Energy saving is far more effective

Reacting to the UK government's launch of a new energy review, Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale said: "It's now clear that ministers are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking how Britain can make its energy system more efficient, this review is only looking at what kind of fuel we use to generate electricity.

"The UK has an electricity grid designed seventy years ago that wastes most of the fuel we put into it. What we need is an energy revolution, a grid that lets renewable schemes and energy efficiency measures meet their full potential."

"Instead the government has launched a spin operation for nuclear power, a form of electricity generation that is the most expensive way to boil water ever devised."

Analysis by energy policy experts at America's Rocky Mountains Institute shows that energy conservation strategies are far more effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions than constructing power stations of any type.

They point out that nuclear power only produces electricity and can only possibly displace electricity plants, not the CO2 emissions which come from transport and domestic and industrial heat. They also looked at the costs of nuclear versus improved energy efficiency and found that every dollar invested in energy efficiency displaces 6.8 times more carbon than the same investment in nuclear power.

"To the extent investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency," the study concludes, "the pursuit of a nuclear response to greenhouse warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."

Stephen Tindale added: "The UK grid allows for a huge loss of energy - enough to heat all the buildings and all the water in the UK - because the large power stations far from our cities that make our electricity discard an enormous amount of heat through chimneys, while more power is lost transporting the energy long distances through power lines. A new generation of nuclear power stations would cement this system in place, preventing the development of a decentralised grid and stifling renewable energy generation."

Nuclear power plants are also vulnerable to terrorist attack. This month Greenpeace launched a film shot by special effects experts that shows a hijacked plane flying into Sizewell nuclear power plant (see www.greenpeace.org.uk).