Carbon dioxide levels are now about 40 per cent higher than at any time in the past 740,000 years at least, and probably in the past 20 million years. We know the cause: our use of fossil fuels and deforestation. The implications are stark, and to some extent unavoidable. Due to the inertia of the global climate system, further warming will occur over the next few decades regardless of action on emissions-reduction. But the decisions we take now – for better or worse – will have enormous impact on the legacy that we leave for our children, and for generations to come. 

Current global warming is already having its effects: sea ice is melting, glaciers are receding, sea levels are rising and the oceans are becoming more acidic. What’s more, in the past 30 years the number of strong hurricanes, the equivalent category to Katrina, has doubled. But I fear what we have seen to date is just a taster of the more severe impacts we can expect, in the absence of more urgent and radical action to decarbonise our fossil-fuel-addicted economies, both here in the UK and globally. This is the greatest problem our civilisation has yet had to face. It requires a collective global response: a massive challenge for our populations, businesses and politicians.

Our emissions have multiple causes, and, country-by-country, our response will require a multiplicity of approaches. We need every tool in the bag, and will need to develop and deploy some new tools too. The UK government committed itself, in the 2003 energy white paper, to a 60 per cent reduction in emissions, while keeping energy costs competitive and securing our energy supplies.

Today, in total we in the UK are emitting about 150 million tonnes of carbon per annum. We are committed, therefore, to reducing that to 60 million tonnes a year by 2050. Each and every sector will need to be squeezed hard if we are going to achieve that. Each will be required to contribute a growing ‘wedge’ of carbon reductions over the next 50 years. These wedges have to comprehensively include each of the following: energy efficiency gains; an ambitious programme of energy renewables; decarbonising the transport sector; a programme to reverse the current decline of nuclear energy on the grid; distributed energy generation with combined heat and power; energy micro-generation, making much of the built environment independent of the national grid; and carbon-capture and storage. Effectively this has been set out in the energy review published in July.

With each of these wedges pursued to give optimal outcomes, we can manage that 60 per cent reduction within a healthy, growing economy. If any wedge can be developed faster, particularly by encouraging new technological developments, even bigger reductions may be achieved, taking us to our goal of a zero net carbon economy more quickly.

To achieve this will require further detailed analysis, and research and skills for each sector. Constraints on the development of each wedge will need to be tackled. As an example, we currently have about 1.4GW energy capacity on the grid from wind farms, but another 9.5GW is caught up in planning. While retaining the importance of local democratic procedures, the bottlenecks in these processes need to be streamlined. Considerably more resources will be put into non-nuclear research over the next ten years, spurred on by two important developments.

Firstly, we are currently working with the chief executives of BP, E:On UK, EDF and Shell to develop a prospectus for a new Institute for Energy Technologies, a public-private partnership which will invest £500m in energy research and development over 10 years, and will include a range of further private sector companies. Secondly, BP has announced the formation of a new BP Bioenergy Institute, which will invest £300m over 10 years into biofuels research. New technologies from these and other efforts in the UK and abroad will provide the means for achieving many of our goals.

It is in this context that I believe we must take steps now to ensure that the conditions exist for the UK’s current nuclear energy capacity to be replaced. In the absence of such action, the UK looks set to become increasingly dependent on carbon-dioxide-emitting gas, sourced increasingly from Russia, Africa and the Middle East.

Timescales are a key factor. Put simply, it takes much longer to plan, get approval for and build a nuclear plant than it does for other generation options. Each year that we delay any new nuclear build means we may commit to perhaps an additional 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted to the atmosphere by 2050, assuming that gas fills the gap as nuclear capacity declines. In some scenarios the position could be worse, if gas prices remain high and coal becomes more competitive.

All energy options have both advantages and drawbacks, as witnessed by the vocal campaigners against wind farms. For nuclear, the waste issue is clearly an issue to be addressed. However, a modern plant built today is considerably more efficient and safe, is designed for ease of decommissioning, and will produce far less waste than previous designs; it is estimated that a fleet of 10 new reactors would add over 40 years no more than 10 per cent to the total volume of UK waste, a long-term disposal solution for which will need to be identified irrespective of decisions on new build. Moreover, for new plant built today, the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning would be borne by the private sector investors, not the governments and would represent no more than three per cent of costs overall.   

Let me make it clear: if there were other sources of low-carbon energy that could replace our generation of nuclear while ensuring security of supply and competitive prices, I would be in favour of it, but there isn’t. Nuclear power is an important source of low-carbon electricity in the UK, and that is why the government has said nuclear power must be an important option in meeting our energy goals.

This may well be the last generation of new nuclear fission power plants in the UK. In 35 years’ time, the ITER project may well yield the availability of commercial fusion power plants, with zero radioactive waste implications. But, for now, we must face the realities as they exist today. Through this comprehensive range of actions to decarbonise our economy, giving us a strong hand in leading international negotiations on emissions reductions, we can begin to ensure a more manageable situation for future generations.