Calls to include Dungeness as potential new-build nuclear site

Energy companies are calling on the Government to include the Dungeness nuclear site on the Kent coast as a potential location for a new nuclear power station.

The Government decided last year that the site was not suitable on environmental and ecological grounds.

But trade body the Nuclear Industry Association, and energy companies planning new nuclear capacity, have lined up to urge ministers to change their minds during Parliamentary consideration of the suite of draft energy National Policy Statements.

The Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee is currently holding an inquiry into the NPSs.

During its deliberations on 27 January the committee was told by the director of strategy and regulation with EDF Energy, Paul Spence, that the decision to omit Dungeness was both “inappropriate” and “premature”.

The session, which was interrupted by a short demonstration by a group of anti-nuclear campaigners, heard a succession of senior energy industry figures call for greater clarity over the relationship between the new arrangements for dealing with nationally significant infrastructure projects and the existing town and country planning regime.

Meanwhile, in a related but separate development, energy secretary Ed Miliband has been warned by Friends of the Earth that the Government could face a judicial review unless its "fundamentally flawed" draft planning policies on major energy infrastructure are significantly changed.

The environment group’s legal department has written to the energy secretary citing a number of issues and highlighting four areas for possible legal challenge.

FoE has argued that ministers were wrong to tell the newly-established Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) that it should not consider the carbon emissions of individual projects. The green group has also questioned the advice to commissioners that all forms of energy infrastructure are needed.

FoE has also claimed that the statements do not meet European legal requirements on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and that the Government’s public consultation programme has been inadequate.

A Department for Energy and Climate Change spokesman said - “If we are to face the challenge of climate change we need to harness renewable energy, clean coal and nuclear to reduce emissions from our energy supply.

“The draft National Policy Statements are a crucial part of reforms that will remove unnecessary planning delays facing large energy proposals. We are currently consulting on these statements and want to hear people’s views.

“The current planning system serves neither the interests of energy security, the interests of the low carbon transition, nor the interests of people living in areas where infrastructure may be built.”

View The Energy and Climate Change Committee’s website

Read the FoE press release

 

Roger Milne

28 January 2010