Some will say that this is a false choice and that we can do without nuclear or fossil fuel burning. But the technologies that everyone hopes will deliver large quantities of renewable power - wave, tidal, offshore wind - are still years away from being proven to reliably deliver large quantities of power. The other less-polluting sources of power - clean coal and gas with carbon capture and storage - are not even at the demonstration stage yet. Even if these technologies do turn out to work in a technical sense, they have still to be shown to be economic. As last week's row about ScottishPower's electricity prices shows, people expect their electricity to be both reliable and cheap. The party manifestos are full of admirable talk about turning Scotland into Europe's green energy power house, how we can be much more energy efficient and how we can turn our homes into little power stations with rooftop turbines, solar panels, etc. None of this answers the really critical question: can enough of this be delivered quickly enough to close the energy gap which looms in 2015? I have yet to see convincing evidence that it can.

NOW the election campaign is over and the results are in, it is time to think about the big issues with which the new Scottish Executive will have to grapple. Energy, particularly the supply of electricity, ought to be near the top of every business list because Scotland faces an energy crunch in the next decade. When an organisation as prestigious as the Royal Society of Edinburgh warns, as it did last June, that we might be facing blackouts in 2015, crisis is not too dramatic a word to use.

The problem is relatively simple. Scotland now has about 10,500 megawatts (mW) of generating capacity. Because of maintenance needs, unplanned shutdowns and the fact that the wind does not always blow, a third of this capacity is not available at any one time.

However, the remaining two-thirds, or 7,000mW, is more than enough to meet peak electricity demand of about 6,000mW. The excess capacity means that Scotland is presently a net electricity exporter.

The bad news is that Cockenzie coal-fired power station (1,200mW) is due to close between 2010 and 2014 and Hunterston B nuclear station (1,200mW) is also likely to shut in the same period. Though renewables, particularly onshore wind power, are steadily increasing their output (currently renewables add up to about 2,500mW), electricity demand is also rising.

This means that, by about 2015, possibly earlier, Scotland will turn from exporting electricity to importing it if the lights are to stay on. That, however, will require big investment in the National Grid, especially in the cross-Border inter-connector power line.

So the questions are pretty big ones. Is Scotland happy to be an energy importer? If we are, is National Grid going to make the required investment? Or should we be looking to build a big new power station to replace Cockenzie and Hunterston B and maintain Scottish electricity exports? If so, what sort of power station should it be? And, here's the big one, should we turn our backs on nuclear power?

Dealing with these questions will be one of the first priorities of the new Executive. Later this month, Tony Blair's government will publish an energy white paper. It is expected to say that there should be new nuclear power stations built, probably alongside the existing reactors. This will, of course, be controversial right across Britain, not just in Scotland.

We know that the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats are flatly opposed to nuclear. So, if they form a coalition government, that, presumably, will be the end of that - no more nuclear power in Scotland.

Is this really sensible? The main objection to nuclear power is that it produces radioactive waste which has to be stored somewhere for perhaps several thousand years. As yet, Britain has no such long-term storage site. The most likely candidate for such a site is Sellafield in Cumbria where the most highly radioactive waste - used fuel rods - gets sent already.

At a recent meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I listened to Robert Armour, the company secretary of British Energy, the nuclear generator, on the subject. He said that Hunterston B produces enough waste every year to fill three double-decker buses. About 70 per cent of this waste is low-level stuff - overalls and such like. Newer designs of nuclear power stations produce about one and a half busloads of waste, he said.

Now, to some people, that will be one and half busloads too much risk to the environment. A few years ago, I would have agreed. But now there is a new environmental problem - climate change.

We know now that one of the principal causes of man-made climate change is pumping out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And here, Armour had an arresting statistic to offer - that generating electricity by nuclear power creates as much carbon dioxide as does the equivalent megawattage of wind energy. He went on to say that the electricity output so far of Hunterston B, if it had been generated by a fossil fuel, would have created five million busloads of carbon dioxide.

I am not sure how he calculates that. But supposing that it is accurate, it poses a hard question, not just for environmentalists, but for all of us: is it better for the environment to create a few busloads of nuclear waste or millions of busloads of carbon dioxide?

Some will say that this is a false choice and that we can do without nuclear or fossil fuel burning. But the technologies that everyone hopes will deliver large quantities of renewable power - wave, tidal, offshore wind - are still years away from being proven to reliably deliver large quantities of power. The other less-polluting sources of power - clean coal and gas with carbon capture and storage - are not even at the demonstration stage yet.

Even if these technologies do turn out to work in a technical sense, they have still to be shown to be economic. As last week's row about ScottishPower's electricity prices shows, people expect their electricity to be both reliable and cheap.

The party manifestos are full of admirable talk about turning Scotland into Europe's green energy power house, how we can be much more energy efficient and how we can turn our homes into little power stations with rooftop turbines, solar panels, etc.

None of this answers the really critical question: can enough of this be delivered quickly enough to close the energy gap which looms in 2015? I have yet to see convincing evidence that it can.

This gives the new Scottish Executive a huge responsibility. If the gap cannot be closed renewably, the timetable for building a new power station means that a decision on construction has to be taken this year. And if today's politicians funk that decision because of outdated environmental beliefs, the whole country will pay a heavy price in the next decade.

 

Web link: Peter Jones