Will the nuclear decommissioning model actually work?

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The story this week about funding the reclamation work at Ffos y Fran has wider implications than are immediately obvious. Whether the company actually has the money available to carry out the promised reclamation work is still to be determined, although some thorough forensic financial investigation suggests that it has. Whether that money has been deliberately moved around in an attempt to shelter it for the company’s shareholders is unclear, but goes to the heart of the dispute. Court proceedings will answer those questions in due course.

The underlying question, though, is how realistic it is for any company to be expected to set aside large amounts of profit during the operational years of a facility in order to pay for restoration work on completion. Clearly, the suggestion that it is a reasonable expectation was key to the consent for the site in the first place; it is the enforceability of that which is now in doubt. It doesn’t really fit the capitalist model of enterprise which involves initial capital expenditure to get a project operational and then maximum extraction of profit during the operational phase. Committing to several years of heavy expenditure requiring the time and attention of the company’s owners and managers for no return at all really doesn’t fit the model. It should be no surprise at all if any company in that position attempted to avoid – or reduce – its liabilities.

It’s a model, though, in which government seems to be placing blind faith when it effectively allows private companies to build and run major projects. In yesterday’s post, I referred to the long-term implications for an independent Welsh government of allowing Wylfa Newydd to go ahead. The assumptions around the Hinkley Point C project include that EDF will be picking up the full costs of decommissioning through a Funded Decommissioning Programme, and the agreed strike price for electricity provided by the plant includes an allowance for those costs. The problem, though, is that no-one really knows what those costs will be – and the decommissioning work will continue for decades, not just years, during which the company will no longer be receiving any income for the electricity produced. The probability of that actually happening seems to me to be vanishingly small, with the likelihood being that some or all of the cost will ultimately fall back on public funds. The same will be true for Wylfa Newydd, meaning a large potential liability for a future Welsh government. Ffos y Fran is an interesting case study, but nuclear decommissioning is on an enormously larger scale – billions rather than tens of millions. Is that being understood?

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.

Facing two ways at once

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I agree with those campaigning against the dumping of ‘nuclear mud’ off the cost of Wales that we should not allow Wales to become a dumping ground for waste created by others.  There’s some question over the extent to which the waste is, in fact, radioactive, but whether it is or isn’t is irrelevant to the question of whether we should be accepting it or not.

We need to be wary, though, of double-edged swords.  If the starting point is that a country or territory creating toxic (including nuclear) waste needs to find its own method of disposal within its own territory, then it follows that anyone supporting the construction of a facility likely to create such waste must be willing to retain and dispose of the waste created once that facility is completed and operational.  Assuming that the waste is a problem for ‘somebody else’ to resolve is simply hypocrisy.

In Wales, and in the case of nuclear waste, this is a particular problem for Plaid.  Whilst some members of the party are actively campaigning against the dumping of mud from Hinkley off the coast of Wales, others are openly arguing for the construction of new nuclear power stations in Wylfa and Trawsfynydd, without ever seeming to say anything about what happens to the radioactive waste which will be produced.  But if it is wrong for England to dispose of its problem in Welsh waters, it is surely equally wrong for Wales to assume that the waste arising from any new nuclear power stations in Wales can simply be exported – whether to England or to anywhere else.

Those who support the construction of new stations – and I include in that category those who try to argue that extra facilities built on new sites are somehow not ‘new’ at all – need to be prepared to explain to people how and where they intend to dispose of the waste.  Anything else is just dishonest.

Choosing low productivity?

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By apparently preparing to announce its decisions on Wylfa B and the Swansea Tidal Lagoon in the same week, the government has put the two schemes into a direct and wholly inappropriate competition for support.  And they seem determined to come down on what is for me the ‘wrong’ side of that comparison by supporting Wylfa B and rejecting the lagoon scheme.

