Michael Meacher, who died yesterday after a short illness, was a remarkable environment minister.

For six years, at the start of the Blair government, he almost single-handedly fought to defend the natural world from road-building, the first generation of GM crops and rampant industrialisation.

While junior environment ministers usually accept the Treasury or No 10 line without question, ‘the Meach’, as he was widely known, stood up to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – and possibly saved the administration from political embarrassment by urging caution at key moments.

His first task was to extricate Blair from the potential embarrassment of introducing GM crops. Blair had been persuaded by David Sainsbury, the head of a large food multinational, that GM crops were the future and posed no danger to consumers.

But with public opinion strongly against them, Meacher defused the debate by negotiating a three-year moratorium during which further tests were done. By pleading caution, he gained the trust of both hostile environment groups and wary consumers.

Not popular at Number 10 – but somehow, he held on

He was widely disliked in No 10 and was denied a cabinet position, but he survived in the environment job possibly because Blair feared that he would be a dangerous backbencher with scientific credibility.

My colleague, the environment correspondent Paul Brown, wrote in 2002: “The prime minister’s impatience with Michael Meacher, the only minister who urges caution and is seen by No 10 to stand in his way, became public when Mr Blair tried to drop his environment minister from the team attending the Earth summit in Johannesburg in 2002.

“After public protest John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, reinstated him – but it was not the first time Mr Meacher and Mr Blair had crossed swords.

“During the mini-reshuffle brought about by the resignation of Stephen Byers from transport, Mr Blair tried to push Mr Meacher into a less high profile post. It is said that Mr Meacher threatened to resign from the government altogether rather than be moved.”

When he finally left government in 2003, Meacher became a strong voice for environment protection, urging government and personal action on climate change, which he grasped as the most important long-term issue of the time.

What a legacy: the ‘right to roam law’

But he will be remembered especially for steering through the ‘right to roam‘ legislation, which surprised and delighted ramblers and Labour backbenchers even as it infuriated landowners by promising a statutory right of access to 1.6m hectares (4m acres) of open countryside in England and Wales.

The commitment, which was explicitly linked by Meacher to the memory of the late Labour leader and keen fellwalker John Smith, reassured many Labour MPs who had feared Blair would be swayed by pressure from the powerful countryside lobby to abandon a principle close to party’s heart since its inception.

And he remained a radical, campaigning MP to the end, supporting the Occupy Democracy gathering in Parliament Square in October 2014 (see photo). Retaining his Oldham West and Royton in the 2015 election with a 14,738 majority he was one of the few Labour MPs to support Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership contest.

He described Corbyn’s election as a “seminal day in British politics, marking the coming together of the two great conditions needed for transformational change.” As a backbencher, Meacher wrote almost daily blogposts about the politics of the day, often making the case for anti-austerity economics.

Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, yesterday praised his contribution to Britain’s political life: “The Michael I have known for more than 30 years was a man was a prodigious writer, a talented speaker, a reforming minister and highly effective propagandist who with little thought for his own health campaigned relentlessly for social justice and for a fairer Britain throughout his life.

“His deeply held commitment to ending poverty marked him out as a tribune of the people and his always thoughtful contributions to debates on the environment, economy and social policy will be sorely missed.”

John Vidal is the Guardian’s environment editor.

This article was originally published on the Guardian and is republished with thanks via the Guardian Environment Network.

The British solar industry is fighting for its survival and it needs your help. High profile solar companies are folding or planning to leave the UK.

So if the Government is to secure the British industry it must act quickly. And it’s not to cost a fortune – quite the reverse!

Our emergency plan would add just £1 to household bills by 2019 from next year, demonstrating just how affordable it is to adopt sensible reductions in support for solar power.

The alternative – decimating the British industry – will waste huge public support to date, cost an estimated 27,000 jobs and set the UK apart from an international tide of technology change, consumer empowerment and economic opportunity.

Government’s own figures show their extreme Feed-In Tariff proposals will decimate the British solar industry and result in just £7 million of expenditure on solar power from 2016-2019 [1].

Per annum, this would represent a 98% reduction in total resourcing for solar power compared to this financial year. As a nation we would actually spend less on solar power – the technology experts agree will dominate world power supply – than Bucks County Council will spend fixing potholes this year [2].

Parliament must act to save this thriving industry

We are looking to Parliament to secure a sensible approach to the British solar industry commensurate with its internationally recognised strategic importance. We hope the proposals we have developed will attract cross-party support.

