Eco-Worrier: what do you think of it?

The Trade and Industry Secretary denounced critics of nuclear energy as “daft” today and told Parliament it was in the public interest to allow the building of new nuclear power stations, as he outlined a strategy for dealing with the country’s energy needs.

Alastair Darling announced that the Government will launch a public consultation into nuclear power and outline plans to incentivise energy companies to help their customers to cut energy use.

“We face two big challenges - climate change and maintaining stable and affordable energy supply in an increasingly unstable world,” Mr Darling told MPs as he unveiled the Government's energy White Paper. “With a third of our current electricity generation capacity due to close in the next 20 years, there is also a pressing need for investment in new low carbon sources.”

The Industry Secretary set a deadline for a final decision on nuclear energy, which has faced numerous delays. “Quite simply, in the public interest we need to make a decision this year on whether we should continue to get some of our electricity from nuclear because new stations take a long time to build,” he said.

The White Paper outlined plans to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by tripling sustainable energy output by 2015, reducing energy use and launching a consultation into nuclear power.

“With the measures we are proposing across government on energy and the wider environment we can cut emissions by between 23-33 million tonnes of carbon by 2020 - the equivalent of removing all the emissions that we get from every car, van and lorry on Britain’s roads today,” Mr Darling said.

Alan Duncan, shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, derided what he called a lack of concrete proposals in the White Paper. He demanded that the Government guaranteed that further nuclear power stations would be built. He also criticised the lack of progress on carbon capture, which could help to reduce the release of carbon emissions.

“It heralds the collapse of carbon capture, it continues an irrational regime for carbon penalties and incentives, it provides little or no prospect of hitting renewables targets, it does not offer the security we need,” Mr Duncan told MPs. “Ten months after the energy review it is still content free, not carbon free.”

Mr Darling insisted nuclear energy was the only way to prevent increasing carbon dioxide emissions and end the reliance on “the whims of foreign governments” for UK energy supplies.

“To say no to nuclear and there are many people saying no to new wind farms, that’s daft, it would needlessly expose the country,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. “I came to this as a nuclear sceptic, but the facts have changed.”

The Government has been forced into a full public consultation after Greenpeace won a court challenge in February, which found serious flaws in the initial consultation on nuclear power.

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