The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from  seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader. 

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By yesterday morning the Green Party of England & Wales had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week. Add that to the Scottish Greens’ membership of around 9,000 (up from 1,700 in September) and the Greens have over 58,000 members.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January. That’s on top of a £300,000 donation by the campaigning fashion designer Vivienne Westwood a few days ago.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from  seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader. 

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By yesterday morning the Green Party of England & Wales had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week. Add that to the Scottish Greens’ membership of around 9,000 (up from 1,700 in September) and the Greens have over 58,000 members.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January. That’s on top of a £300,000 donation by the campaigning fashion designer Vivienne Westwood a few days ago.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from  seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader. 

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By yesterday morning the Green Party of England & Wales had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week. Add that to the Scottish Greens’ membership of around 9,000 (up from 1,700 in September) and the Greens have over 58,000 members.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January. That’s on top of a £300,000 donation by the campaigning fashion designer Vivienne Westwood a few days ago.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Trident has in the last few weeks become one of the most potent symbolic political markers for the forthcoming election, and is likely to feature heavily in the debates.

Some of us who have been closely involved in the issue for decades may have been taken by surprise … previous promising moments have come and gone with minimal fuss and it has been a challenge not to become cynical.

But this time is different, and there are a number of factors at play, not least the rise of the smaller parties.

Whilst they lost the referendum back in September, the SNP were closer than most were expecting a year ago to successfully breaking up the union. Since then they have experienced a surge of support, are likely to increase their representation in Westminster in May and could well be a crucial dimension in any power arrangement after the election.

They have already highlighted the removal of Trident bases from Scotland as an absolute condition of any support they may give in negotiations. Statements have been uncompromising, so that it will be a big political challenge to row back from them should they come under pressure to change course.

A strong Green challenge could prove decisive

The Green Party, previously hoping to secure 2-3 seats on a very good day, could become serious challengers for more. Perhaps equally importantly, Green candidates up and down the country could capture many left-wing votes from disillusioned left wing voters who see the cautious positioning of Labour with dismay.

Some have even been suggesting that the Greens could do more damage to Labour prospects than the threat UKIP has to the Tories, in a sort of Ralph Nader moment.

They already have more members than UKIP and the LibDems, and could break through 50,000 in the coming few weeks. Of course, it is moments like these, with the Greens punishing the larger parties for their reckless support of unsustainable neo-liberal capitalist solutions, that their influence is strongest.

So far, particularly on the Trident issue, Labour has been captured by the narrative around legacies of lost elections in the dim and distant past. But their paranoia about being seen as a left wing could yet cost them more votes than it secures. It is about time they realized that the public is in a very different place.

When in the 1980s, heavily influenced by the fear-induced Cold War, a strong unilateralist stance may well have lost crucial support in various parts of the country, it is today generally ambivalent towards investment on Trident.

A time of austerity and cuts just when a new generation of submarines demands major investment could yet prove fatal to the project.

Is this a clever way for the UK to spend £4 billion a year?

Much has been made by campaign groups of the £100bn lifetime cost of the system, which is a reasonable estimate given the uncertainties involved in financial forecasting over such a long period.

Perhaps more meaningful, though, is the annual spend … and this will soon be shooting up from around £2.5bn today towards £4bn a year throughout the 2020s, with capital costs consuming a full one third of the whole defence procurement budget across the decade.

In Tuesday’s Commons debate former Lib Dem defence minister Nick Harvey used parliamentary privilege to expose the fact that the army is being asked to come up with plans to make do with manpower levels around 60,000 – a massive cut and one likely to reverberate around the Shires.

This creates unusual allies between anti-nuclear activists and armed forces constituencies.

Cheaper dual-capable nuclear options to Trident that could also plug the armed forces financial gap are now being considered seriously, promising to split the pro-deterrence lobby, enabling some to join the clamour for a reassessment and a less distorted government review later in 2015.

Cold war warmed up?

