Is Brexit playing tricks with Government’s green vision?
Geraint Talfan Davies, former controller of BBC Wales and chairman of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, the Arts Council of Wales and Welsh National Opera, looks at the latest snub for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon...
THE UK Government’s sense of irony is clearly and seriously underdeveloped. How else can one explain its ability on World Environment Day last Tuesday to engineer simultaneous headlines about its investment in a very expensive nuclear power station in Anglesey, Cabinet approval for a third runway at Heathrow and its disinclination to fund a Swansea Tidal Lagoon powered by the moon?
Someone in government communications deserves the sack, but such is the dysfunctionality of this Government that those deserving the sack probably need to form an orderly queue.
On this account the Government’s chief apologist in Wales, Secretary of State Alun Cairns, must be nervous. In recent times he has had to defend the decisions of his Cabinet colleagues to dump an overlarge prison on Wrexham to cater for English prisoners, the abandonment of plans to electrify the railway line from Cardiff to Swansea, and now the squashing of plans for a lagoon that could provide the foundation for a new industry for one of the poorest parts of the UK.
Now I don’t want to underestimate the difficulty of being the Secretary of State for Wales. The holder of this post has two jobs – to be Wales’ voice in London and London’s voice in Wales.
This week people are beginning to search for some sign of Mr Cairns’ influence. Counsel for the defence will point to the Government’s willingness to contribute to the £12bn Wylfa Newydd nuclear power station. But like the other nuclear station, Hinkley B, the siting of Wylfa had more to do with the common sense of locating new nuclear sites cheek by jowl with older nuclear stations than about Welsh lobbying.
With the lagoon it should be different. Here is a project that needs not only legitimate scrutiny, but also clever and forceful advocacy.
Yet last week Mr Cairns was willing to tell any reporter who asked that he has said many times that the Swansea lagoon figures were “awful”, as if this were beyond contention. Although he was claiming that a final decision had not been taken, his downbeat assessment was clearly an exercise in managing expectations.
Are the figures truly awful? Some commentators have been trotting out older worst-case figures of £150 per megawatt hour, whereas the current figure the Swansea lagoon company has put forward is £92.50 MWh over 35 years, exactly the same price as the Hinkley B nuclear station.
But with this difference: that at the end of those 35 years there is no decommissioning cost for a lagoon, whereas the decommissioning of a nuclear reactor runs into billions. The lagoon will keep running for at least 120 years. And you cannot decommission the tides.
With nuclear, with that 35-year cut-off in mind – let’s say 45 years to be generous – the Government has already had to set aside £7.3bn for decommissioning Hinkley B and the ongoing maintenance of the nuclear mausoleum until the end of time.
One would have thought that the need to look at the project in the round was rather an obvious point, but the UK Government’s reclusive approach over the past 18 months – perhaps a further sign of its all-consuming Brexit preoccupations – means the public has had no real sight of the Government’s thinking and detailed judgments on aspects of the scheme.
Interviews on College Green outside Parliament are not a satisfactory alternative. This is the point made by the economist Lord Stern, who has gone public with his concerns.
Far from being some local lobbyist fighting Swansea’s corner, Lord Stern is a former chief economist with the World Bank, a former Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury and author of the influential Stern Review that looked at the economics of climate change.
He argues that before announcing any decision on the Swansea scheme the Government should first publish its internal economic analysis of it “so that its rigour and robustness can be checked.” He asks some interesting questions:
Has the Government fully taken into account the substantial potential benefits to the population in terms of recreation and health?
Has its analysis included the Swansea scheme’s important role as a prototype, which will lead to increased learning and reduced costs for subsequent schemes?
Lord Stern added: “Countries around the world are closely following the UK’s decision on tidal power. Let us hope that we do not convey the impression that the Government uses narrow and misleading economic analyses in considering strategic decisions of this kind and ignores the costs and benefits of being world leaders in low-carbon energy technologies.”
It is extraordinary that we are in this position 18 months after the publication of the very thorough Government-commissioned Hendry Report that gave the scheme enthusiastic backing.
Hendry summarised the situation thus: “Do we want to take advantage of a resource we know for certain will be available for as far ahead as we can see, or to leave the debate still rumbling on, with our grandchildren asking why we did not harness the power of the tides when we knew how to and had the opportunity?”
The Tidal Lagoon Company, the people of Swansea, the Welsh Government and the British public as a whole need to know precisely how, and on what evidence, the UK Government, including the Secretary of State for Wales, has answered all those questions.