Wave and tide power could provide up to 20% of the UK's current electricity.

A new report by the Carbon Trust predicts Britain could establish a global lead in harnessing marine energy if it is prepared to invest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1694771,00.html?gusrc=rss

The UK's energy debate has been framed wrongly.

 
He writes: "The arguments commonly voiced by many of the antagonists are dangerously simplistic and highly misleading in terms of policy. For example, given that nuclear power provides only 3.6% of our final energy consumption, the argument that the UK cannot meet its carbon dioxide targets without building a new generation of nuclear stations to replace the existing and aging generation is evidently wrong. Similarly, the argument that nuclear power is too costly, does not take into account the security costs associated with attempting to maintain fossil fuel supplies from what are often perceived to be unstable regions of the world. How much, for example, have the UK's forays into Afghanistan and Iraq cost the tax payer? Until such costs are factored into the analysis, economic comparisons between fossil fuels and nuclear are essentially meaningless."

Read more at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4633160.stm

Energy Security: threat from Ukraine

When Russia turned off Ukraine’s gas, it sparked panic over the security of European energy supplies. It prompted nuclear enthusiasts, such as the former energy minister Brian Wilson, to pipe up...But reactors only produce electricity, which cannot replace the oil that fuels our cars and lorries. Neither is nuclear power a cheap or reliable source of electricity.

Professor Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the industry-funded Oxford Institute for Energy Studies says: “The nuclear stations we have built have been economic and technical  disasters. It is a 1970s fallacy that anything you produce yourself is secure and anything you import is insecure. It’s just not an empirical fact.” The dispute between Russia and Ukraine has not altered Stern’s view that importing gas is likely to be a more secure option that relying on nuclear power. Russia has never defaulted on gas supplies, and it was not in its interest to do so, he said. In any case, the UK wasn’t likely to depend on Russian gas in the foreseeable future.

Environmentalists, however, argue that it is more important to control the demand for energy than to increase the sources of supply. “If the UK is serious about gas security we’d be going crazy over using it efficiently,” said Greenpeace’s chief scientific adviser, Dr Douglas Parr. “We burn our gas wastefully in big power stations when local power stations, which use the heat as well, could slash our need for gas. With our commitment to efficient gas use so lacklustre, worrying over gas supplies is just posturing to generate support for the unpalatable nuclear option.”
See full article:
http://www.sundayherald.com/53456