But remember: Trident is a weapon system dreamt up and developed in a Cold War context. Skirmishes and threats at the margins of Europe aside, no-one seriously considers the prospects of Britain facing an aggressive and totalitarian nuclear superpower alone as significant.

And yet that is the only scenario that could just justify the independent nuclear deterrent that both the Tory-led government and Labour Party are currently committed to hollowing out the armed forces for.

At a time when the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) hangs in the balance and states parties meet in New York for their every-five year review (at the same time as the election), Britain’s leadership is critical. And yet we are nowhere, our credibility severely dented by this insistence on wasting billions on our own arsenal.

Nuclear weapon states meet in London in early February to consider their game plan at the conference. The hopes of them pulling any scrawny rabbits out the hat at this final hour seem dim indeed.

Your vote can help rid us of this terrorist monstrosity

Returning to the election, the best we can realistically hope for from Labour is that it retain its commitment to a minimum credible nuclear deterrent – with some ambiguity around the posture and systems this entails, on the basis that Trident must be included in the Defence and Security Review soon after the election.

This will enable smaller parties, notably the SNP and the Greens, to take on a critical role in post election talks and demand a change in policy on Trident.

But what they do before the election matters too: the more they raise Trident in the campaign, the more they reflect public opposition to the spend, and the more influential they are in the result, the stronger their elbow at this crucial point becomes.

Perhaps then we will see a new government pause, order another delay and review, and perhaps we may yet see them move back from committing to a new generation of nuclear weapons before it’s too late and the money is committed.

Voters in Britain have a bigger chance than they have ever before to bring an end to Britain’s addiction to nuclear weapons, and cause an important upset to the global nuclear order.

Demo: Wrap up Trident – today, midday at the MOD in London.

Paul Ingram has been the Executive Director for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) since 2007. BASIC works in the US, UK, Europe and the Middle East to promote global nuclear disarmament and a transformation in strategic relationships using a dialogue approach.

He was also until recently a talk show host on state Iranian TV promoting alternative perspectives on strategic matters, and taught British senior civil servants leadership skills.

Previously Paul was a Green Party councillor in Oxford and co-Leader of Oxford City Council (2000-2002) and a member of the Stop the War Coalition Steering Group (2002-2006).

The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

Austria is to launch a legal challenge against the European Union’s (EU) decision to allow billions of pounds of subsidies for Hinkley Point C, casting fresh doubt over the UK’s first planned nuclear reactors in 20 years.

In October, the EU approved the controversial £17.6bn subsidy deal for the power station, which is expected to provide 7% of the UK’s electricity by 2023.

David Cameron had previously hailed the subsidy deal between the French state-owned EDF and the UK government as “a very big day for our country”. He also described the signing of the Hinkley deal as marking “the next generation of nuclear power in Britain“, for its ability to meet energy demand and contribute to long-term security of supply.

But the appeal by Austria, a non-nuclear nation, will be launched by April and could delay a final investment decision by the UK government for over two years.

The Guardian understands that Luxembourg is very likely to support the case in the European Court of Justice, arguing that the UK’s loan guarantees – over a 35-year period – constitute illegal state aid. Another EU country may follow suit.

“There has been a high-level decision by our Chancellor and Vice Chancellor to challenge the EU decision on Hinkley within two months of its publication in the EU’s official journal”, said Andreas Molin, the director of Austria’s environment ministry. The journal’s publication is expected in the next fortnight.

Stefan Pehringer, a foreign policy adviser to the Austrian federal chancellory said: “The Austrian government has announced its readiness to appeal against the EC’s [European Commission] decision concerning state aid for the Hinkley Point project, as it does not consider nuclear power to be a sustainable form of technology – neither in environmental nor in economic terms.”

Can Hinkley survive the 2015 election?

Work has already begun at the Hinkley site, which the UK government said will have a capacity of 3.3GW, with the electricity it generates bought at a strike-price of £92.50 per megawatt hour, around double the market rate.

EDF had planned to sign a long-awaited funding agreement with its Chinese investment partners in March, thought to be key to settling procurement plans for the £24.5bn build, and the precursor to a final investment decision.

