A new study carried out by Sheffield University shows that wind and solar power saved consumers a massive £1.55 billion in 2014.

And this year it will save us even more money – an estimated £2 billion, according to the researchers.

The saving arises because when wind and or solar power kick in with no minimum price (as they have no fuel cost to pay), the most expensive generation on the grid at the time is pushed off.

And under electricity market rules, that pushes down the wholesale power price across the entire system. This is known as the ‘Merit Order Effect’ and has also been observed in other countries including Germany.

The result is to more than halve the cost of the support going to renewable generators under the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) – by a massive 58%.

In 2014 these support payments cost energy consumers about £2.67 billion. But after subtracting the £1.55 billion benefit in lower prices, the net cost of supporting renewable power generation was only £1.12 billion.

The study was commissioned by leading green energy retailer Good Energy, whose chief executive Juliet Davenport said: “This analysis puts the bill payer at the centre of the debate around renewable energy subsidies. Let’s give them the full picture and not just half of it.”

Government mission to cut costs is also cutting benefits

Chancellor George Osborne is on a mission to cut the cost of supporting renewable power generation under the ‘Levy Control Framework’ (LCF). That’s the name for the budget allocated to subsidising low carbon energy through the RO, FITs and other mechanisms.

Thanks to the unexpected surge in renewables, the sums paid out under the LCF have increased faster than expected, leading to a projected £1.5 billion ‘overspend’ in the current financial year.

This is why the government says it has announced a series of massive cuts to renewable energy support. At the same time, they have also imposed a carbon tax, known as the Climate Change Levy, onto renewable energy, while also bringing in planning restrictions on onshore wind farms.

As a result large parts of the once thriving UK renewable energy industry are going bust, costing thousands of jobs – 27,000 are at risk or already lost in the solar sector alone – and wiping out the value of companies that are being forced into liquidation.

However the government does not include the benefit to consumers of the lower wholesale power prices, but only the direct cost of the support, which is added onto energy bills – even though the actual cost to consumers is 58% less than it appears thanks to the lower energy prices.

“What is not taken into account is the fact that renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has actually been bringing the cost of energy down for consumers”, commented Davenport. “The bill payer money invested into supporting renewables yields significant benefits, let’s be very clear about that.”

Renewables – a victim of their own success

Another reason why the LCF budget is being overspent is that the ‘top up’ payments to renewable power generators increase as the market price of power falls, in order to pay them the price that’s guaranteed under FIT and the newly introduced ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CFDs).

And average wholesale power prices have been declining from a mid-2012 peak of around £50 per MWh (megawatt hour) to under £40 today.

However one of the reasons for the decline is precisely … the surge in renewable power generation. Solar capacity in the UK has increased from just 96MW in 2010 to over 8,200 MW today. The latest figures show that, in the second quarter of 2015, 25.3% of electricity was generated by wind, solar, hydro and other renewables.

And the greater the success of renewable generators in pushing down the wholesale power price (paid to all generators), and thus the benefit to consumers, the greater the ‘headline’ cost of the renewable energy subsidies they receive.

In other words there is a deep systemic problem at the heart of the UK’s system for renewable energy support. The more successful renewables are, and the more they are reducing our bills, the more they appear to cost. It could be described as ‘designed to fail’.

The report also explored the value of the reduction in overall electricity spending achieved for each additional unit of wind or solar generation, concluding that “if current Merit Order Prices are maintained, new large-scale renewable generation will deliver a net benefit to consumers.”

So allow renewable energy capacity to keep on growing, and the subsidies paid for renewable energy generation will not just pay 58% of their cost as they do today, but will pay over 100% of their cost, putting more money into our pockets than they take out. How’s that for a bargain?

Paul Barwell, Chief Executive of the Solar Trade Association said: “With the Government’s consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closing this week (October 23rd), this report is very timely. This analysis shows that the net effect on bills of supporting new rooftop solar – under the STA’s ‘Solar Independence Plan for Britain‘ – is zero.

“The £100m we need added to consumer bills over three years will be completely offset by the savings from solar lowering the wholesale price. This is just the evidence that the Government needs.” 

The report: ‘Wind and solar reducing consumer bills An investigation into the Merit Order Effect‘ is published by Good Energy.

Consultation: DECC’s official Consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closes this Friday 23rd October.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Renewable energy sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit‘.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

I wonder what our pro-nuclear greenies will be thinking this week as they listen to President Xi Jinping and George Osborne bombastically declaring ‘a new nuclear dawn for the UK’.

I hope they’ll be feeling as ashamed as they should be.

It may be just a little harsh to blame the meltdown in UK energy policy on a handful of well-meaning but monumentally misguided environmentalists, who chose some time ago to lend their voices to the nuclear establishment here in the UK.

They were warned that it would probably end in tears, and so it has turned out. Here’s the indictment against them.