Already a broad range of companies and business organisations are expressing support for the solar cause – and not always the ones you might expect. It’s Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell who said: “I have no hesitation to predict that in years to come solar will be the dominant backbone of our energy system, certainly of the electricity system.”

And it was John Cridland, Director General of the CBI, who pointed out: “Today, 164 countries have renewable energy targets. That’s 164 potential markets worldwide for the UK’s renewable industry.” While Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, argues that “From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the rooftop is going to be the baseload.”

The British solar industry has delivered unprecedented cost reductions and it is close to achieving parity with grid electricity prices. But it is not there yet. Bizarrely, Government proposals will derail the industry at the last hurdle and waste public investment to date.

As former energy minister Greg Barker put it: “We mustn’t grab defeat from the jaws of victory… [if the proposals go through] it will be pretty catastrophic. You would kill the industry in the UK and set it back several years.”

Based on the Government’s own Impact Assessment we estimate their proposals will cost around 27,000 jobs across nearly every constituency of the UK and force companies into closure. Sun Edison, one such company, expressed it well: “We are extremely disappointed that the draconian policy proposals made by the Government in August will essentially eliminate the solar PV market in the UK.”

Our economy will also pay a further heavy price in lost opportunities: major G8 economies are not only ramping up solar power deployment, but they expect international competitive advantages as a result of driving solar below the cost of fossil fuels [3].

Just £1 per year on electricity bills to keep our solar industry

According to DECC, solar currently adds £9 a year to household energy bills [4]. It is difficult to estimate the cost of the current domestic boom precipitated by the current extreme cut proposals (and the STA warned against this approach). However, we have modelled an emergency package to stabilise the solar industry that, from next year, will add just £1 to consumer bills by 2019.

We urgently need cross-party backing for our emergency proposal which needs to be adopted quickly to avoid further unravelling of the industry and of the efficiencies it has achieved to deliver lowest-cost solar installations. Our emergency proposal comprises four main elements:

• Investible: Higher initial tariffs set to provide minimum investable returns (8p domestic to 4p stand-alone)

• Fluid markets: Higher flexible caps that will not result in damaging industry stops and starts

• Cost control: Automatic and deployment based degression of tariffs that provide cost control to Government while providing the forward visibility necessary for industry investment and cost reduction

• Inclusivity: enabling all sectors of society to continue to invest in solar power

From next year, the STA £1 plan would add just an extra £1.06 on average household electricity bills per year in 2019. Crucially it will ensure that families, farmers, housing associations, businesses, local authorities and community groups can continue to participate in the shift to clean energy.

This emergency plan is not ideal – we continue to recommend our Solar Independence Plan which reflects the previous Conservative Ministerial ambition of achieving 20GW of solar capacity by 2020.

However, our emergency plan will help to secure an adequate level of solar deployment to prevent industry supply-chains unravelling, but further non-FIT measures will also be needed if British solar is to thrive:

• Adoption of credible Zero Carbon Building measures by CLG to incentivise solar in new build

• Resumption of CfD auction rounds, with appropriate adaptations for SMEs

• Alignment of commercial sector energy regulations to incentivise solar investment via the current HMT Business Energy Tax Review [5]

• Removal of grid constraints.

Don’t back a false-economy for consumers and UK plc

Government claims the British solar industry can operate without support and that their extreme cuts are essential to safeguard the Levy Control Framework. Neither claim stands up to scrutiny.

The government’s own Impact Assessment shows their proposals will not sustain a viable solar industry and several independent analyses show different UK sub-markets in solar will reach parity with fossil fuels around 2020 [6].

Key reasons that projected spend under the LCF has increased include lower wholesale electricity prices and freezing of the Carbon Floor Price, but this will not increase energy bills (which is what matters). Furthermore the beneficial reductions in wholesale electricity prices driven by solar power should feed through to lower consumer bills.

Finally, no other technology empowers consumers to take control of their energy like solar power, nor has the potential to transform choice and competition in electricity markets, reducing costs for consumers.

Anti-solar is anti-consumer and against the international trend of active consumer empowerment in electricity markets.

Leonie Greene is head of external affairs for the Solar Trade Association.

Call on your MP to support the British solar industry.

More information:

• STA website
• This article in leaflet form (PDF)

References

1

Yesterday the big deal was announced. David Cameron and Chinese President signed their nuclear memorandum.

And in a separate deal, EDF, owner of the Hinkley C nuclear power project in Somerset, signed its deal with Chinese state-owned nuclear power company China China General Nuclear Power Corporation.