But the lawsuit may delay such plans, and introduce uncertainty about the UK’s attitude towards Hinkley after elections in May.

The Austrian government’s analysis suggests that European court cases of this nature typically last for one and a half years. But “as this is going to be a more complicated and fundamental case, it will last a little bit longer”, Molin said. “Two years could be a rough guess.”

He added: “If you accept the argument that Hinkley constitutes a ‘market failure’ as put forward by the Commission, you could apply it to all other means of electricity production, probably all other forms of energy conversion, and it might even apply beyond the energy sector. We think that the single energy market itself is at stake in this case.”

The Commission’s hurried and paradoxical decision

The EU’s original decision last year surprised many observers, as the then-competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia had previously expressed scepticism about Hinkley’s’ conformity with an exhaustive list of strict state aid criteria.

These govern proportionality, decarbonisation, the potential for market distortion, the definition of ‘market failures’ and, crucially, whether the public monies advance an “objective of common interest” for the bloc.

No grounds for the Commission’s volte-face have yet been published, but the Guardian has seen a draft of the EU decision from last October, suggesting that one key decider had been advised that Hinkley advanced an EU ‘common interest’ around security of supply.

A Commission investigation declared itself “unsure” whether the reactor would resolve the UK’s security of supply issues, and was unconvinced that ‘diversification’ of supplies, on its own, would justify the monies involved.

“The Commission however accepted that the decision was in line with the Euratom treaty”, the draft ruling says. The Euratom treaty obliges member states to facilitate investments in nuclear power and encourage ventures that lead to the technology’s development.

Molin said that Austria would argue that the Euratom treaty could not be used in this way in state aid cases, but there would be other lines of dispute. “We will try to prove that the commission did not consider all the things which it should have considered and that there were some procedural flaws”, he said.

Minutes from the Commission’s internal discussion of the issue show that the EC’s president at the time, José Manuel Barroso, viewed the Hinkley decision as unprecedented, and said that it “touched on a politically sensitive topic”.

No contract for the Hinkley plant was put out to tender, and the ruling sparked outrage among environmentalists in the EU, that shows no signs of dying down.

“The Commission took a political decision disguised as a legal one”, said Mark Johnston, a senior adviser to the European Policy Centre. “Barroso thought it would be easier to bend over for Cameron than to defend the single energy market. The significance of the case for energy investments across Europe could not be greater.”

A ‘fatal blow’, claim the Greens

Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party MEP for the South West region, which includes Hinkley, said: “I think that this court case is certainly going to delay the signing and also the construction of Hinkley.”

“As one of the government’s main arguments for Hinkley was that it would solve the ‘energy gap’ before renewables could be brought onstream, it is a fatal blow to Hinkley as part of a future energy strategy for the UK.”

Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, said that such claims now seemed risible. “I think we have seen the final generation of nuclear power, I am very pleased to say. It’s gone, it’s dusted. Lets focus on evidence-based renewables and energy conservation futures.”

But the UKIP MEP and energy spokesman, Roger Helmer, offered strong support for nuclear energy, qualified only by a caveat that the government’s Hinkley deal had been “excessively expensive” because of regulatory uncertainty from Brussels.

“Given that Hinkley is a trailblazer for the new generation of nuclear and now looks like being held up for a long period of time, it will be extremely damaging – not just for nuclear but across the whole spectrum of industry”, he said.

No grounds for such state aid in EU treaties

Dr Dörte Fouquet, a lawyer for the Brussels-based law firm Becker Büttner Held, which specialises in energy and competition law, said Austria’s chances of success were “pretty high” because there were no grounds for giving such state aid under EU treaty law and Austria would question the common European interest in building a nuclear power plant in the UK.

She added that long delays now appeared inevitable: “A court process that kicks off in May would take a minimum of two years and if it goes into appeals, you’d then be looking at another two years. So it could be a minimum of three and a maximum of four years or longer.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change remained bullish. “The UK is confident that the state aid case for Hinkley Point C is legally robust and we vigorously support the European Commission’s defence of its decision last year”, a  spokesman told the Guardian.

