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Governments are retreating on climate action. Labour must not

Another timely piece from Sam Mason explains why you should join the Labour CND webinar on 13 May on how to fight the dangerous push to nuclear power.

Not only was 2023 confirmed as the hottest on record, it was also a record year for energy-related CO2 emissions. What UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres has called “a mere preview of the catastrophic future that awaits if we don’t act now” is the reality for those in East Africa or South Asia in the grip of devastating floods and heatwaves.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) data clearly shows we are not acting fast enough, and we are now close to breaching the 1.5 degrees of warming threshold enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement.

Despite knowing that we have to end the production and use of fossil fuels, our governments are retreating on commitments.  There perhaps can be no more cynical undermining of the need to transition to renewable energy than the news that Rishi Sunak is intending to issue oil and gas exploration licences at sites intended for offshore wind.

But the other alternative to fossil fuels enjoying a renaissance as a ‘renewable’ fuel is nuclear power, renamed in the so-call taxonomy of green energy as environmentally sustainable. This is to support an ambitious programme of nuclear power expansion outlined in the Government’s Civil Nuclear Road map to 2050 which aims to reach 25% of our energy needs through nuclear power production – the biggest programme in 70 years. This is also part of an initiative announced at the COP28 in Dubai to triple nuclear energy globally by 2050.

So, what is driving this new dash for nuclear? That’s a good question, given how long it takes to build nuclear power plants and their environmental impacts – not least those linked to uranium extraction, storage, and decommissioning issues, to name a few.  Is it really just to “fill-in” for the days when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine?

It’s over seventy years since the Attlee government passed the Atomic Energy Act, setting in train Britain’s nuclear programme following the end of wartime collaboration with the US, in the form of the Manhattan Project. The UK nuclear weapons programme was the forerunner to Britain’s development of nuclear power, which began in 1953, with the first commercial reactor later coming online at Calder Hall in 1956. A Magnox reactor, it combined power generation with plutonium production for military purposes. 

Since the heyday of nuclear power in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, the UK’s nuclear power industry has been in decline. Indeed, during Labour’s last period of office, the Party moved away from supporting new nuclear on the basis of the cost and environmental impacts. The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) established in 2000 by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not support a new programme. Their 2006 position paper, entitled ‘The Role of Nuclear Power in a Low Carbon Economy’, voiced all the concerns we continue to have today, such as technology lock-in; distraction from investment in renewables and energy efficiency measures; costs; intergenerational legacy; waste; safety; increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Unlike the IEA, we do not agree there can there be a “vision of a nuclear for peace and prosperity” that supports the action we need on climate change.

In October last year, we set out our arguments against nuclear power in a new pamphlet: ‘Labour, Climate Change, and Nuclear power – Not Cheap, Not Safe, Not Peaceful’.  It covers the history of Labour’s support for nuclear power and why the labour movement needs to oppose this technology – whether old or new nuclear.

On Monday 13th May, we will be hosting a webinar to look at the points made in the pamphlet and explore the renewed drive to more nuclear power. It will lead off with an overview of Labour CND’s pamphlet and follow with contributions from Linda Clarke who will look at the construction side of the industry, and Dr Phil Johnstone who will discuss the links between civilian and defence nuclear projects.

Given the shrinking window for action on climate, Labour CND believes the debate over nuclear and its role in tackling climate change and energy security is no longer a debate Labour – or Britain – can afford to keep having.

Please join us at the webinar to help build confidence in our arguments fighting this dangerous push to a nuclear future. Register now

* This article first appeared in Labour Outlook, 6 May 2024

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To address climate change, we need peace

In her latest blog, Samantha Mason addresses issues from the King’s speech on the opening of parliament.

ATTENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE HAS UNDERSTANDABLY
taken a back seat as we’ve watched the horror of events unfolding in Gaza and mobilised around the call for a ceasefire and peace.  However, as climate campaigners have pointed out, including in a letter to Ed Miliband, fighting for the “cause of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people” is not separate from the colonial violence and dispossession which is also at the heart of the climate crisis.

