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3rd SDUK Annual Sustainable Development Conference - “Acting Today, Protecting Tomorrow”

Malcolm Wicks MP,  Minister of State for Energy
QEII Conference Centre, London,  06 March 2008

In the UK, we are used to a secure and reliable energy supply. Not all countries - not even all rich countries - always have that luxury. And we’re moving from being a net exporter of energy in recent decades to being a net importer, as our own supplies of fossil fuels reduce. But energy powers the economy, lights and heats our homes, and propels our public transport.

At the same time, we all know that high-carbon energy is one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use accounts for over half the greenhouse gases being emitted today.

So it’s clear that a sustainable future requires us to solve both challenges together: to ensure that we continue to enjoy secure energy supplies, while tackling the very real phenomenon of climate change by cutting our carbon emissions.

We set out our strategy to do just that in May last year, in our Energy White Paper. This is a comprehensive document, and I do encourage you to read it on my Department’s website - but it’s over 300 pages long, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to delay for too long the award ceremony and drinks reception.

So I propose simply to remind you of some of the key points of the strategy that relate to sustainability, and provide you with an update of how we are now delivering on those White Paper commitments, and how we’re looking to go even further in some areas.

Energy Efficiency

The first thing we need to do is use energy more efficiently. The best and cheapest way to cut our emissions, and to ease the pressure on energy supply, is to use less energy in the first place.

So, in addition to the Government’s “Act on CO2” campaign to encourage virtuous behaviour in this respect, we work with the regulator Ofgem and with the energy companies themselves to encourage energy efficiency. I make no apology for putting energy efficiency first.

Renewables

Next, we need to bring on low-carbon sources of energy. Of course this includes renewables, which we support through the Renewables Obligation and through investment in new technologies. Projects such as the Wave Hub off the Cornish coast and the new Energy Technologies Institute show that we are serious about this investment.

We’ve been making good progress on renewables, with £500m already invested in renewable energy technology. Since we introduced the Renewables Obligation in 2002, the proportion of electricity supplied from renewable sources has more than doubled, from an admittedly low base, and with the measures in the White Paper we expect it to triple again by 2015.

The UK now has more than 160 wind farms with over 2 gigawatts of installed capacity, and last year we gave the final consents for the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, the London Array. By the end of this year, we will have more installed offshore wind capacity than any other country in the world.

We are conducting a feasibility study for tidal power generation in the Severn estuary, which has the second largest tidal range of any estuary in the world and the potential to generate 5% of UK electricity.

And in December we launched a Strategic Environmental Assessment on a draft plan for up to an additional 25 gigawatts of offshore wind power. This could mean that offshore wind could be generating enough power for up to 25 million homes by 2020 - the equivalent of all UK homes.

I think, as people start to see these projects become a reality, there will be no doubt that we are delivering on our White Paper commitments, which were rightly ambitious.

Indeed, we are going beyond them - and we need to, because we are fully committed to meeting our share of the EU 2020 renewables target, which will require us to source around 15% of UK energy (not just electricity: total energy) from renewable sources by 2020. Our progress is already rapid, but we will be consulting later this year on how we can go even further, to be sure to meet that 2020 target.

Nuclear

In January, we announced our decision in favour of allowing energy companies to bring forward proposals for new nuclear power stations.

Nuclear power has always been controversial, and I do not dismiss the objections lightly. Nuclear is not a renewable source, and because it produces radioactive waste - which can be disposed of safely but which cannot be cleaned up - I would not even describe it as a green energy source.

But it is a low-carbon technology - it is green in that limited but crucial sense. It is also a proven and reliable source of electricity. So if we are serious about achieving dramatic cuts in our carbon emissions, if we are serious about tackling the biggest and most urgent ecological challenge facing the planet, then I believe the justification for retaining nuclear in the energy mix is overwhelming.

Our policy makes clear that we will not subsidise new nuclear power plants, and that the energy companies that operate them will be responsible for all the waste and decommissioning costs.

Carbon Capture and Storage

We cannot escape the reality that, despite our major investment in renewables and the continued use of nuclear, we will still need a considerable proportion of our energy needs to be met from fossil fuels for some time to come. The challenge, therefore, is to use fossil fuels more cleanly. We do this in various ways. Technology has of course improved: new cars and new power plants emit considerably less CO2 than their equivalents of twenty or thirty years ago.

But the most exciting development in this regard is Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS. I’m proud that we are supporting the world’s first commercial-scale demonstration of CCS for post-combustion coal. This technology has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel plants by up to 90%. That’s important for us in the UK, but even more important elsewhere.

Setting an example

Climate change is very obviously a global phenomenon, not a local one. It doesn’t affect us alone - and if CO2 emissions are a guide, 98% of it is not caused by us: the UK currently emits around 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions.

I believe we not only have a moral obligation to play our part, but we also have a pragmatic need to set an example. Only by cutting our own CO2 emissions dramatically can we credibly persuade other countries, particularly in the developing world, to do likewise.

The International Energy Agency has predicted that the world’s energy needs will grow by 55% between 2005 and 2030, with fossil fuels accounting for 84% of this. Developing countries contribute 74% of this global increase, with China and India alone accounting for 45%. China continues to build around two new coal-fired plants every week.

That’s why our support for Carbon Capture and Storage technology is so vital.

An example can also be set at a more local level. We do support distributed energy and microgeneration. And I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone, for his announcement last week of a programme, in partnership with Dalkia and Honeywell, to cut energy use in GLA and other public buildings in London. The Mayor is right to be showing leadership in this area.

Central Government has committed to making the Government office estate carbon-neutral by 2012. For my own part, I’ve asked my officials to look into the possibility of adding on-site renewables to the Department’s headquarters in Westminster and our other buildings, and they are consulting with the Carbon Trust about the feasibility of the various options.

Beyond energy policy

I’d like to finish with a bit of context, because I know that energy policy is only part of the wider sustainability agenda. As a Government, we published the UK Sustainable Development Strategy three years ago. It sets out our determination to live within environmental limits, to ensure a strong, healthy and just society, to achieve a sustainable economy, to promote good governance, and to use sound science responsibly.

So we are working across Government to achieve more with less - looking at how our goods and services are produced and how we can minimise the impacts of products and materials across their whole life cycle. We are working, as I have briefly described, to secure a profound change in how we generate and use energy. We are ensuring that our natural resources are protected and that we better understand our environmental limits. And we are working to provide sustainable communities, where partnership and engagement are at the core, providing a healthy and just society for all.

In other words, we are truly “acting today to protect tomorrow”.