From the Editor

All those in favour of gas price rises, please say Aye.

Now there’s the kind of poll where you’d be pretty confident of the outcome. Deafening silence, and not many ‘don’t knows’ to complicate the picture either. In a way, there’s something almost reassuringly familiar about the whole thing; you know what you don’t want, and then you get it.

This energy policy review, on the other hand, is a much more slippery beast. Bear in mind, for starters, that it’s not part of the climate change programme review, which is due to be published at the end of March. Or vice versa. But the drive to cut carbon emissions is part of the big picture for our energy policy choices.

Energy policy choices - note those words. Choices - yes, we do have choices. And not just energy supply choices, although you might be forgiven for thinking that the review is mainly about supply-side issues, so little emphasis has there been on managing demand, on tackling our patterns of profligate energy use. Energy, mind, not just electricity; how we keep warm, how we manage mobility, is as much at stake as how we power the grid - or indeed how we reconfigure the grid, to harness the decentralised potential of microgeneration.

Funny, then - or tragic, rather - that the issue hogging the headlines has been “nuclear or not”. A recent opinion survey commissioned by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research got media coverage mainly because 54% of respondents expressed themselves “willing to accept the building of new nuclear power stations if it would help to tackle climate change”. Well, for a forensic demolition of that misconception, read Amory Lovins ‘Wise up to nuclear folly’.

And, for some reassurance on the sound instincts of a still nuclear-sceptical British public, reflect on some of the Tyndall survey’s less widely reported findings. Fully 74% of its respondents agreed that “we shouldn’t think of nuclear power as a solution for climate change before exploring all other energy options”, and a higher proportion endorsed a preference both for promoting renewables, and “reducing energy use through lifestyle changes and energy efficiency”.

For all that, there’s a widespread assumption that the government will get the supply-side outcome it is presumed to favour, committing us to attempt new nuclear replacement of existing nuclear capacity. Fatalism, perhaps - you know what you don’t want, and then you get it. But at least the new political popularity of ‘the environment’ [ ‘Whitehall Watch’, and ‘And another thing’] holds out the promise of more prominence for micro-renewables and energy efficiency incentives.

Which, let’s face it, we’ve been pretty useless about in the past. Green campaigners bear some of the responsibility, argues a new report [‘DOs and DON’Ts for mind changers’], and need to be more perceptive about getting their messages across. Proposals for a Green Living Initiative [‘Brand Green buy-in ’ ] hinge on linking economic incentives with information to promote greater engagement. ‘

Exchange of Fire’ debates a radical route to reducing energy waste in our housing stock. Even George W. Bush is waking up to the hangover of oil addiction [‘Whitehall Watch’]. So much of this comes back to the unsustainable economics of cheap fossil fuels. Cheap, that is, if you disregard their environmental costs - the kind of false accounting that still badly needs exposure to the light [‘Wanted: a Ministry of Light’].

Anyone tempted to review their position on those gas price rises yet?

17 August 2006

Roger East