There’s no bigger action for climate change
than achieving peace for Gaza

The impacts of climate change continue apace as 2023 is likely to be declared the warmest on record. The UN Secretary General’s call for the world to end the madness of the fossil fuel age which is driving don’t seem to have reached the ears of the UK government who is forging ahead with the issuing of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

The  oil and gas bill announced in the King’s Speech follows Rishi Sunak’s statement in September pledging a “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to reaching net zero“. This also included the removal of energy efficiency standards for private landlords, condemning renters to totally avoidable high energy bills – a point well made by the UK Green Building Council and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Of course, this is all part of the new ‘Uxbridge’ narrative of the government being ‘on the side of car drivers’ pushing-back on a number of measures including targets to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars. Unfortunately, the science of climate change doesn’t care about political posturing and the only reality here is that we cannot put off until tomorrow what we should be doing today.

Any new oil and gas in the North Sea won’t benefit
UK energy consumers because we don’t own it

Likewise, financial and health burdens will also certainly not be ‘eased’ for people as a result. Any new oil and gas produced in the North Sea will not be to the benefit of UK energy consumers as we don’t own it. It is therefore false to say it will help bring down bills – a point the new Secretary of State for DESNZ Clair Coutinho has finally conceded.

There are undoubtedly costs in transitioning to a decarbonised economy and these should not be falling on workers in terms of jobs, pay and other terms and conditions, or hard-pressed communities. These costs should be ‘proportionately’ distributed and socialised by ending the greed of fossil fuel corporation profits and bringing all energy assets back into public ownership. Not least when we see the renewables sector trying to fashion itself on a fossil fuel ‘for profit’ business model.

A crisis in the offshore wind industry, not just impacting the UK but in Europe and the US as well, has seen the main offshore wind farm developers pulling back from bidding in government auctions.  Big players such as Ørsted and Vattenfall have also pulled out of projects due to issues of “profitability” as inflation and higher interest rates have increased costs.

And the idea that nuclear power will be an answer to the energy and climate crisis is also starting to wobble (unsurprisingly) on financial grounds.  The ‘poster child’ for small modular reactors (SMRs), NuScale in the US, has ended a major project on basis of costs defeating one of the primary arguments for SMRs that they can be built more quickly and cheaply.  Indeed, many technological fixes being proposed for tackling climate change such as Carbon Capture and Storage and Direct Airsource Capture are proving to be the false solutions many climate campaigners have always argued.

The idea that nuclear power is an answer to
climate change is starting to wobble

It is clear that climate change will be one of the battle grounds in the next general election and this should not be allowed to turn into binary choices of cars over clean air or arbitrary fiscal rules. Right now, we need a coherent long-term plan that aligns reducing greenhouse gas emissions with addressing the energy, health, and cost of living crises all of which are inter-connected. Similarly, the plan needs to recognise the need for global cooperation and climate justice. This should be seen as an opportunity for the Labour Party to provide a real alternative to Tory climate and environmental policies that will continue to cause long-term harm to us all.

At the end of November, the global climate talks – COP28 – will take place in Dubai. There is little faith in these talking shops that fail to address the fossil fuels in the room and on 9 December there will be a Global Day of Action with mass demonstrations planned across the globe. In the UK these are being coordinated by the Climate Justice Coalition.  

People everywhere have risen up for Gaza and it’s possible, sadly, we may yet be coordinating joint actions that day.  Whether this is the case or not, one thing is clear, there is no bigger action for climate change than achieving peace for Gaza, or other areas of the world suffering conflicts, and it must remain an integral part of our climate demands.

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Labour’s climate promises melt in the heatwave

In her latest climate blog, Sam Mason argues that Labour must have a strategic climate plan from day one of taking office. The watering down of Labour’s recent commitment to block new North Sea oil and gas licences for reasons of political expediency bodes ill for a green future.

