THE threat of more firefighter strikes and the looming shadows of war with Iraq have pushed government decisions about the future of Britain鈥檚 energy industry onto the backburner. Anyone who thinks the industry will meet its target of producing 10 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and wave power, by 2010 is surely whistling in the wind. It will be lucky to get anywhere near 5 per cent.
You can add to these woes the likely drastic shortfall in the 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the government has set the industry as another goal for 2010. And now the long-promised White Paper on energy, due out in the next few weeks, is having an uncomfortable gestation, with considerable differences of opinion between some government departments and Downing Street.
For one thing, the Department of Trade and Industry recognises that decommissioning costs for nuclear power stations will have to be met, whether or not the stations continue to operate for their expected lifetimes. The rub is that an early closure of any of them would bring forward those costs just when they could be earning income, some of which could be set aside for their eventual closure.
Advertisement
Last month, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, told me that the government has no plans to bring in a carbon tax to replace the climate change levy, which is intended to make businesses more energy efficient and thus reduce carbon emissions. But policy in such matters continues to evolve with the development of other measures such as emissions trading schemes, said Brown.
That said, in his autumn statement the Chancellor gave no clue as to specific Treasury thinking on energy policy. I sense a financial time bomb is ticking away under British industry.
THE government is taking most seriously the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change鈥檚 suggestion that if aircraft were to fly at lower altitudes, this would help slow the rate of climate change (快猫短视频, 19 October, p 6). I asked junior transport minister David Jamieson about his department鈥檚 view of the idea.
Jamieson replied that there is a lot of ongoing research into the impact of civil aircraft on climate change. British researchers are involved in such work and participated in the study that led to the IPCC鈥檚 report, Aviation and the Global Atmosphere. The report and its supporting scientific papers established that the contrails formed by high-flying aircraft enhance the effect of high cirrus clouds, by adding to global warming. Besides this, such aircraft emit carbon dioxide. At cruise altitudes they also emit nitrogen oxides, which form ozone 鈥� a potent greenhouse gas. Of these effects, the IPCC believes that the contrails have the largest effect on global warming.
However, Jamieson warned that some researchers say the results in the IPCC report are valid only for the regions and particular scenarios of aircraft altitude reduction that were analysed. Moreover, the 快猫短视频 item implies contrails would be eliminated by flying at the lower level proposed. It seems likely that the incidence of contrail formation would be reduced but not necessarily eliminated, said the minister. He added that the Department of Transport is involved in sponsoring a three-year European Union project to study trade-offs in different flight scenarios, including changes to flight altitude.
Clearly it is premature to conclude that the flight altitudes of air traffic should be reduced.
