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Green money gone nuclear

Funds have been diverted from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, which provided grants for solar panels, wind turbines and ground source heating, to help with the costs of cleaning up nuclear plants such as Sellafield and Dounreay.

Written by Alison Prince
Friday, 7 March 2008

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Two weeks ago we flagged up the fact that the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) had withered to almost nothing. It was effectively scuppered in May 2007, when grants for solar panels, ground source heat pumps and small wind turbines were slashed from a maximum of £15,000 to a mere £2,500, with many applications being refused altogether. It was not through lack of public interest – quite the reverse. The huge enthusiasm for energy efficient houses meant that the original grants were all allocated within half an hour of each month’s fund being released. And yet the DTI, now renamed as BERR, (Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) has slammed the brakes on.

Why should a run-away success in the field of energy conservation be cut back just as it is beginning to blossom? The answer is, at least £15 million from the LCBP has been diverted to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), where it has vanished into the huge expenses of cleaning up toxic waste at Sellafield and other sites. Greenpeace took a commendably level-headed view of the problem. It fully supports renewable energy production on a domestic scale but it is concerned, too, that the menace of radioactive waste is dealt with to the best of our ability.

Clean-up costs

The NDA has been allocated a budget of £8.2 billion to cover the next three years, but the nuclear clean-up costs have soared to £73bn – an increase of 16% in a single year. Even this is not enough. Cleaning up the old Magnox plants has been abandoned in order to concentrate on the more pressing urgencies of Sellafield and Dounreay. The Environment Agency, also a Government body, is horrified, describing the shelving of Magnox decontamination as ‘prolonging and potentially increasing risk to the environment that they pose.’

Meanwhile, putting solar panels on your roof or a wee turbine in your garden is going to be just that bit more difficult.

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