The government also announced that the terms of its offer to EDF on the Hinkley Plant were finalised. Cue sounds of champagne corks popping, strains of ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ …

But the nuclear deal is not all it seems. In fact it’s a veritable dogs’ dinner of surprises, quirks and oddities which throw up many more questions than answers.

And it still leaves the key question wide open. Will Hinkley C ever actually be built? For all the claims that EDF’s ‘final investment decision’ is a mere formality that will be made in weeks, it is in fact no such thing.

In fact, there is more reason that ever to doubt it. The official announcement, speeches and press releases may give the firm impression that it’s all a done deal. But look harder and it’s all stitched together with paperclips and sellotape and could fall apart at any moment.

First, the money – £6 billion is not enough

The first anomaly is that CGN will pay £6 billion for a 33.5% share in the Hinkley C project, presumably buying into what is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of EDF, the NNB Generation Company (NBB GenCo).

That’s on the basis, claimed by EDF, that the project cost will be £18 billion. Now if that were the case, that would leave EDF with another £12 billion to find. Which is still a lot of money. But in fact, it’s much worse than that.

But the cost has been reliably estimated by EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia at £24.5 billion – including the considerable costs of financing the construction through to completion. In fact, he warned that if the project encountered problems the cost could end up as high as £34 billion, a figure accepted by EDF boss Laurent de Rivaz.

Given the massive problems encountered at the other sites using the same EPR reactor design, it would surprise no one if huge problems were encountered. The Flamanville EPR project in France and the Olkiluoto EPR project in Finland are both running roughly three times over the initial project cost and nine and eight years over time, respectively.

The Ecologist also understands, following information from a well-placed industry insider, that construction ceased at the 4-reactor EPR project in Taishan, China, in mid-2014. This has not been officially announced. EDF owns 30% of the project, and CGN, EDF’s Hinkley C partner 70%.

It would be foolhardy indeed to go enter into the Hinkley C EPR project without having a secure funding line for, say, £25 billion lined up. Without that, investors in the project would risk running out of money before completion – with billions of pounds sunk in a doomed project.

Seen in that context, CGN’s £6 billion investment is nowhere near enough. So where might the other £19 billion come from?

Raising debt not an option

The obvious answer is debt. You go to the bank, and borrow the money. But then this is a risky business. China Development Bank, Bank of China and Société Générale are already heavily exposed to Taishan and may now have cut off new funding to the project.

But that’s alright, isn’t it? Because the Hinkley C project has had £17 billion of UK Treasury Construction Finance Guarantees approved by the European Commission. An initial £2 billion was recently announced by Chancellor George Osborne during his recent visit to China.

These guarantees will grant security to bondholders in the project ensuring that their capital and interest are paid no matter what.

But there’s a catch. Under the deal agreed with the Commission, the Flamanville EPR project must be up and running before the guarantees come into effect. And until that time, the shareholders must provide billions in ‘contingent equity’ to cover the bondholders’ risk, protecting UK taxpayers.

Flamanville was meant to be finished in 2012, but it’s running late thanks to severe technical and safety problems, and under the latest project update, EDF does not expect it to be complete until 2020. And under the terms of the Commission’s approval, if Flamanville is not up and running by the end of 2020, the UK’s guarantees expire and bondholders must be repaid from shareholder equity.

What this means is that there is now a near-zero chance of these guarantees ever actually being taken up. Osborne’s £2 billion promise in Beijing was a smokescreen. And without those guarantees, who is going to lend their money to the project?

This has been as good as admitted by EDF, which states, “The project is due to be equity funded by each partner, at least during a first stage.”

So what’s left?

That leaves EDF with two options. One is to sell additional equity in the project, and the other is to self-finance. Selling more equity in Hinkley C is certainly possible, even though the only buyer is likely to be CGN or one of its companion Chinese nuclear parastatals.

However EDF insists that it will keep a majority share in the project. So it can only sell a maximum of 15.5% to keep its own 51% – say for around £2 billion. Which still leaves it £17 billion short of the £25 billion it needs to be safe, and £10 billion short of its own cost estimate.

EDF can also self-finance and flog off its assets. And that’s exactly what EDF is doing – seeking to raise €10 billion by selling its Italian subsidiary Edison and its share in US nuclear company CEGN, and possibly a Polish coal mine, as reported in the FT. But that still leaves it many billions of pounds short.