“This brings us one step closer to seeing new nuclear as part of our future low carbon energy mix. We have no reason to believe that Austria, or any other party, is preparing a case which has any merit.”

But DECC did not respond to questions about the effect that a lengthy court case might have on cost over-runs or a final investment decision.

The renewables industry has bridled at what some see as double-standards in EU decisions last year denying state aid to renewable energy in Germany, while allowing it for nuclear in the UK.

“It’s puzzling why the European Commission has decided to have a set of rules for one energy source and entirely different set for another”, said European Wind Energy Association spokesman Oliver Joy.

“If we want a level playing field for all energy forms in the EU then we need common standards that allow all technologies to compete on an equal footing.”

Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity.

This article is a synthesis of two articles by Arthur Nelsen originally published on the Guardian: ‘Austria to launch lawsuit over Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidies‘ and ‘UK nuclear ambitions dealt fatal blow by Austrian legal challenge, say Greens‘. It is published on The Ecologist by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from  seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader. 

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By this morning the Greens had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

Austria is to launch a legal challenge against the European Union’s (EU) decision to allow billions of pounds of subsidies for Hinkley Point C, casting fresh doubt over the UK’s first planned nuclear reactors in 20 years.

In October, the EU approved the controversial £17.6bn subsidy deal for the power station, which is expected to provide 7% of the UK’s electricity by 2023.

David Cameron had previously hailed the subsidy deal between the French state-owned EDF and the UK government as “a very big day for our country”. He also described the signing of the Hinkley deal as marking “the next generation of nuclear power in Britain“, for its ability to meet energy demand and contribute to long-term security of supply.

But the appeal by Austria, a non-nuclear nation, will be launched by April and could delay a final investment decision by the UK government for over two years.

The Guardian understands that Luxembourg is very likely to support the case in the European Court of Justice, arguing that the UK’s loan guarantees – over a 35-year period – constitute illegal state aid. Another EU country may follow suit.

“There has been a high-level decision by our Chancellor and Vice Chancellor to challenge the EU decision on Hinkley within two months of its publication in the EU’s official journal”, said Andreas Molin, the director of Austria’s environment ministry. The journal’s publication is expected in the next fortnight.

Stefan Pehringer, a foreign policy adviser to the Austrian federal chancellory said: “The Austrian government has announced its readiness to appeal against the EC’s [European Commission] decision concerning state aid for the Hinkley Point project, as it does not consider nuclear power to be a sustainable form of technology – neither in environmental nor in economic terms.”

Can Hinkley survive the 2015 election?

Work has already begun at the Hinkley site, which the UK government said will have a capacity of 3.3GW, with the electricity it generates bought at a strike-price of £92.50 per megawatt hour, around double the market rate.

EDF had planned to sign a long-awaited funding agreement with its Chinese investment partners in March, thought to be key to settling procurement plans for the £24.5bn build, and the precursor to a final investment decision.

But the lawsuit may delay such plans, and introduce uncertainty about the UK’s attitude towards Hinkley after elections in May.

The Austrian government’s analysis suggests that European court cases of this nature typically last for one and a half years. But “as this is going to be a more complicated and fundamental case, it will last a little bit longer”, Molin said. “Two years could be a rough guess.”

He added: “If you accept the argument that Hinkley constitutes a ‘market failure’ as put forward by the Commission, you could apply it to all other means of electricity production, probably all other forms of energy conversion, and it might even apply beyond the energy sector. We think that the single energy market itself is at stake in this case.”

The Commission’s hurried and paradoxical decision

The EU’s original decision last year surprised many observers, as the then-competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia had previously expressed scepticism about Hinkley’s’ conformity with an exhaustive list of strict state aid criteria.

These govern proportionality, decarbonisation, the potential for market distortion, the definition of ‘market failures’ and, crucially, whether the public monies advance an “objective of common interest” for the bloc.

