Wild Land News no 63, Spring 2005

COMMENT - Generation and Conservation Article

The Asian tsunami might have nothing to do with climate change, but it gave us some idea of the vulnerability of low-lying coastal regions. With many of the survivors vowing never to return in the aftermath of that one event, we can imagine of the social and economic chaos resulting from a permanent rise in sea-levels, with whole communities having to move inland and compete with existing populations for the available land in safer areas.

In Britain last year, freak weather gave us a reminder of our own vulnerability when Boscastle was devastated, followed in a few days by the mudslide in Glen Ogle. Sceptics dismiss these as one-off events and point to precedents. Politicians equivocate, wishing to sound neither radical nor indifferent, knowing that they depend on votes and that any action they take must be carefully measured. In the meantime energy policy will continue to be a muddle until enough people find themselves so inconvenienced by the effects of climate change that they demand action from politicians.

By that time, many environmentalists believe, it will be too late. In fact many experts think it is already too late to get up to speed with renewable technologies that are still in their infancy. Some are now thinking the unthinkable - that the only option is a return to nuclear power. In a TV documentary James Lovelock, author of Gaia, expressed the view that time has now run out for alternative technologies to save the situation, and the almost inevitable accidents in the nuclear industry would be far less serious than the impact of climate change.

In Scotland over the last decade the main development in renewable energy has been the proliferation of onshore windfarms. In SWLG we have accepted in principle the role of wind power, but have argued for developments to be steered towards brownfield sites or places of unexceptional scenic quality, while opposing those which damage our landscape heritage. In this campaign we have found common ground in unusual quarters - we might not normally expect a great overlap in readership with, say, Country Life magazine, yet that publication has been peppered with anti-windfarm articles accompanied by a clever three-bladed design representing a wind turbine, but highly suggestive of the well-known radioactivity hazard symbol.

But even among the country landowning set it seems opinion may be divided. While in the Borders the Duke of Buccleuch has been opposing windfarm developments, his not-too-distant neighbour, the Duke of Roxburghe, stands to make well over £0.5 million per year out of a 56-turbine development proposal on his grouse moors. At £10,000 or more per turbine per annum, not a bad little earner. A decade ago when commercial wind power was just starting in Scotland, we were told that between £1500 and £2200 was the going rate, but the bandwagon has rolled on since then. As usual, the easiest money is made by the landowners.

So what are the politicians to make of all these mixed messages? What policy is going to be the best vote winner? The position is not at all clear; politicians dither and energy policy continues fairly rudderless. Yet if the government were truly committed to reducing fossil fuel emissions, it could have taken positive action in the meantime by placing far more emphasis on energy conservation, rather than concentrating on more and more generation. We occasionally pick up snippets of information from random sources, such as the fact that if every household in the UK were to replace a conventional light-bulb with an energy-efficient one, one power station could be shut down; or if we turn our central heating thermostats down one degree we could save 10% of the energy used.

So why isn't the government promoting this information more? Surely if it really cared about the consequences of over-consumption it would be bombarding us with the message about energy conservation in a properly structured educational campaign, using the press, TV, radio, the internet and whatever else? This would send the right signal to the green lobby, yet would be relatively uncontroversial. It would certainly be better than throwing money at suspect and controversial renewable technologies, with much of that cash inevitably ending up in landowners' pockets in the form of enhanced land values.