The company could also take on more corporate debt. Except it’s already carrying far too much. According to a Bloomberg report in February this year, “Electricite de France SA’s new Chief Executive Officer Jean-Bernard Levy is struggling to control the utility’s ballooning debt as Europe’s biggest power generator faces an investment peak this year …

“Net debt climbed 2.4 percent to 33.4 billion euros ($38 billion) last year … EDF has committed to turning a negative cash flow of 4 billion euros last year into a positive one after dividend payouts by 2018. Levy must rein in debt as the company funds investments of 55 billion euros through 2025.”

“EDF’s debt is increasing each year, that’s one of my biggest surprises when I arrived”, Levy told Bloomberg and other reporters. “My biggest astonishment was maybe the fact that cash flow was significantly negative.”

As for selling shares into the market, there may be few takers. EDF’s falling share price has given its shareholders a loss of almost 16% over the last year.

Heavy demands on EDF cash

And EDF’s problems don’t end there. Flamanville problems cost EDF an unscheduled €2 billion last year, with more expected to clock up this year and in years to come. Losses at Taishan have not been declared but are surely running into billions.

And then, there is the Areva problem. Areva, another French parastatal nuclear corporation, is essentially bust thanks to a variety of mishaps including a failed $2.5 billion uranium mine in Canada and its woes at Flamanville, where it supplied a defective steel reactor vessel which has now been incorporated into the structure. It also has problems at Olkiluoto, and at Taishan as well, where it also supplied the reactor vessels which may suffer from the same defects.

The French government’s answer is for EDF, which is not quite as bust as Areva, to buy into the company, buying a majority 51% to 75% stake for €1.3 billion to €2 billion. But of course the liabilities won’t end there – as a basket case company with rising global liabilities Areva is sure to soak up more cash for many years to come.

And then there is the potentially enormous cost that it faces going forward in decommissioning its ageing fleet of nuclear power plants in France, the UK and other countries – just as its revenue stream from those reactors is cut off. These and other factor led Moody’s to downgrade EDF’s credit rating in April with ‘negative outlook’.

Another surprise – a twin EPR for Sizewell

In a footnote to EDF’s press release comes another big surprise. The Sizewell C nuclear project in Suffolk is use a twin EPR design presumably modelled on Hinkley C:

“EDF and CGN have signed the Heads of Terms of an agreement in principle to develop Sizewell C in Suffolk to a final investment decision with a view to build and operate two EPR reactors. During the development phase EDF will take an 80% share and CGN will take a 20% share.”

It’s a surprise because most people have written off the EPR as a dead duck reactor. Following its Olkiluoto experience, for example, Finland has cancelled a second EPR project and no new orders are coming in. But also because its hard to conceive how on Earth EDF could finance its 80% share when it’s already facing such a flood of liabilities and demands for cash, and no working EPR is likely to materialise for some years to come.

As for the ‘Hualong’ HPR1000 reactor design that CGN (66.5%) and EDF (33.5%) are to build at Bradwell in Essex, it’s an entirely untested ‘never built’ Chinese reactor type, that represents a fusion of two other ‘never-built’ reactor designs, China’s ACPR1000 and ACP1000.

The ACP1000 is a purely paper reactor, while ‘third generation’ ACPR1000s are under construction at the Yangjiang nuclear complex in western Guangdong with a scheduled completion date of 2019. Three actual HPR1000s are under construction at Hualong 1 and CGN’s Fangchenggang units 3 and 4, the official ‘reference plant’ for the design of the UK’s Bradwell reactor.

What these have in common with the EPR design is that no actual working reactor of the HPR1000 or its two antecedents the ACPR1000 and the ACP1000 has ever been completed.

So where do we go from here?

There is a very real possibility that EDF will be unable to raise the cash to proceed with Hinkley C.

Not helping EDF  is the warning from two leading rating agenices, Moody’s and Standard & Poor, to further downgrade EDF’s credit rating in the event that it pursues the Hinkley C project, because of the dangers of big cost overruns and delays to EDF’s untested EPR French reactor technology.

Huge questions marks must also hang over the Sizewell and Bradwell nuclear projects – the first saddled with a known failed and never-built reactor design, and the second with a never-built reactor design that is a hybrid of two other never-built reactor designs.

But there is another big question in this as regards China’s role. What’s in it for them? There is one likely answer. Hinkley C and other planned UK nuclear power stations give them a remarkable opportunity to penetrate and occupy not only the UK’s nuclear establishment but France’s as well.

With no other investor willing to put money into France’s failing nuclear companies or the UK’s increasingly desperate nuclear ambitions, China’s motivations are surely not purely economic, even if there is money to be made.

