Paralysis at the heart of decision-making

Despite a growing sense of urgency over the need for reliable low-carbon electricity sources, the developed world seems to have lost the art of taking difficult but necessary decisions, preferring to chase after dreams and shadows, writes Malcolm Grimston.

December 1951, the USA sees the first electricity from nuclear fission; June 1954, the Soviet Union feeds nuclear electricity into a grid for the first time; August 1956, Britain starts the first commercial-scale nuclear power station.

In January 2008 the UK government said: "More than ever before [nuclear power] has a key role to play". As 2015 draws to its close the number of new projects under way in the UK is zero. The 'nuclear renaissance' in Western Europe and North America (though fortunately not everywhere) seems to have fizzled out before it really started.

Despite a growing sense of urgency over the need for reliable low-carbon electricity sources, the developed world seems to have lost the art of taking difficult but necessary decisions, preferring to chase after dreams and shadows.

The reasons are complex and the subject of a book I have been working on for the last year. Underlying the crisis is a developed world narrative about energy that looks something like this:

• It is so long since we faced serious interruptions in power supplies that we cannot conceive of how serious 'the lights going out' would be.
• We can afford to campaign against any measures to deliver secure supplies in future and put the rights of individuals ahead of the needs of society at large.
• The way the nuclear industry constantly talks about safety shows just how dangerous it must be, while renewables and energy efficiency will deliver cheap reliable power very soon.
• Climate change might be real but for decades we’ve seen Big Green jokers like Amory Lovins and Paul Ehrlich cry wolf - they are still at it today and we are still here today.
• So, all things considered, there is no need to take potentially unpopular decisions now.

The outcome is the continued hegemony of the fossil fuels, who have been the real winners since the 'dash for nuclear'. In 2014 the world set a modern record - 13.69% of its primary energy came from non-fossil sources. Fifteen years of the modern push for renewables, with its big claims and even bigger subsidies, had seen that percentage grow by just 0.4 percentage points while energy use had grown by 40%.

Responsibility can be ascribed widely.

The nuclear industry has combined the hubris of a 'new priesthood' with a series of actions which have persuaded the public that nuclear power is horrendously dangerous - grandiose plans for burying waste hundreds of metres underground, a very public obsession with 'improving safety' despite the already excellent record; cruellest of all the forced exclusion of tens of thousands of Japanese from areas round Fukushima with radiation levels which would not cause a raised eyebrow were they from natural sources. Generation III nuclear plants are now looking very expensive, especially in the West, to the extent that it is proving extremely difficult to fund their construction. Every nuclear plant that is not built represents severe environmental and health effects from whatever alternative is chosen. A quick win would be never ever to treat radiation as more dangerous than it is in comparison to other environmental insults: it is the belief that over-the-top responses will 'put people's minds at rest' that is 'irrational', not the public's response.

Next culprit is the dismal level of public debate about the implications of variable output of power sources, a debate often framed in terms of average 'energy' rather than momentary 'power'. One can only admire Green spin. Marvel at 'new renewables' to describe wind (invented 1887), solar photovoltaics (1884), wave (1904) and geothermal (1910), while ignoring their growing use in the late 1800s and early 1900s until national grids killed them stone dead in the 1920s and 1930s. Wonder at the term 'grid parity' - basically "if we can get someone else to cover most of our costs we are not much more expensive than the alternatives". Far from getting cheaper, system level costs of renewables rise significantly as renewable penetration grows. In 2004 Jürgen Trittin, German Environment Minister, said: "Payments for renewable energy will cost each household on average about €1 per month - as much as one scoop of icecream". A decade later his successor Peter Altmaier said Energiewende will cost around €1 trillion. As cost overruns go this beats Olkiluoto into a cocked hat. 'Export' to describe dumping excess renewable production on one's neighbours is pretty good too.

A further dangerous myth involves energy efficiency. Up to now it has been a great driver of increased energy use - unless we believe that had we not invented modern jet engines we'd be using vastly more energy by flying 15 billion miles each year in World War I biplanes. Yet without explanation it is now simply stated that we can easily and cheaply halve our energy use.

Finally, the role of competitive markets has not been helpful in the field of electricity, however beneficial they may have been elsewhere. Markets have proved good at operating existing assets efficiently, much less good at sending timely signals to invest, especially in low carbon technologies. In effect, to promote non-commercial outcomes like secure supplies and low carbon emissions governments are paying private sector rates of return to encourage non-government bodies to carry out public policy. It may be time to return responsibility for the plant mix to the State - government dictates the plant mix but can then sell on or franchise out the power stations for competitive operation.

A new narrative is needed, starting as follows:

• Running seriously short of energy would be far more serious than perhaps many people realise.
• Running short of electricity would be especially damaging.
• Electricity is practically impossible to store in significant quantities.
• There has been very little investment in new power stations in some countries over the last decade, leaving a growingly urgent need for major investment of one kind or another.
• All methods of generating electricity have environmental downsides as well as economic costs but climate change is in a different league from any other environmental challenge.

Such a narrative, coupled with reintegrating properly refereed science into its rightful place in decision-making, may even at this late hour help to turn things round. There are practical solutions available but they need work and they will present problems. Chasing after fantasy perfection rather than focusing on compromise-laden reality hasn't worked so far - there is little reason to think it will do now.

Malcolm Grimston

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Malcolm Grimston is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy and Technology. His forthcoming book, The Sclerosis in Energy Decision Making, is a multi-disciplinary survey of decision making in the energy field, especially in the UK and western Europe.