• John Cridland, business group’s deputy director general, urges ‘balance of wind, nuclear, gas and clean coal’
• Greenpeace makes case for investment in renewables to ‘create much-needed British jobs’
The CBI has thrown its weight behind the nuclear industry’s calls for government to scale back “overambitious” wind power targets and boost the role of atomic energy and coal.
The “voice of business” believes energy prices will have to rise 30% in real terms by 2020 and some kind of financial incentives might be needed so that up to 15 new nuclear plants are constructed, capable of providing 34% of UK electricity by 2030.
John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI, denied business leaders had become “anti-renewables” or have been captured by a nuclear lobby, which so far has talked about building six or eight new plants. “We are not obsessed with nuclear. We have a passion for low carbon,” said Cridland. But he warned that government targets of generating 32% of electricity from wind were unachievable and should be scaled back to at least 25%.
“While we have generous subsidies for wind power, we urgently need the national planning statements needed to build new nuclear plants. If we carry on like this we will end up putting too many of our energy eggs in one basket. But by moving government policy in a different direction we can achieve a good balance of wind, nuclear, gas and clean coal,” he added.
The comments came alongside launch of a report, Decision Time, which warns that failure to take a more balanced approach will leave the country dangerously dependent on imported gas.
The CBI’s advice comes just days before the government is scheduled to unveil an energy white paper, a renewable energy strategy and a low-carbon industrial strategy.
Ironically, the business group’s arguments were given more weight by the renewables industry itself. A report out tomorrow from the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts that only half of the onshore targets for England promised by local areas under “regional spatial strategies” have been met.
The CBI stance will alarm large swaths of the environmental movement, which will note that references to the possible need for a floor price for carbon, and others about wind “crowding out” investment in atomic power, follow similar statements from EDF Energy and E.ON, the foreign-owned utilities that want to construct new reactors in Britain.
Vincent de Rivaz, the chief executive of EDF in Britain, and Paul Golby, the boss of E.ON UK, were both quick to welcome the CBI report, which was drawn up with McKinsey, the management consultant.
“We are pleased that the CBI chose to tackle the issue of how to encourage low-carbon generation,” said de Rivaz. “Action is required now in order to maximise our ability to hit our low-carbon targets in the most affordable way for UK consumers.”
The CBI report calls for the 2020 renewables target to be reduced to 25% but coal, either in its existing shape or “cleaned” by carbon capture and storage, should see its share of the total electricity generation portfolio raised to 16%. The CBI also wants energy efficiency targets to be almost doubled to 20%.
Cridland said the CBI had been in close dialogue with ministers and he was confident some of its measures would be represented in the white paper. But he accepted it would be politically tough to dilute the wind target and boost nuclear – which supplies less than 20% of UK electricity – without protests from green groups.
The BWEA said the results of its progress report on England’s regional renewable targets were worrying: “There is a divergence between government renewable energy and climate change planning policy and what is actually happening on the ground.”
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The CBI claims to represent the interests of British industry but it’s actually doing its members a great disservice. Investment in renewables would create much-needed British jobs in one of the few growth sectors in the global economy.”