The financial viability of Wylfa B at the agreed price for the electricity depends on the assumption that the price is sufficient to allow the companies concerned to build and run the plant for some 30 years and then decommission it over a period of some decades and manage the waste in some currently undetermined fashion for the indefinite future, all at no further cost to the public purse.  I simply don’t find this in the least credible; it’s not the way that capitalism works.  A much more likely scenario is that the essentially unknown costs of future decommissioning and waste management will fall back on the government of the day – building Wylfa B creates a huge liability for the future.  That would be a problem for a country the size of the UK; it would be crippling for a future independent Wales.  Wylfa B fails the financial test, let alone the other problems associated with nuclear power.

Nevertheless, the flawed cost figures, built on such a wholly unrealistic assumption, seem to be the main basis on which the government is taking its decisions.  There are risks associated with both schemes, of course.  But the size and near certainty of the financial risk from Wylfa B dwarfs the potential risk from the lagoon scheme; it’s just being ignored.

There was, though, another part of what the Secretary of State said yesterday which attracted my attention, when he referred to the difference in the numbers of jobs created by the two schemes.  Specifically, he said "We are also looking at nuclear provision in Wales that would create 10 times more jobs in construction and more than a thousand extra during operation”.  I suspect that it’s a reasonably accurate conclusion; indeed, it may be an underestimate: he could have gone further and talked about the hundreds of jobs which will be required well into the future for decommissioning and waste management.

I wonder, though, whether he fully understands the economic implications of what he is saying here.  I can understand why any minister wants to be able to point at all the wonderful jobs (s)he has helped to ‘create’; but if we compare any two schemes with broadly similar outputs (whether in terms of KwH, numbers of widgets produced, or whatever), deliberately choosing the one which employs the largest number of people is tantamount to deliberately choosing the scheme with the lowest productivity.  I don’t have any problem with that as an approach; creating full employment is surely an admirable economic objective, and more important for me than maximising the efficiency of individual activities at the cost of reducing the overall size of the workforce, which is the likely outcome of increased automation.  I’m somewhat amazed, though, to see it coming from a minister in a Tory government which is generally obsessed with reducing the size of its own workforce in the interests of ‘efficiency’.

I can think of plenty of other opportunities for employing more people to achieve a specific output, but I somehow don’t see the government supporting them.  Somehow I think it unlikely that this is the start of a new trend. 

Turning a blind eye

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The collapse of the deal to clean up the UK’s Magnox reactors has highlighted some serious flaws in the procurement process, and I suppose it is natural that opposition politicians have jumped upon these to make political points.  But I wonder if the real story here isn’t rather different, and it’s one that neither the government nor the opposition really wants to hear, since they’re both committed to building a new generation of nuclear power plants.

The amount of work required to be done has turned out to be greater – much greater – than that specified in the procurement process for the contract.  Whilst part of that may well be down to failures in drawing up the specification, on my reading of the situation the bigger problem is that the amount of work required was always unknown - and probably unknowable.  “Decommissioning”, in relation to nuclear power stations, is a term tossed around as though those who use it know and understand exactly what is involved.  But they don’t.

The real lesson we should be learning from this debacle is not that people need to be better at drawing up specifications and managing procurement processes, it is that we don’t adequately understand the nature and extent of the work required to decommission a nuclear power station.  And given that the type of reactor proposed for the new stations isn’t the same as the ones currently being decommissioned, the extent to which lessons learned from the Magnox reactors can be applied in the future is inherently limited. 

Despite that, the government, aided and abetted by the main opposition party, seems determined to plough ahead using a financial model which assumes that these unknown and unknowable future costs will be paid for by the companies operating the stations after they have closed.  That suggests to me that they not only do not understand the technical challenges involved, they also don’t understand the nature of capitalist enterprise.  There is no realistic prospect that the costs of decommissioning will fall anywhere other than on the taxpayer, but they are simply pretending that things are otherwise.  Politicians who eulogise the immediate employment prospects whilst turning a blind eye to the longer term costs are either being dishonest or obtuse.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul

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We can’t go on borrowing indefinitely, according to the Labour-Tory austerity mantra, and we need to reduce the national debt.  One of the ways in which that is to be achieved is by getting private companies, or other countries, to fund infrastructure projects, because, of course, they have the money sitting in their piggy banks and don’t need to depend on borrowing.  Or do they?