1. Creating confusion

They were warned that their high-profile support would prove to be massively confusing for many people, including a large number of environmentalists who were persuaded (often against their better judgement) that if the likes of George Osborne and his pro-nuclear buddies had decided that nuclear is ‘a necessary evil’, then that was good enough for them.

Personally, I suspect that this may even have influenced Friends of the Earth as it went through a hugely damaging ‘review’ of its own anti-nuclear stance a couple of years ago. Happily, under new CEO Craig Bennett, that deeply damaging equivocation has been set aside – and FoE will be first to be tweeting its disdain for George Osborne’s latest nuclear shenanigans this week.

There are even those who think that the pro-nuclear greenies are one of the reasons why Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear power here in the UK has been anaemic at best, and utterly irrelevant at worst.

2. A failed technology

They were warned that EdF’s EPR (the reactor of choice for Hinkley Point) had already proved to be a total plonker at both Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland. And that it would inevitably prove to be a total plonker here in the UK. And so it has turned out.

To be fair, even they eventually woke up to that ineluctable reality, shamefacedly putting out a statement on September 18th:

“Hinkley C bears all the distinguishing features of a white elephant: overpriced, overcomplicated and overdue. The delay that was announced recently should be the final straw. The Government should kill the project.”

3. Devastating impact on sustainable energy alternatives

They were warned that any kind of pro-nuclear positioning would be devastating for the genuinely sustainable alternatives they simultaneously purport to support.

And that any kind of ‘both / and’ story (ie we need both lots of nuclear and lots of renewables) would be totally abused by a Government that cares only about nuclear – and about fracking.

And so it has proved to be, as Osborne has trashed the prospects forrenewables here in the UK, has consigned to history our zero-carbon agenda for the built environment, has ridiculed the importance of energy efficiency, and, in the process, has guaranteed that we have literally no chance whatsoever of achieving our statutory targets under the Climate Change Act.

4. Supping with the Devil, eat with a long spoon

They were warned that when you sup with these nuclear devils you can never be sure what you’re going to end up with. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that our pro-nuke greenies have been keeping very quiet about the now inevitable prospect of a huge part of our energy system in the UK being handed over to the Chinese.

Neither Osborne nor Xi Jinping is particularly persuaded by EdF’s case for the EPR at Hinkley Point. But they’re both salivating with excitement at the prospect of giving the Chinese nuclear industry control over future developments at both Sizewell and Bradwell.

How can that possibly work from a sustainability point of view, let alone an energy security point of view? Even the Tories have started to wake up to this particular horror story.

Once captured by the nuclear industry, you don’t get to choose what you think might be the best (ie least problematic) option: you get what you’re given. And as pro-nuclear environmentalists, you get stitched up by an industry that gobbles up people like you for breakfast, that has lied, inveigled and bribed its way into the heart of umpteen governments over decades, often off the back of its still undeniable links to the nuclear weapons establishment.

So just how naïve can you be?

That’s some indictment. Five years ago, the UK was seen to be an indisputable leader in the international diplomacy of climate change. In Paris in a few weeks’ time we will be seen as an out-and-out pariah, sitting alongside the carbon-intensive horror stories of Canada and Australia.

To be sure, that’s primarily down to the Tories, and George Osborne in particular, with a lot of rather forlorn aiding and abetting from the Lib Dems under the last Coalition Government. But maybe they wouldn’t have got away with all that quite so easily if the Green Movement had been a lot more resolute in its advocacy of genuinely sustainable energy solutions.

So for God’s sake, think again before you shift your allegiance to the latest ‘just over the horizon’ dreams now being peddled so enthusiastically by the nuclear industry. In your recent recantation on the EPR front, here’s what you said:

“We urge the Government to scrap this plant (Hinkley C), and use the money promised to its investors to accelerate the deployment of other low carbon technologies, both renewable and nuclear. We would like to see the Government produce a comparative study of nuclear technologies, including the many proposed designs for small modular reactors, and make decisions according to viability and price, rather than following the agenda of the companies which have its ear.”

Elsewhere, you’ve made the case for the Integral Fast Reactor, and your colleague Stephen Tindale (a former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK) is out there proselytising passionately about the Molten Salt Reactor. Others bang on and on about Pebble Bed Reactors, or a variety of new reactors based on thorium technologies *.

Now, time to support the real solutions!

Give yourselves a break, guys! It is indeed just about possible, tens of billions of dollars and decades down the line, that one of these nuclear will-o’-the-wisps may materialise in such a form as to produce a few usable electrons.

In the meantime, that big old fusion reactor in the sky, known as ‘the sun’, will go on producing the wherewithal to revolutionise every aspect of our energy systems down here on Earth at a price that everyone will be able to afford.

