Once more, we see a Government shying away from making decisions, this time the problem being the United Kingdom's ability to produce its own electricity.
All our coal fired power stations are scheduled to close within the next few years to comply with this country’s “Green” commitments, and all but one of the present nuclear production facilities will be life expired within 10 years.
Now the difficulty is that Greg Barker, the Power Minister, finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Developers are showing a marked reluctance to develop new stations until Government underwrites a base price for electricity. At the moment they have their hands out for about twice the going wholesale rate, and naturally, he is not eager to settle on this basis.
This situation has arisen due to amalgamations and take-overs, which have resulted in just a handful of companies that have the skills and ability to build and develop nuclear stations. To a certain extent therefore, they are holding most of the cards. The further bad news is that the building of such complexes tends to overrun.
At the moment, one station in France is running four years behind schedule, and a similar operation in Finland is, at present, seven years late, and counting.
Just to add to the Government’s difficulties, there is at the moment, no plan “B”, just mutterings about renewables. So action has to be undertaken pretty soon, otherwise, in an extreme case, the lights will go out and the nation’s few remaining factories will grind to a halt.
Yet a solution is to hand. Government is looking for a large project to create employment, and help to get the nation moving again, hence their backing of HS2, the high speed rail development. They also have to solve this looming power crisis.
Surely it would be more sensible to approve the Severn Barrage, which at a stroke, will, on completion in ten years, provide the United Kingdom with five per cent of all its electricity requirements, risk free, and create 11000 jobs in the construction thereof. Plans have been lying with Government for some time, and, more importantly, it is privately financed, no drain on the public purse. HS2, which I don’t believe is necessary in its planned form, will take at least twenty years to complete.
Government must make a decision quickly. Failure could bring great joy to candle makers!
* Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm AE Harris