I’m far from being a fan of the Wylfa Newydd project in any event, but I noticed recently that there’s something curious about the way in which it’s being funded, when compared with the mantra referred to above.  According to press reports, up to £12 billion of the construction cost will be funded by the Japanese government.  So where, exactly, will the Japanese government find such a sum of money?

According to this list, the country with the largest public debt as a percentage of GDP is … Japan.  (The link shows several different ways of assessing the level of debt – I’ve used the column showing the average of CIA and IMF data.  Using one of the measures, the first and second positions of Japan and Greece are reversed, but the basic point still holds.)  So a country which has a debt ratio of 90% of GDP (the UK) cannot afford to borrow more to fund its infrastructure development, but it will instead rely on another country whose ratio is 174% (Japan) to fund that development.  By borrowing the money, of course.

Borrowing is fine, apparently, as long as someone else is doing it.  It only brings about the end of civilisation as we know it when the UK borrows money.  And that brings me back to a common theme on this blog – the decision as to whether a government should borrow or not owes more to ideology than to economics.

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.

Jobs aren't everything

Tweet The new Plaid MP for Meirionnydd, Liz Saville Roberts, is certainly making her mark early in the parliamentary session.  I was always confident that she would.  Yesterday’s Western Mail carried a report of her speech marking the anniversary of Tryweryn.  The speech was powerful and robust.

I particularly liked the way in which a comparison was drawn with what we still see happening in Wales, with a particular reference to the “super-prison” in Wrecsam.  I thought that she was absolutely right when she said that “Almost any atrocity can be justified in Wales on the ground that it creates employment.  This justification is still used today…”.

I entirely agree that we should not allow people to get away with using that justification to inflict developments on Wales which are inconsistent with the way that we want to shape our own future.  It would be a great pity if other members of her party were to undermine fatally such a clear and resolute position by arguing that jobs are so important that there are some things that we just have to accept.  Like a new nuclear power station on Ynys Môn, for instance.

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.

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.

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.

Intelligence isn't always very bright

Tweet People tend to think of ‘intelligence-gathering’ as a murky world of spies, secrets, and interception of communications.  But what gets presented to decision-makers as ‘intelligence’, neatly collated into digestible reports, can often include a great deal of gossip, which is as likely to have been gleaned in chance discussions as by devious methods.  It also seems as though some of the final reports blur the distinction between fact, gossip, and fiction – outright dishonesty isn’t the sole progenitor of dodgy dossiers.

The recent revelation on Wikileaks about the cables sent by the US Ambassador to the then Secretary of State is a case in point.  What it amounts to is that the Secretary of State was being fed ‘information’ about what was happening in Wales which would be utterly unrecognisable to many of those involved.

My favourite bit was this:

Plaid Cymru was “vehemently opposed to nuclear energy.”

The American claimed Welsh Government energy advisor Dr Ron Loveland told the embassy that “even raising the issue of nuclear energy with Welsh Deputy First Minister and leader of Plaid Cymru Ieuan Wyn Jones is ‘too sensitive.’”  Mr Jones has since left those posts.  “This negative attitude toward civil nuclear energy is pervasive in Wales, as several contacts echoed to ESTHOff similar concerns about nuclear waste.”

Given the huge difficulties that Plaid has faced over many years precisely because Plaid Cymru, far from being vehemently opposed, is unable to articulate a coherent policy on the issue, and given that a lot of that difficulty stemmed from the pro-Wylfa stance of Ieuan, this part of the feedback to the US is laughable.

On second thoughts, no it’s not laughable, it’s extremely worrying.  If they can get something as simple as this so wrong, how much more wrong information is being passed back up the line?  Worse still, how many US decisions on how to react to events in the world’s trouble spots are being made on the basis of information of such dubious veracity?

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.

Never mind, it will never happen

Tweet I’m not entirely sure what purpose the Conservatives thought they were achieving by holding a debate in the Senedd this week on the building of a new nuclear power station in Ynys Môn.  It’s not a matter over which the Assembly has any power – and the Tories are usually the first to deride other parties for wasting debating time on matters over which they have no influence.

