It’s now three years since Fukushima hit the headlines and time to ask: has Britain learned any lessons from the disaster?
In Germany nuclear energy is being phased out. Its government has realised that nuclear is not the panacea they thought it was. The country tried very hard to make the nuclear dream come true: they built 36 power stations, many of them with ground-breaking designs. To accommodate the waste these produce the country invested heavily in underground disposal units. The promise was that these would be perfectly safe – a promise that simply could not be met.
While Germany is scaling back its nuclear facilities, in Britain our government has just given the go-ahead for another heavily subsidised nuclear power station. What will be the return to the British taxpayer on this investment? To try and put some numbers on the deal, the 16 nuclear reactors currently on the grid produced 64 terawatt hours of energy in 2012. That is one-third less electricity than Germany generated from the renewable energy industries it installed between 2002 and 2012 alone. Britain’s nuclear energy is, right now, well behind the German renewable energy market and yet it is still racing to expand this outdated and unsafe industry.
Germany’s renewables industry is making its energy supply safer and more reliable. The German grid has less black-outs than Britain’s and the country exports far more energy than its Saxon counterpart. The price of the energy on offer is now declining as economies of scale begin to kick-in.
Yet, just as you thought things couldn’t get worse in Britain, the government looks set to go full steam ahead with fracking. Like nuclear, this make no economic or ecological sense. Fracking causes earth tremors, pollutes drinking water and releases methane gas which has a bigger impact on climate change than carbon dioxide. Who wants that on their doorstep?
All this is going on when we have much cleaner and safer energy sources on offer – it is just that our government does not have the will or long-term vision to invest in them. We are fortunate to live in an age when we can harvest affordable energy whilst creating employment, economic growth and prosperity for all – but only if we invest in renewables.
The move over to renewables has not ruined Germany. Public finances are steady. Unemployment is low. The standard of living is no worse than Britain or France. The cost of energy is on the decline. The German Greens achieved this by putting a framework in place for renewable power generation in their country.
Here in Britain there is only one party that is committed to bringing a similarly prosperous future to our shores. The Green Party of England and Wales opposes fracking and nuclear energy – favouring instead investment in renewable energy supplies and community energy projects. One such project has already witnessed huge success in Yorkshire. This model is ready to be scaled up to the national level – but only if voters get behind the party and help them to bring about the necessary political changes.
By Jurgen Huber, Co-Chair of West Central London Green Party