No grounds for the Commission’s volte-face have yet been published, but the Guardian has seen a draft of the EU decision from last October, suggesting that one key decider had been advised that Hinkley advanced an EU ‘common interest’ around security of supply.

A Commission investigation declared itself “unsure” whether the reactor would resolve the UK’s security of supply issues, and was unconvinced that ‘diversification’ of supplies, on its own, would justify the monies involved.

“The Commission however accepted that the decision was in line with the Euratom treaty”, the draft ruling says. The Euratom treaty obliges member states to facilitate investments in nuclear power and encourage ventures that lead to the technology’s development.

Molin said that Austria would argue that the Euratom treaty could not be used in this way in state aid cases, but there would be other lines of dispute. “We will try to prove that the commission did not consider all the things which it should have considered and that there were some procedural flaws”, he said.

Minutes from the Commission’s internal discussion of the issue show that the EC’s president at the time, José Manuel Barroso, viewed the Hinkley decision as unprecedented, and said that it “touched on a politically sensitive topic”.

No contract for the Hinkley plant was put out to tender, and the ruling sparked outrage among environmentalists in the EU, that shows no signs of dying down.

“The Commission took a political decision disguised as a legal one”, said Mark Johnston, a senior adviser to the European Policy Centre. “Barroso thought it would be easier to bend over for Cameron than to defend the single energy market. The significance of the case for energy investments across Europe could not be greater.”

A ‘fatal blow’, claim the Greens

Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party MEP for the South West region, which includes Hinkley, said: “I think that this court case is certainly going to delay the signing and also the construction of Hinkley.”

“As one of the government’s main arguments for Hinkley was that it would solve the ‘energy gap’ before renewables could be brought onstream, it is a fatal blow to Hinkley as part of a future energy strategy for the UK.”

Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, said that such claims now seemed risible. “I think we have seen the final generation of nuclear power, I am very pleased to say. It’s gone, it’s dusted. Lets focus on evidence-based renewables and energy conservation futures.”

But the UKIP MEP and energy spokesman, Roger Helmer, offered strong support for nuclear energy, qualified only by a caveat that the government’s Hinkley deal had been “excessively expensive” because of regulatory uncertainty from Brussels.

“Given that Hinkley is a trailblazer for the new generation of nuclear and now looks like being held up for a long period of time, it will be extremely damaging – not just for nuclear but across the whole spectrum of industry”, he said.

No grounds for such state aid in EU treaties

Dr Dörte Fouquet, a lawyer for the Brussels-based law firm Becker Büttner Held, which specialises in energy and competition law, said Austria’s chances of success were “pretty high” because there were no grounds for giving such state aid under EU treaty law and Austria would question the common European interest in building a nuclear power plant in the UK.

She added that long delays now appeared inevitable: “A court process that kicks off in May would take a minimum of two years and if it goes into appeals, you’d then be looking at another two years. So it could be a minimum of three and a maximum of four years or longer.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change remained bullish. “The UK is confident that the state aid case for Hinkley Point C is legally robust and we vigorously support the European Commission’s defence of its decision last year”, a  spokesman told the Guardian.

“This brings us one step closer to seeing new nuclear as part of our future low carbon energy mix. We have no reason to believe that Austria, or any other party, is preparing a case which has any merit.”

But DECC did not respond to questions about the effect that a lengthy court case might have on cost over-runs or a final investment decision.

The renewables industry has bridled at what some see as double-standards in EU decisions last year denying state aid to renewable energy in Germany, while allowing it for nuclear in the UK.

“It’s puzzling why the European Commission has decided to have a set of rules for one energy source and entirely different set for another”, said European Wind Energy Association spokesman Oliver Joy.

“If we want a level playing field for all energy forms in the EU then we need common standards that allow all technologies to compete on an equal footing.”

Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity.

This article is a synthesis of two articles by Arthur Nelsen originally published on the Guardian: ‘Austria to launch lawsuit over Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidies‘ and ‘UK nuclear ambitions dealt fatal blow by Austrian legal challenge, say Greens‘. It is published on The Ecologist by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from  seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader. 

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By this morning the Greens had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.