Whatever the intended purpose may have been, it did highlight the problems with energy policy in three of the four parties represented in the Senate.  (Lack of coherence from the fourth is entirely normal.)

For the Tories, it highlighted a willingness to take a step into the financial unknown in support of their big business friends.  It is entirely clear that no nuclear power stations will be built unless they are given public subsidies, guarantees on prices, or clear undertakings to underwrite risks. The fact that the extent of these costs is currently completely unquantified is apparently irrelevant as far as Tories are concerned.  They will be happy to see all of us, as taxpayers, contribute whatever it costs to enable the large companies involved to make their profits.

For Plaid, it highlighted, yet again, that the party’s energy policy has been turned into something of a shambles by short-term electoral considerations.  The party is, as I’ve commented before, apparently opposed to all new nuclear power stations except the ones that companies actually want to build.  And to read the local press in Carmarthenshire at least, it is in favour of all new wind powered stations except the ones that companies actually want to build. Whilst there are still some in the party prepared to argue the case for renewables – and Cynog Dafis had a paean of praise for wind farms in the latest issue of 'the Welsh agenda’ – overall the party’s stance on energy is now completely incoherent, especially when compared to the clear and unequivocal stance it adopted on energy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Then we come to Labour.  I thought that the comments by the Conservative AM Angela Burns were a little unfair.  Amongst other things she said that there had been little progress from the Welsh government in developing energy policy in Wales. But that’s completely untrue; there has been plenty of progress in developing policy on energy in Wales – the policy on energy produced by the One Wales government between 2007 and 2011 was an extremely good policy.  The problem with the Labour Party stance is that the development of policy and the implementation of policy seem to be seen as two entirely different things.  Policies once developed are put onto a nice big shelf somewhere and the government carries on as though it had never bothered to go through the exercise of developing them.

In any event, the Senate has now declared its support for a new nuclear power station in complete contrast to its previous support for an entirely renewables-based energy policy.  The only saving grace would appear to be that they are no more likely to be able to implement the new policy than they were to implement the old one.

Let’s dump nuclear waste in Ynys Môn

Tweet That’s only a half joking suggestion.

Talking about fracking just before Christmas, I noted that it was dishonest for anyone who supports greater use of gas in generating electricity to then oppose fracking.  If we use gas, we need supplies of gas; assuming that we can get them elsewhere is simply dumping our environmental problems on someone else.  The total availability of gas – and therefore the world price – has been transformed by fracking in the United States; and energy policy based on gas thus depends explicitly on fracking, either at home or abroad. 

There’s a similar problem with nuclear power.  Building new nuclear power stations depends on there being facilities available for storing, processing, and disposing of nuclear waste.  It’s equally dishonest for proponents of Wylfa B to make – as many seem to – the implicit assumption that those facilities will be available “somewhere else”.  Supporters of Wylfa B would sound much more honest to me if they were also lobbying to have nuclear waste stored and dumped in Ynys Môn.  I won’t hold my breath on that.

Those of us supporting renewables can’t escape a similar problem either, although some seem to believe that they can.  Building wind turbines means we need infrastructure – power lines and substations – to get the electricity into the grid.  Whilst there’s always scope for debate about the detail, such infrastructure has to go somewhere.  Arguing for wind power and then opposing the infrastructure would again be dishonest.  So as someone who accepts the need for that wind energy, I also have to accept the need for that infrastructure as a consequence of my preferred energy strategy, and I’m prepared to argue for that.

Politicians arguing for any of those three approaches to energy policy and then opposing the inevitable concomitants are not simply dishonest; they are in a sense promising something which they know to be impossible. So let’s hear the argument for nuclear waste storage on Ynys Môn.

How would it be different?

Tweet Shortly before Christmas, both Labour and Plaid renewed their calls for devolution of policy over energy.  Well, actually, over planning consent for energy related developments; not at all the same thing, although one wouldn’t know that from listening to them speaking.

Leaving aside the element of point-scoring and game-playing (particularly from Plaid in this case, who seemed to be preoccupied with “putting Labour on the spot” for failing to vote for a Plaid amendment in the House of Commons), both parties implied, although wisely avoided saying directly, that devolution of consent would lead to a change in policy in some way.