And then bring in all the other renewables, reducing in price all the time, as well as a whole generation of new technologies driving both energy efficiency and storage, set to work through distributed micro-grids and the explosion of investment in electric vehicles, and you can see the future emerging right here and now in our everyday lives.

It took you all a very long time to recognise the EPR as the humungous white elephant it has been all along. So, please, think again before backing another whole herd of tomorrow’s white elephants, and get back to doing what you once did really well: advocating for the kind of radical decarbonisation on which our future depends.

That means killing off coal and kerosene first, and then oil and gas, through technologies that are already doing the job, in an increasingly affordable way, for rich countries and poor countries alike.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book, ‘The World We Made‘ is available from Phaidon.

This article was originally published on Jonathon’s blog.

* Author’s note: If you’re interested in reading more about these variegated nuclear pipedreams, then just follow ‘The Ecologist‘. Time after time, Editor Oliver Tickell and his fellow authors have painstakingly dispelled these false hopes and endless promises of nuclear jam tomorrow. For example:

• ‘New reactor types are all nuclear pie in the sky‘ by Jim Green.
• ‘Nuclear power – small isn’t beautiful, safe, or cheap‘ by  Justin McKeating.

A new study carried out by Sheffield University shows that wind and solar power saved consumers a massive £1.55 billion in 2014.

And this year it will save us even more money – an estimated £2 billion, according to the researchers.

The saving arises because when wind and or solar power kick in with no minimum price (as they have no fuel cost to pay), the most expensive generation on the grid at the time is pushed off.

And under electricity market rules, that pushes down the wholesale power price across the entire system. This is known as the ‘Merit Order Effect’ and has also been observed in other countries including Germany.

The result is to more than halve the cost of the support going to renewable generators under the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) – by a massive 58%.

In 2014 these support payments cost energy consumers about £2.67 billion. But after subtracting the £1.55 billion benefit in lower prices, the net cost of supporting renewable power generation was only £1.12 billion.

The study was commissioned by leading green energy retailer Good Energy, whose chief executive Juliet Davenport said: “This analysis puts the bill payer at the centre of the debate around renewable energy subsidies. Let’s give them the full picture and not just half of it.”

Government mission to cut costs is also cutting benefits

Chancellor George Osborne is on a mission to cut the cost of supporting renewable power generation under the ‘Levy Control Framework’ (LCF). That’s the name for the budget allocated to subsidising low carbon energy through the RO, FITs and other mechanisms.

Thanks to the unexpected surge in renewables, the sums paid out under the LCF have increased faster than expected, leading to a projected £1.5 billion ‘overspend’ in the current financial year.

This is why the government says it has announced a series of massive cuts to renewable energy support. At the same time, they have also imposed a carbon tax, known as the Climate Change Levy, onto renewable energy, while also bringing in planning restrictions on onshore wind farms.

As a result large parts of the once thriving UK renewable energy industry are going bust, costing thousands of jobs – 27,000 are at risk or already lost in the solar sector alone – and wiping out the value of companies that are being forced into liquidation.

However the government does not include the benefit to consumers of the lower wholesale power prices, but only the direct cost of the support, which is added onto energy bills – even though the actual cost to consumers is 58% less than it appears thanks to the lower energy prices.

“What is not taken into account is the fact that renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has actually been bringing the cost of energy down for consumers”, commented Davenport. “The bill payer money invested into supporting renewables yields significant benefits, let’s be very clear about that.”

Renewables – a victim of their own success

Another reason why the LCF budget is being overspent is that the ‘top up’ payments to renewable power generators increase as the market price of power falls, in order to pay them the price that’s guaranteed under FIT and the newly introduced ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CFDs).

And average wholesale power prices have been declining from a mid-2012 peak of around £50 per MWh (megawatt hour) to under £40 today.

However one of the reasons for the decline is precisely … the surge in renewable power generation. Solar capacity in the UK has increased from just 96MW in 2010 to over 8,200 MW today. The latest figures show that, in the second quarter of 2015, 25.3% of electricity was generated by wind, solar, hydro and other renewables.

And the greater the success of renewable generators in pushing down the wholesale power price (paid to all generators), and thus the benefit to consumers, the greater the ‘headline’ cost of the renewable energy subsidies they receive.

In other words there is a deep systemic problem at the heart of the UK’s system for renewable energy support. The more successful renewables are, and the more they are reducing our bills, the more they appear to cost. It could be described as ‘designed to fail’.

The report also explored the value of the reduction in overall electricity spending achieved for each additional unit of wind or solar generation, concluding that “if current Merit Order Prices are maintained, new large-scale renewable generation will deliver a net benefit to consumers.”

So allow renewable energy capacity to keep on growing, and the subsidies paid for renewable energy generation will not just pay 58% of their cost as they do today, but will pay over 100% of their cost, putting more money into our pockets than they take out. How’s that for a bargain?

