Last month 35 organisations, including the Renewable Energy Association, with support from all major political paties, presented a manifesto of sustainable energy principles to the Government’s energy review. Mr Blair’s comments suggest that this review is simply a smokescreen to conceal the ditching of the farsighted vision of the Energy White Paper the Government published just three years ago.

A coherent national policy needs to look beyond electricity and address also the two thirds of our energy devoted to heat and transport. It should plan to exploit the efficiencies of decentralised generation and set firm policies for energy conservation and renewables.

We must not allow the Government to marginalise these priorities in favour of an easy fix for a perceived shortage in centralised electricity generation.

PHILIP WOLFE
Chief Executive, Renewable Energy Association
London SW1

Sir, It is misleading to describe nuclear power as a carbon-neutral energy source (Business Commentary, May 16; “Britain goes nuclear to beat energy crisis”, May 17).

The Government’s own energy review consultation document, issued in January, which is seen by most independent commentators as nuclear-friendly, states that “the mining, refining and enriching of uranium, and plant construction and decommissioning, are carbon- intensive processes, especially when low-quality uranium ore is being processed.”

The pamphlet from SERA, Labour’s environment campaign, What’s in the Mix: The Future of Energy Policy, released this month, demonstrates the sensitivities of different grades of uranium ores to energy intensitivity in its mining and processing.

Two independent academic studies disaggregate the carbon footprint of nuclear fuel in its production before use and its management after irradiation in a reactor: one, by the German Öko-Institut, which advises the German environment ministry; the other by the academic researchers Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith (www.stormsmith.nl ). Both conclude that nuclear generation produces about one third more CO2 per kWh than conventional mid-sized gas-fired electricity generation.

Carbon-neutral it is not.

DAVID LOWRY
Environmental policy consultant
Stoneleigh, Surrey

Sir, Your report (“Power station’s dirty secret”, May 17) did not mention that the wood yard at Drax is now nearly as big as the coal yard.

Drax may pump out lots of CO2 (and 7 per cent of the UK’s electricity, which we are all wasting by leaving LEDs and lights on in offices and homes across the UK), but it is moving towards burning carbon- neutral, native-grown biomass such as willow and elephant grass. Such renewable energy sources can reduce our need for foreign gas and oil.

What we need now is support from the press and Government to encourage such initiatives which benefit everyone: the shareholders of the newly floated Drax, the biomass farmers and the world at large.

ANDY BROWN
Cockermouth, Cumbria

Explore Letters

• Feedback