An all- day conference held at Conway Hall on 17th June
To give an impression of the high quality of this event, here is a thumbnail
of the contributions made by just 3 of the 20 speakers:
Caroline Lucas, Green Party, speaking by video link from New York, (there to support the UN Treaty
banning Nuclear Weapons), celebrated the milestone reached in the UK at midday
on 7th June 2017, when renewable energy generation (combined solar,
wind, hydro and biomass) for the first time met over 50% of electricity demand.
She quoted the proverb: “When storms
come, some build walls, while others build windmills”.
Andrew Warren, Chairman,
British Energy Efficiency Federation, said it is a scandal that we have no government
research into whether the £24 billion being spent on Hinkley Point C would be
better spent on energy efficiency. He pointed out that despite government
predictions (in 2003) that energy demand would rise three-fold over the next
ten years, energy demand actually fell by 15.2% between 2005 and 2015 (with a
fall in gas sales of 32% over the same period). Much of this fall has been due
to much greater energy efficiency (especially in lighting technology) driven by
EU regulation. The only actual blackouts the UK has experienced in recent years
have been due to outages at nuclear power plants.
Chris Baugh, Assistant
General Secretary, PCS union, argued against the myth that nuclear power
creates more jobs than renewables. He pointed out that most of the steel manufactured
in Germany today goes to building wind turbines and that the German steel
unions back the German Green Party.
By Paolo Enock
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