Now, as a supporter of independence, I’m not going to disagree with their call for devolution of these powers – on the contrary, I’d go a lot further than either of them seems to want to.  I’m concerned though about arguing for something on the basis of a false prospectus; it’s not an honest argument for further devolution.

Let’s take for example Wylfa B.  Would a Welsh decision be any different from a UK one?  I doubt it.  With all the Tories, most of Labour, and at least a third of Plaid AMs likely to support the project, the result would almost certainly be exactly the same.

Or how about TAN 8?  Whilst some AMs make a lot of noise about the need to look at it again I don’t believe that there’s a majority in the Senedd for changing the policy.  (And there’d be no complaints from me on that score – I’m as convinced as ever that Wales does need to exploit its potential for wind energy).

Or how about gas power stations?  The Welsh government didn’t oppose the new station in Pembrokeshire despite the known environmental problems and failings.  There were some politicians in all parties actually supporting it – on the basis of jobs.  What part of that exactly would devolution of this power have changed?

Or what about “fuel poverty”?  This was the specific peg on which Carwyn Jones based his latest call for the devolution of these powers, but there was nothing at all in what he said which indicated how, if at all, he and his government could or would use the powers he was requesting to address the issue.  Energy pricing is not devolved, and neither was he calling for it to be devolved.

There’s something more than a little disingenuous about calling for more powers on the back of problems which either those powers would not solve or else those making the call would not be prepared to use those powers in ways which would solve the problems.  The danger in that is that it discredits the idea of devolution itself, quite apart from adding to the mistrust for politicians.

Verbal gymnastics

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There is a lot with which I can agree in the report (available here) on Energy Policy and Planning published last week by the National Assembly’s Environment and Sustainability Committee.  I was surprised by their apparent faith in the future viability of Carbon Capture and Storage, however.  That faith does not seem to be justified by the evidence at this stage, but that’s a comparatively minor disagreement.  My real disagreement is with what they have to say about nuclear energy and in particular with the support of a majority on the Committee for the construction of Wylfa B.

I tend to agree with the views expressed by Gareth Clubb of Friends of the Earth in the report in the Western Mail, who referred to a lack of evidence presented to the committee which would support their conclusion that there are “strong economic arguments” for Wylfa B.  It looks, rather, as though the supporters of nuclear energy on the committee had pretty much made their mind up before even considering the evidence.

It’s clear from the report’s wording that the committee sees nuclear energy as both a “low cost” form of energy and a “short term” solution.  Unless they are using some very odd definitions of those terms, it’s hard to see how they can make either of them stand up.

The most optimistic estimates of timescales for new nuclear build suggest that it will be at least seven years before any new stations will be exporting power to the Grid.  And given previous experience both in the UK and elsewhere, the most optimistic timescales are unlikely to be achieved.  Short term solution it most definitely is not.

Back in the 1950s / 1960s, it was claimed by the proponents of nuclear energy that the electricity produced would be ‘too cheap to meter’.  It wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now.  The construction costs of new stations are enormous, as are the decommissioning costs, and it is clear that new stations will only be built in the UK if the government stumps up massive subsidies.  The subsidies may be disguised in terms such as underwriting waste management costs, but subsidies they will be.  Low cost?  No chance.

The report’s conclusion that nuclear energy is an essential part of the energy mix is rather fatally undermined by the attempt to claim that it is only so if new stations are built at existing sites.  This is simply verbal gymnastics; if nuclear is an essential part of the energy mix, then whether it is built at new or existing sites is irrelevant.  And if the location outweighs other arguments, then it cannot be an essential part of the mix.  (In any event, the proposed Wylfa B isn’t really ‘on an existing site’ anyway – it’s alongside it, which is why the consortium was busy purchasing additional land for the construction.)

Given that Wales is already a net exporter of electricity, and has a number of other new projects in the pipeline already, there is clearly no need in terms of Welsh energy policy for new nuclear capacity.  Such capacity can only be aimed at consumers elsewhere.  And that brings us back to the “strong economic arguments” to which the report refers.

