George Monbiot on the future of UK energy

In one respect, Simon Jenkins is right. “Nobody,” he complained in the Guardian last week, while laying out his case for nuclear power, “agrees about figures.” As a result, “energy policy is like Victorian medicine, at the mercy of quack remedies and snake-oil salesmen”. There is a reason for this. As far as I can discover, reliable figures for the total volume of electricity that renewable power could supply do not yet exist. So anyone can claim anything, and anyone does. The enthusiasts for renewables insist that the entire economy – lights, heating, cars and planes – can be powered from hydrogen produced by wind. The nuclear evangelists maintain, in Jenkins’ words, that “even if every beauty spot in Britain were coated in windmills, their contribution to the Kyoto target would be minuscule”. All of us are groping around in the dark.

The Guardian