"If and when people get their heads together to solve the problem, they will solve the problem." An interview with a world-leading energy expert.

I talk to Janusz Bialek, DONG Professor of Renewable Energy at Durham University. 

An expert's view of the issues facing the energy industry

“Necessity is the mother of invention”. Professor Bialek’s phrase neatly sums up the most important feature of the energy debate in Britain and across the world. We need energy for our civilisation to function, but we also need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions if our civilisation is to continue to exist. The attempt to reconcile the need for energy with that of protecting the environment underlies all of Janusz’s work.

Alongside being a world-leading expert who has produced some 140 research papers, Janusz has advised the UK government and European Commission on energy infrastructure. An interview in the New Statesman in 2011 confirmed his prominence in the national energy debate, and he is widely sought after by the media.

We start on the issue of rising energy bills, which is especially timely as a number of companies have just announced significant increases in customer levies. The rising cost of energy has been criticised as yet another example of corporate greed by some commentators, but Janusz is keen to stress the importance of other factors.

     “What the generators do is obviously to increase prices now in order to ride through any price             freeze if it comes”.

“If you look at electricity bills, about 50% of the bill is due to the wholesale price of energy. The so-called ‘marginal’ fuel for electricity (which is the fuel that determines energy prices) is gas. So if the gas price goes up, as it is at the moment, then the final electricity price has to go up.”

He explains that rising gas prices are due in part to the increasing demand for the fuel as countries such as Japan and Germany abandon nuclear power after the Fukishima disaster. The glut of shale gas from fracking has also caused a huge amount of coal to flood the European market from the USA, as it is no longer needed for electricity generation. This means that gas plants in Britain are running at a loss, because it costs generators more to buy the gas than they get from selling it. Energy companies therefore rise prices for consumers to correct this shortfall. I ask if Labour’s proposed energy bill freeze if they win the election in 2015 could be a solution to the growing pressure on households.

The great killer cover up

Britain has some of the worst air pollution in Europe, so why does the government want to scrap air quality monitoring stations?

For a country whose capital city has the worst air quality in Europe, you would expect England to be taking drastic steps to curb the problem of air pollution. However, in a move of almost unparalleled recklessness, the government intends to make changes that could result in the closure of up to 600 air quality monitoring stations.

Ministers want to remove obligations on local authorities to assess levels of air pollution, a decision that could spell disaster for efforts to curb a problem that causes 29,000 early deaths every year. This scheme is part of the ‘Red Tape Challenge’, in which government departments compete to make savings to their budgets. 

What is even more mind boggling is the justification for this irresponsible cost-cutting, as outlined in the consultation document. After explaining the extensive monitoring that is currently in place to assess air pollution, the overview concludes:

“It is therefore perhaps more important that local authorities focus their actions on what is needed to… reduce the public health impacts of poor air quality rather than continue their current focus on local assessment”.

In other words, politicians wish to obscure the true scale of the problem and instead gain some positive PR through superficial measures to green up our cities. Monitoring is there for a reason – to inform and direct action. It is impossible to have an effective air quality management strategy without it.

Justine Greening, the excellent MP for Putney, is one senior minister who recognises the importance of this process. She specifically identified the “detailed monitoring of air pollution” as a means of tackling the problem in her constituency.

The possibility of removing air quality monitoring stations is even more worrying when we consider the lack of political action that characterises the current approach to air pollution.

This summer, the government twice failed on their duty to notify the public about dangerous levels of ozone on 16 and 22 July in line with UK and international law. 

Ministers have also refused to warn drivers of diesel vehicles – potentially numbering in the hundreds of thousands – that they risk legal action by removing particulate filters which reduce emissions of carcinogenic gases.

This catalogue of errors led to a Supreme Court ruling this year that the government was not doing enough to tackle the problem of air pollution. This decision by the highest court in the land could also pave the way for legal action by the European Commission, which has the power to levy huge fines for the government’s failure to meet air quality targets.

What is needed is a total rethink of our approach to the problem of air pollution in our society. Using a comparison originally made by the environmental journalist George Monbiot, we need to make the same fuss over deaths caused by car fumes as we do with cigarettes. Forget passive smoking, what about “passive driving”.

With smoking, it is accepted that people have a moral right to harm themselves through their own lifestyle choices but that this cannot be at the expense of others. Therefore, people falling ill through passively inhaling cigarette smoke is rightfully seen as unacceptable, and this is used as a justification for nearly all government policies to discourage smoking.

Cameron's fracking article: corrections and clarifications

As any diligent newspaper reader would have noticed, the prime minister has sacrificed a summer of ‘chillaxing’ to assume his position at the helm of the Tory propaganda machine.

Any malfunctioning cogs – namely one particular relative of George Osborne – have been adjusted, and Government departments ordered to do their bit to produce positive news stories. So it is no surprise that David Cameron took it upon himself to write an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph to claim that Britain “cannot afford to miss out on fracking”.

Regrettably though, if the prime minister intends to break into journalism he faces an uphill struggle. What is meant to be a convincing manifesto for shale oil and gas extraction is filled with false assertions and empty rhetoric.

Therefore, Whipped Green has taken upon itself to issue some corrections and clarifications to the article in question.

These will be forwarded to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, and will hopefully appear in print later this week.

I, The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, sincerely apologise for deceiving readers with the following statements.

1.

“It’s simple – gas and electric bills go down when our home-grown supply goes up.”

This assertion fails to take into account the primary factor behind changes in domestic gas bills – the wholesale price of gas. Britain is part of a grid that channels gas throughout the whole of Europe. Therefore, much of the gas produced in the UK would be exported, meaning that the cost reduction due to increased supply would be dissipated across the entire continent.

This contrasts with the USA which, until recently, hardly exported any gas. Therefore, the rapid increase in gas supply from fracking flooded the domestic market, driving down energy bills. Even Mark Linder, from the PR department at Caudrilla, admits that any reductions in UK gas prices would be “basically insignificant”.

Also, the cost of extraction in the UK is likely to be higher than across the pond. Initial attempts to frack in Balcombe (which is for shale oil, not gas) have been vigorously resisted by local residents, and all indications suggest than any further inroads by Caudrilla will attract substantial opposition. This is hardly surprising – the first extraction operation in Blackpool was abandoned after it caused an earthquake.

2.

“One myth still remains – that fracking damages our countryside.”

Perhaps he meant to say “fact”, because otherwise this statement is truly bizarre. Fracking requires the industrialisation of our countryside on an almost unprecedented scale, with around 15,000 wells in clumps of six to ten needed to match production levels in the North Sea. Then comes the huge increase in traffic needed to service this infrastructure: six to sixteen lorries every day for five years according to a report commissioned by Caudrilla.