Nowhere in the report are these arguments spelled out, but given that the overall economics of nuclear energy are open to debate, to say the least, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is simply a euphemism for the jobs which such a development would provide.  It’s a pretty narrow view of the economics of nuclear energy.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with the idea that we should produce a surplus of some products and services for export in order to purchase those things which we cannot supply ourselves.  That’s as true for electricity as it is for widgets.  It’s a sensible approach and provides unemployment.

There’s a non-sequitur here though, if that’s the basis of the argument.  There is no necessary or obvious link between a decision to over-produce electricity in order to provide gainful employment, and a requirement to build a new nuclear power station.  In fact, quite the opposite – there are other, better ways of achieving the same objective.

The obvious one is investment in renewable capacity.  Less obvious is investment in energy conservation and insulation – reducing our own demand is as effective a way of producing a surplus as is generating more.  But the key thing is that either of those approaches would almost certainly generate more jobs at lower cost than the nuclear option.  It could be argued, of course, that that’s all very well in theory, but where are the developers proposing to provide those alternative jobs on Ynys Môn?

It’s a valid question, but it betrays an underlying mindset that energy policy is really about government reacting to proposals put forward by private developers rather than driving policy on the basis of what’s right environmentally as well as economically.  And that’s an abdication of responsibility for setting out an energy policy rather than merely tinkering with planning control policy.

One of the problems with the “jobs trumps all else” argument is that it ignores qualitative judgements about what sort of future we want to build in Wales.  And it can be very open-ended.  But there’s surely more to these decisions than that. 

Wales is rich in potential for renewable energy, it gives us a huge advantage over a lot of other countries in decarbonising our economy.  Ignoring that and pursuing a technology on which so many others are busy turning their backs,  for the sake of a smaller number of jobs than we could gain by exploiting our advantages, shows a remarkable lack of vision for an institution which prides itself on having sustainability at its core.

Jobs based on a different future, please

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Last week’s news that the Labour Party in Wales would support the move of Trident to Milford Haven if Scotland becomes independent caused a flurry, but was hardly a surprise.  It’s entirely consistent with Labour’s position on nuclear weapons over many years.

But the underlying reasoning behind the move by the First Minister is really nothing to do with the argument about nuclear weapons per se.  It is, rather, based on a much simpler logic which runs something like this:

·        Wales needs jobs

·        ‘This project’ provides jobs

·        Wales should welcome ‘this project’.

One could substitute almost anything for ‘this project’; and in that sense, Carwyn Jones’ position on Trident isn’t that different from the position of many other politicians on other projects – such as Wylfa B or the Severn Barrage for instance.  The logic is exactly the same.

There is scope for debate, of course, about how many real jobs ‘this project’ provides.  The only certainty is that the numbers will be overstated by supporters of the project, and will inevitably include a number of jobs to be filled by those relocating with the project.  And whilst the debate about the number of jobs is far from irrelevant, it has more to do with whether any particular project represents value for money than with the underlying principle.

And it’s the consideration of the principle which is missing from the logic above.  It’s easier to see a principle in relation to Trident than it is for a number of other projects, but that simply underlines the fact that different people draw the line in different places.  Rather then admitting that the real issue is where to draw the line, most politicians seem to fall back on criticising anyone who opposes ‘this project’ as being anti-jobs – and it was notable that that was exactly what Jones did last week, in his side-swipe at Plaid over Trident.

I’m clear that I want to see a demilitarised Wales (and world, come to that, but let’s start with that part for which we bear the most direct responsibility), and that Trident, or any other variety of WMD, doesn’t fit with that view.  (Just as I’m also clear that I want to see an energy policy based on renewables, and that Wylfa B doesn’t fit with that view.)  That means that there are some projects to which I would be opposed, no matter how many jobs they would bring.  Ultimately, I want to see employment in Wales based on creating a new future, not on simply perpetuating the status quo.

To argue that we should ignore such questions – and all the strategies produced by government – in pursuit of jobs, in whatever field, is to avoid taking responsibility for building a different kind of future for our country and the world.  Politicians who argue otherwise are simply reacting to and managing ‘what is’ rather than building ‘what should be’.