied upon.

·         On nuclear energy, whether the party is for or against depends on who you speak to;

·         On wind energy whether the party is for or against depends on who you speak to;

·         On the construction of new gas-fired fired power stations, whether the party is for or against depends on who you speak to;

·         And it recently emerged that on the question of the Severn barrage, whether the party is for or against depends on who you speak to as well.

In the light of that disarray, the only way that a Plaid government could deliver any energy policy at all would be if a majority within the Plaid group could secure the support of members of one or other of the opposition parties for their position.  That hardly gives voters for whom climate change is one of their top issues a sound basis for selecting Plaid as a party of government.

During the recent spat, Plaid members have proudly claimed that in their party, members can at least debate the issues freely.  That’s true, and it’s a great strength of the party.  But it is matched by a corresponding weakness in that nobody ever accepts the result of that debate.  The debate never comes to any conclusion, because those who find themselves on the 'losing' side continue to put their case - usually in a very public fashion.  And one of the results of that has been that although in theory the party’s members control policy, in practice the policy is set by those members who are elected politicians and who decide for themselves what stance to take on these issues.  It’s one of the explanations for the shift in real power over policy from the membership to the elected elite.

Clearly the lack of unity over Wylfa B is a problem for Plaid, but in focusing the debate around the views of one candidate the wider point is being missed.  This is an institutionalised problem of a party with an inability to decide on and promote a single consistent policy on one of the most important issues facing humanity.  With all due respect to MH@Syniadau, with whom I usually tend to agree, that really isn’t simply a problem with Rhun.