Queen’s Speech

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

The title of the Government’s energy White Paper is Powering Our Net Zero Future. It addresses the need to staunch our emissions of carbon dioxide in view of the advancing crisis of climate change. It proposes that, by 2050, we should double our generating capacity for electricity, while reducing our overall energy consumption to two-thirds of its present level. This is a gross underestimate of our requirements for electricity and power.

According to a widely accepted analysis, the electrification of transport would require a 75% increase in generating capacity. The decarbonisation of the economy will create numerous additional demands, some of which I will mention later. The only source that could meet such demands is nuclear power. Therefore, I believe we should embark without delay on the necessary infrastructure projects to create this supply and exploit it.

An alternative opinion has been offered by the FIRES report, which is the work of a group of academic engineers. FIRES is an acronym that stands for “Future Industrial Resource Efficiency Strategy”. The report argues that we have run out of time. It proposes that the only way we can hope to meet the 2050 target of net zero emissions is by a radical regression which would entail abandoning much of the technology that accompanies our present state of affluence.

According to that report, we would have to immobilise ourselves by forgoing our present means of transport, including automobiles and aircraft. International shipping would also need to be much reduced. Building construction involving steel and concrete would need to be severely curtailed, and we should cease to eat red meats. Such a curtailment of economic activity involving a further abandonment of manufacturing would lead to mass unemployment and the immiseration of much of our working population. It is an appalling prospect to contemplate.

As evidence of the lack of time, the report talks of the 30-year period covering the time from the inception of a new technology to its realisation in a fully operational system. One can point to the length of time it has taken to design and complete the third generation of nuclear plants, such as the European pressurised water reactors, or EPRs, at Olkiluoto in Finland, Flamanville in Normandy and Hinkley Point in Somerset. However, there are convincing recent and historical counterexamples suggesting that such projects can be accomplished far more rapidly. In fact, an EPR reactor which is virtually identical to that at Hinkley Point has been constructed at Taishan in Guangdong province in China. Work began in 2008 and, in spite of numerous reported setbacks, it began full operation in 2018.

One might also consider the post-war experience in Britain in establishing our civil nuclear industry, which, at the time, embodied a wholly new technology. Britain’s first nuclear power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria was opened officially by the Queen in October 1956. The construction had begun in 1953 and its design work could not have begun much before 1952 when Churchill called for the construction of the plant. There should be ample time between now and 2050 to revive our nuclear industry.

We should now consider some of the uses of the enlarged supply of electricity which would be required for domestic heating and to power numerous industrial processes. Steel, which is currently manufactured in coal-fired blast furnaces, could be made in electric arc furnaces fed by both iron ores and scrap metals. Hydrogen and ammonia, which would be among the predominant vectors of energy, should be produced by high-temperature electrolysis of water, the heat and electricity for which should be provided by nuclear reactors.

Provided that the hydrocarbon fuels are created in a manner that does not add to the burden of atmospheric carbon dioxide, there should be no need to forgo the use either of the internal combustion engine or jet engines. The technology for the direct air capture of carbon dioxide, which is energy intensive, already exists. It could be deployed on a large scale to provide the carbon component of the fuels.

Portland cement, which is used in concrete, has become a major element in modern building construction. Its manufacture emits large quantities of carbon dioxide and it should be greatly reduced. However, a reversion to the use of lime mortar in brickwork could be mandated, since the setting of the mortar reabsorbs the carbon dioxide that has been emitted in the reduction of the calcium carbonate limestone to quicklime. Bricks that are now fused inseparably by a sand and cement bond could be reused extensively, as they are in much of present-day domestic building.

The time is not available for me to describe such a scenario in more detail, and to realise it will require energy, imagination and government initiatives. At present, all three of these ingredients are in short supply.