AS THE MET OFFICE ISSUED THEIR FIRST HEAT WAVE WARNING of the summer and pictures of New York engulfed in smoke from the “out of control” Canadian wildfires fill our TV screens, you would think people were starting to join the dots on climate change.  Indeed, the announcement that Labour will block new north sea oil and gas licences was a positive step that along with the commitments for a green prosperity fund seemed to show the party was doing just this.

Unfortunately, what we have seen is that a week is indeed a long time in climate politics. Both commitments have been melting away in tune with the rising thermometer and the Labour Party is bowing, not to the realities of climate change, but political expedience.

Watering down the committment on North Sea
oil and gas licences is bowing to
political expediency

The GMB’s General Secretary Gary Smith was quick to call out the oil and gas announcement as “naïve” and populist.  A strange statement given we are on the verge of exceeding the Paris climate agreement ‘limit’ of 1.5C degrees of global heating in the next few years, which will and does threatens all workers.

Unite similarly attacked the announcement as headline grabbing and a promise of “jam tomorrow” but, with an important difference. Unite emphasised need for detailed transition plans for workers in the North Sea led through a process of collective bargaining that guarantees jobs, pay and conditions for all workers and supporting industries. A demand they are right to insist on together with public ownership of energy.

IN THE FIGHT TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE – life and livelihoods cannot be decoupled.  Whether that is for workers in the north sea or the millions in East Africa who have been impacted by the worst drought for 40 years. A war of words on yet to happen pledges of action won’t put food on the table for any worker or address the urgent need to take serious action to decarbonise the economy.

Rachel Reeve is back-tracking on Labour’s
green prosperity spending

As the oil and gas ‘pledges’ get watered down, Rachel Reeves has decided to start rolling back on the party’s green prosperity spending commitment. Far from fiscally responsible, it shows that Labour really isn’t thinking about the kind of detail and plan trade unions are calling for in the much-needed energy transition. Further, it helps to re-enforce the cynicism that unions have in the promised jobs of renewable energy.

The science of climate change doesn’t care about fiscal responsibility, and its impacts on the economy will only increase the further we are from taking action.  Damage to infrastructure and social consequences such as on health all bring additional costs and burdens on already struggling public services. Investment in the work needed for both mitigation and measures to adapt to the impacts of climate change will not only be good for the UK, but also globally.

While the UK has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions in the transition from coal to natural gas in the 1980’s it remains one of the largest contributors to cumulative CO2 emissions.  This underlines the historic responsibility of the UK to fulfil its “fair share” in climate funding for countries on the frontline of climate impacts, namely in the global south, and to ensure a transition rooted in justice that recognises the disastrous impacts on communities here of the past deindustrialisation. This funding means having a plan and putting serious investment behind it from day one.

Reversing Labour’s commitment to nuclear weapons could free up billions for strong public services and a just transition for workers

And if Rachel Reeves is concerned about where they will find the money from, there are two obvious places they could start with – nuclear. Reversing the commitment to nuclear weapons and Trident renewal would free-up billions to invest in energy transition, warm homes, strong public services and a just transition for workers that would secure jobs and ensure protections of livelihoods.

This second is removing the fetish with nuclear power, the most expensive form of energy. Whilst Keir Starmer has said the Tories have been a “shambolic failure” in delivering on nuclear energy, the historic failure of nuclear power projects to deliver on time and budget should be enough in itself to say it provides neither energy or climate security. Hinkley Point C backers EDF have announced further delays and billions of cost increases.

Keir Starmer asserting such delays would be avoided because they would have a “strategic plan with real purpose” is to the contrary. Any plan including nuclear power would continue to add to the delays in accelerating the renewable energy transition, developing storage capacity, and reducing energy consumption by transforming buildings and public transport. All of which would be jobs rich.

