There is an Energy Bill now going through Parliament. It is a bad piece of legislation and will do nothing to help consumers keep down their energy bills.
At the heart of the Bill is a rigid determination to proceed to build more nuclear power stations which will be dangerous, expensive and unnecessary. After Chernobyl and the more recent Japanese disaster caused by the tsunami, most countries are turning against nuclear power for the future, even if they are temporarily dependent on it. Even Britain has had its nuclear accidents and leakages, with the beaches and sea around Sellafield in Cumberland contaminated. Radiation is dangerous stuff, causing cancers among other things.
Nuclear power stations are very expensive to build and would not be built at all if the energy companies were not guaranteed big subsidies. The government says they are not subsidising future nuclear power, but that is just not true. Behind closed doors they are doing deals with the energy industry to agree a “strike price”, a minimum (and high) price for nuclear electricity to guarantee profits, a price which will be paid by us all in our electricity bills.
Renewable energy is the way forward, with wave, tidal, geothermal and solar as just some of the technologies of the future. Then there is anaerobic digestion, using all animal, human and food waste to produce methane (i.e. gas – the same as we use to heat our homes).
The Scandinavian countries and Germany are decades ahead of Britain in renewable and we need to imitate them and soon. It is time to change direction and push the energy companies out of power – political power that is.