New Nuclear Power

Debate between David Mowat and Tessa Munt

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

I am afraid that I cannot.

I am not very impressed by the interconnector with Ireland or with our building a big wind farm in the middle of Ireland and sending the jobs over there. Another option is gas. For pragmatic reasons, that will be part of the solution. It replaces coal and creates much less carbon.

I welcome the use of wind and solar energy. However, we debate these options as if they are mutually exclusive. If our 2050 target was to be met entirely by wind power, the 4,000 wind turbines that we currently have would have to be multiplied by a factor of about 30.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

rose—

[David Mowat]

I will not give way. The hon. Lady might have wanted to talk about offshore wind. That could be part of the solution. However, these technologies have a lot of ground to make up on price.

Carbon capture and storage has been talked about a little. That is part of the solution. I regret that this country has not moved faster on CCS. One reason for that is that we have over-emphasised renewables because they are subject to an EU directive. Progress on CCS would not have counted towards that directive, even though it would have helped us to decarbonise.

I think that there are problems with the case for nuclear. As I said at the start of my remarks, the problem of waste has not been fixed. It is perfectly legitimate for people to think that that is a reason not to go ahead with new nuclear. However, I believe that the risks from waste are smaller than the risks from global warming and that we therefore need to decarbonise. I say to the Secretary of State that unless nuclear can prove that it has a cheaper strike price than other low-carbon technologies, there will be questions about going ahead with the deal. Although nuclear produces less carbon than renewable technologies—for example, it produces significantly less carbon per kilowatt-hour than solar—there is still the issue of waste. I do not know how the caps that have been put into the deal will work. The hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) made the point that the probability of an accident is never zero. That is true, but it does not mean that we should never do anything.

Of course, nuclear provides base power, whereas renewables are intermittent. Even with the waste issue, I believe that we must move ahead with nuclear as part of the mix in the way that the Government are doing. I wish them luck with the negotiation, although I regret that they are negotiating with only one company. Frankly, the Labour party is the cause of that because it sold off vast tracts of our nuclear industry.

In my last 40 seconds, I will ask some questions of the Secretary of State. As I said, we now produce less carbon than most OECD countries and European countries. The Secretary of State must therefore be circumspect in ensuring that the cost of our electricity supply is competitive and that we do not move ahead a lot more quickly than the rest of Europe. As I said at the beginning in response to the hon. Member for Cheltenham, I do not understand why the contract for difference price for other low-carbon technologies is so much higher than that for nuclear. I will finally just say that—