In what could be a long, over hot summer, the only ‘lobby’ the party should be listening to is the climate, which is telling us through our lived experience of climate impacts not least on workers across the globe, we are running out of time for politician’s lack of strategic vision on this.

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We need socially useful production, not manufacturing of destruction

In her latest climate blog for Labour CND, Sam Mason takes issue with the GMB composite at the forthcoming Trades Union Congress arguing true solidarity with our sisters and brothers across the world means public investment in socially useful production not more weapons of mass destruction

In 2007, Nicholas Stern made this much referenced quote:
“Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen. The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction or delayed action is now overwhelming. We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century. The problem is global and the response must be a collaboration on a global scale.”

THIS DEFINITION of “market failure” is said to stem from free markets failing to maximise society’s welfare.  Something which we are witnessing to catastrophic ends in the respective energy and climate crises. Evidence if it was ever needed, free market economics and the privatisation it walks hand in hand with are not the best way to address the global challenges facing us. This includes climate change but also increasing inequality, public health, diminishing social protections, decent unionised work and threats of war and nuclear conflict.

One area which remains free of the market mantra is defence spending, however.  Of course, private sector companies benefit from this but it is through the investment of public money, and for ends that do nothing to meet the needs of workers and people, here in the UK or globally. Something well understood by the former Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards committee in developing their Alternative Corporate plan for socially useful production in the 1970’s.

The GMB notion, misleadingly entitled economic recovery and manufacturing jobs, is an agenda for warmongering and nuclear weapons

WHILE THE IDEAS of worker’s plans as espoused by the Lucas shop stewards have gained some traction in recent times across the labour and climate movements, unfortunately some industrial unions are still pinning job creation plans to the mast of defence spending. The GMB motion to be debated at the postponed TUC Congress in October under the misleading title of “economic recovery and manufacturing jobs”, is an agenda for warmongering and nuclear weapons, taking us in completely the wrong direction.

Contrary to what the motion says, a lack of investment in defence spending is not the reason for our lack of funding in our public services. The proposals in this motion would further reduce vital monies for these as well as investment in renewable energy, urgently needed retrofit and insulation of our homes and, essentially the creation of many more jobs including in the defence ‘company’ towns of Barrow.

WE HAVE JUST SEEN devastating of floods in Pakistan, said to be one of the “worst climate change-induced catastrophes ever recorded globally”. Pakistan contributes less than 1% to global greenhouse gas emissions, and rightly this ‘event’ has refocused debate on the responsibility of the global north around reparations and loss and damage.

However, Pakistan is also a heavy IMF indebted nation and nuclear weapons state.  None of which helped avert this recent catastrophe or will assist in the post flooding crisis of food shortages, displacement, destruction of livelihoods and health risks.

IF THE GMB MOTION PASSES at the TUC, this will be a catastrophic failure of the labour movement towards the global south. To show true solidarity with our sisters and brothers across the world, it’s time we reassessed our own transition. This includes support for debt cancellation, and a programme of global public investment in socially useful production, rather than collaborating in more weapons of mass destruction.

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Government energy strategy: security for the nuclear lobby, not for people or planet

Samantha Mason is a member of the Labour CND committee and a well-known climate and just transition activist. In the second of her regular climate blogs she takes a cold hard look at the government’s recently published energy security strategy.

The government energy security strategy means security for the nuclear lobby, but not for energy or climate

MUCH ANALYSIS has now been made of the UK Government’s British Energy Security Strategy since it was announced on 19th April. Namely its failure to meet its stated “mutually reinforcing goals” of security, sustainability and affordability, and address energy demand side measures i.e. energy conservation or reduction of use. Whilst some may welcome the Government’s ambition in aiming to produce 95% of electricity by 2030 through low carbon means, as ever there is no plan for how this will be achieved.