It is rather that has perceived a vulnerability and has decided to exploit it for its own long term strategic, industrial and geopolitical advantage. Remember here that the UK and France are both nuclear weapons states and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council increasingly seen as punching above their weight.

Deliberate under-financing is the oldest trick in the book for rapacious venture capitalists. You find a company in trouble, inject some cash, but not enough, and some more cash, but still not enough, and a few years down the line you’re either running the company or winding it up and making off with its assets.

It may be that Chinese money will see the Hinkley C, Sizewell and Bradwell nuclear projects carried though to completion, probably accompanied by big Chinese buy-in to Areva and EDF. But China’s help will come at a very high price. 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The Austrian timber giant Schweighofer is processing large amounts of illegally harvested timber from Romanian forests into semi-finished wood products and biomass, according to the US Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The accusation comes in a new report released today, which follows two years of investigations and details, for the first time, the extent of the destruction caused by the high volumes of illegal wood reaching Schweighofer’s Romanian mills.

The illegal timber products, says the EIA’s executive director Alexander von Bismarck, are being sold throughout the European Unio. “Schweighofer is one of the largest timber companies in Europe and unfortunately a major driver of illegal logging in Romania.”

Romania still has an estimated 218,000 hectares of old growth forests. A recent Romanian government study estimated that 80 million cubic meters of timber have been cut illegally in the past 20 years, representing a loss to the Romanian economy of over €5 billion.

Also today, WWF filed a complaint at the Federal Forest Office in Vienna for violations of the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) and calls for a full investigation of the allegations against Schweighofer.

Half of Romania’s timber is illegal – and most of it goes to Schweighofer

According to the report, over 50% of logging in Romania is illegal. This includes illegal cutting in national parks, clear-cutting, overharvesting, use of false permits, and logging on stolen land. According to the Romanian government itself, 20% of public forest land has been restituted illegally after the fall of Communism, instead of being returned to the rightful owners.

In its investigation, EIA identifies and documents actual cases of each type of illegal logging in the forest and found that in nearly every case the wood was on its way to, or ended up at, Schweighofer’s mills. And Gabriel Paun, director of the Romanian NGO Agent Green, believes the trade is deeply penetratred by criminal organisations:

“In my opinion organized crime structures facilitate the flow of illegal wood from Romania to the European and global markets. So until now the EU and national legislation was not able to stop illegal activities, therefore remains a high risk to buy wood products from many Romanian regions.

“Europe’s last intact forest landscape is at stake, and two thirds of its virgin forests that are home to the largest populations of brown bears, grey wolves and lynx living in the wild.”

Earlier this year, two videos showing Schweighofer purchasing managers accepting illegal wood were released. A logging truck from a Romanian national park was filmed with a hidden camera as it transported undocumented logs to Schweighofer, despite the company’s claim that it rejects timber from national parks.

Over the past year, Agent Green has investigated and exposed a series of cases of illegal or unsustainable logging in national parks and other protected areas. In the spring of 2015, EIA released an undercover video, in which two of Schweighofer’s senior managers agreed to purchase illegally cut wood and offered boni for it.

Economic loss for Romania

EIA’s report also finds that Schweighofer has caused massive damage to the furniture industry in Romania by pushing up prices and buying out timber stocks. According to former Romanian Minister of Environment, Doina Pana, this practice has cost the Romanian economy 50,000 jobs since Schweighofer settled in the country.

Schweighofer extracts the profits from its Romanian businesses through a complex network of companies. At the head of this structure sits an Austrian-registered private foundation, Schweighofer Privatstiftung, through which the company enjoys significant tax benefits.

Magor Csibi from WWF Romania added that it should be economic common sense to further process wood in Romania in order to create jobs, economic growth for the local communities and more relevant income for the state budget:

“Unfortunately, the market became dominated by major actors who took advantage of the legislative gaps and created an economic model which concentrates only on the maximisation of profits, ignoring the sustainability of the forest ecosystems.”

In order to protect their business model, Schweighofer actively tried to prevent a new forest law in Romania that limits the share one single company can have in the national timber market. In a letter to the Romanian Prime Minister, CEO Gerald Schweighofer threatened to sue Romania in international courts and to lay off all of the company’s Romanian employees should the new law not be retracted.

Romania’s forests need EU protection

WWF has, based on available report and information, now filed a complaint according to the EUTR in Austria. WWF has made continuous efforts to save the last remaining virgin forests in the Carpathian region and managed to create legislation proposing 25,000 hectares of virgin forest to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.