Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group
This debate was interesting, but disappointingly it was largely a “debate about big energy” rather than “a big debate about energy”. The discussion included a lot of industry lobbying government to finance business-as-usual (more, newer, faster and bigger machines).
I think also that this debate may have differed from the others because it was in Westminster; about half the people there were MPs, the other half industrialists. I suspect this influenced who decided to show up from industry. I think I was the only participant not employed in the energy supply sector.
There was some fairly brazen lobbying for more financial support for one technology or another. It was not a “balanced debate” in the sense officially adopted by IMechE; ie that you need a balance between demand reduction, efficiency of conversion, and renewable supply before you consider low carbon solutions or fossil supply. Rather it was a debate about “government doing what it can that’s good for the energy supply business”. This focused on requests for more investment of taxpayer money, and more policy security to enable investment.
Several MPs valiantly engaged in highly technical discussion of supply and distribution technologies but apart from one (Alan Whitehead), I felt the MPs were in awe of the industrialists, and didn’t challenge them with a longer-term vision, nor provide much leadership or ask challenging questions.
There was discussion of energy security, gas imports, nuclear power, CCS, a sensible discussion about importing electricity from Europe being less concerning than importing gas from Russia. There was some discussion of smart grids, storage and balance of electricity supply & demand.
I heard little evidence of the assembled expertise addressing the challenge of designing an energy system that might actually work into the long term future.
There was no mention of long term sustainability, only of “low carbon supply”, no mention of the future beyond one investment period, no mention of future generations or of legacy. There was no mention of demand reduction, apart from two attempts by one MP to raise the subject which didn’t yield much comment. There was little on heat. There was absolutely nothing on EROI, and no challenge to the assumption of infinite growth or that “technology will solve all”.
My contribution, which yielded no follow-up in the debate or in the published report, was that a holistic and long term sustainable approach is needed if we want to leave future generations with a functional energy system; that we need to design an energy system that includes transport and heat, that includes, as well as emissions reductions, demand reduction down to the levels of supply that are reliably achievable in the long term future (much lower than current scenarios).
Overall, the very fact of the debate taking place, in all its parts and in all these locations, is an excellent initiative, and I hope it leads to more and better debates, even if the content of what I observed was very timid, and unlikely to lead to an anything that could be described as a “sustainable energy future”.