A roll call of technologies from offshore wind to nuclear power is no substitute for this, and further demonstrates that the UK’s energy crisis is part of the historic complexity and incoherency of government energy policy. Dieter Helm, an energy policy expert and recent adviser to the Prime Minister, has aptly referred to this as a “lobbyists utopia” and, in this case, the nuclear lobbyists are having a field day.

Energy policy is not rocket science. It is about achieving core objectives – security of supply and decarbonisation – and achieving them at the lowest cost. Neither will be met by purely private markets — Professor Dieter Helm

The British Energy Security Strategy says it will “reverse decades of myopia” by investing massively in nuclear power. This includes the deployment of 24GW of nuclear power by 2050 to meet around 25% of projected energy demand. This will be achieved, it claims, by developing up to 8 new nuclear reactors with one final investment decision (FID), therefore nuclear project commitment, in this Parliament, and two more in the next including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).  The Government claims this will provide “cleaner, cheaper power, lower energy bills and thousands of high wage, high skilled new jobs”.

Contrary to reversing decades of myopia, investment in new nuclear is far from long-sighted, and does nothing to help the climate or energy crisis.

On 4th April, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the final part of its sixth assessment report on climate change. The first one on the science of climate change, was issued ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called this “code red for humanity”.  The next part on adaptation, issued in February, was referred to by Guterres as an “atlas of human suffering”. This final part on mitigation talks of the shrinking timeframe – just years to stabilise the climate.

WE ARE WATCHING as the world is ravaged by conflict and war (not just in Ukraine but Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Ethiopia, the DRC among others) and “clobbered” by climate to quote Guterres again. It is irresponsible for our politicians to carry on as if old technology such as nuclear and business-as-usual energy models will solve the twin energy and climate crises. The liberalised and privatised energy model, particularly in the UK, is at the heart of our energy crisis.

Energy nationalisation of itself does not necessarily cure all the ills of our energy system. A lot depends on the design of a new public ownership model, and when the taxpayer is bailing out energy companies it defies logic not to pursue this. Labour’s current proposals for a windfall tax hark back to an energy policy of New Labour focused on making “liberalisation work better”. The party seems to have learned nothing from this, including that the unbundling or break up of the energy companies would not “hit hardest those least able to pay”.

Labour’s current proposals for a windfall tax hark back to
an energy policy of New Labour focused on
making “liberalisation work better”

History tells us otherwise. We are now in a very changed landscape for energy and environment policy. In the face of climate change, we have no time left to flip flop on energy strategy and this means firm opposition to nuclear power.

The Government can pluck any target out of thin air it likes but evidence – decades of evidence – tells us their ambition and reliance on economies of scale will not be achievable – on construction costs, delivery timelines, and finding solutions to deal with waste.  Aside from an incompetent Government, market forces won’t fund this agenda and once again it will be foisted on tax payers. The new Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act, will frontload costs onto consumers, further increasing fuel poverty. Labour acknowledged this in the debate on the passage of the bill before it came into force, but still backed it.

NUCLEAR POWER is also at the behest of shifting geo-political relationships as evidenced by moves to remove China from investments in UK nuclear power projects.  To suggest that nuclear gives us a home grown source of energy is quite misleading . Uranium is needed and the global leaders in supply are Australia, Khazakstan, Canada, and indeed Russia. 

Investment in nuclear power will only lead to delays in building up our renewables capacity and generation, storage technology, and the system to deliver on this, the national transmission grid and distribution networks. Importantly too, investment in nuclear continues to detract from decades-overdue energy conservation measures that include retrofit and insulation of UK homes which would also help energy affordability.

The only way to address these crises is by having a national energy transition plan, based on renewable energy as a global public good which is essential to all our activities. Such a plan would enable us to map out the transition for workers, rather than lay waste their skills as is happening at present. It would harness their knowledge and experience, for the much needed work on decarbonisation. 

Above all an energy security strategy must be for people and planet not nuclear lobbyists.