Paul Barwell, Chief Executive of the Solar Trade Association said: “With the Government’s consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closing this week (October 23rd), this report is very timely. This analysis shows that the net effect on bills of supporting new rooftop solar – under the STA’s ‘Solar Independence Plan for Britain‘ – is zero.

“The £100m we need added to consumer bills over three years will be completely offset by the savings from solar lowering the wholesale price. This is just the evidence that the Government needs.” 

The report: ‘Wind and solar reducing consumer bills An investigation into the Merit Order Effect‘ is published by Good Energy.

Consultation: DECC’s official Consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closes this Friday 23rd October.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Renewable energy sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit‘.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

I wonder what our pro-nuclear greenies will be thinking this week as they listen to President Xi Jinping and George Osborne bombastically declaring ‘a new nuclear dawn for the UK’.

I hope they’ll be feeling as ashamed as they should be.

It may be just a little harsh to blame the meltdown in UK energy policy on a handful of well-meaning but monumentally misguided environmentalists, who chose some time ago to lend their voices to the nuclear establishment here in the UK.

They were warned that it would probably end in tears, and so it has turned out. Here’s the indictment against them.

1. Creating confusion

They were warned that their high-profile support would prove to be massively confusing for many people, including a large number of environmentalists who were persuaded (often against their better judgement) that if the likes of George Osborne and his pro-nuclear buddies had decided that nuclear is ‘a necessary evil’, then that was good enough for them.

Personally, I suspect that this may even have influenced Friends of the Earth as it went through a hugely damaging ‘review’ of its own anti-nuclear stance a couple of years ago. Happily, under new CEO Craig Bennett, that deeply damaging equivocation has been set aside – and FoE will be first to be tweeting its disdain for George Osborne’s latest nuclear shenanigans this week.

There are even those who think that the pro-nuclear greenies are one of the reasons why Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear power here in the UK has been anaemic at best, and utterly irrelevant at worst.

2. A failed technology

They were warned that EdF’s EPR (the reactor of choice for Hinkley Point) had already proved to be a total plonker at both Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland. And that it would inevitably prove to be a total plonker here in the UK. And so it has turned out.

To be fair, even they eventually woke up to that ineluctable reality, shamefacedly putting out a statement on September 18th:

“Hinkley C bears all the distinguishing features of a white elephant: overpriced, overcomplicated and overdue. The delay that was announced recently should be the final straw. The Government should kill the project.”

3. Devastating impact on sustainable energy alternatives

They were warned that any kind of pro-nuclear positioning would be devastating for the genuinely sustainable alternatives they simultaneously purport to support.

And that any kind of ‘both / and’ story (ie we need both lots of nuclear and lots of renewables) would be totally abused by a Government that cares only about nuclear – and about fracking.

And so it has proved to be, as Osborne has trashed the prospects forrenewables here in the UK, has consigned to history our zero-carbon agenda for the built environment, has ridiculed the importance of energy efficiency, and, in the process, has guaranteed that we have literally no chance whatsoever of achieving our statutory targets under the Climate Change Act.

4. Supping with the Devil, eat with a long spoon

They were warned that when you sup with these nuclear devils you can never be sure what you’re going to end up with. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that our pro-nuke greenies have been keeping very quiet about the now inevitable prospect of a huge part of our energy system in the UK being handed over to the Chinese.

Neither Osborne nor Xi Jinping is particularly persuaded by EdF’s case for the EPR at Hinkley Point. But they’re both salivating with excitement at the prospect of giving the Chinese nuclear industry control over future developments at both Sizewell and Bradwell.

How can that possibly work from a sustainability point of view, let alone an energy security point of view? Even the Tories have started to wake up to this particular horror story.

Once captured by the nuclear industry, you don’t get to choose what you think might be the best (ie least problematic) option: you get what you’re given. And as pro-nuclear environmentalists, you get stitched up by an industry that gobbles up people like you for breakfast, that has lied, inveigled and bribed its way into the heart of umpteen governments over decades, often off the back of its still undeniable links to the nuclear weapons establishment.

So just how naïve can you be?

That’s some indictment. Five years ago, the UK was seen to be an indisputable leader in the international diplomacy of climate change. In Paris in a few weeks’ time we will be seen as an out-and-out pariah, sitting alongside the carbon-intensive horror stories of Canada and Australia.

To be sure, that’s primarily down to the Tories, and George Osborne in particular, with a lot of rather forlorn aiding and abetting from the Lib Dems under the last Coalition Government. But maybe they wouldn’t have got away with all that quite so easily if the Green Movement had been a lot more resolute in its advocacy of genuinely sustainable energy solutions.

So for God’s sake, think again before you shift your allegiance to the latest ‘just over the horizon’ dreams now being peddled so enthusiastically by the nuclear industry. In your recent recantation on the EPR front, here’s what you said:

“We urge the Government to scrap this plant (Hinkley C), and use the money promised to its investors to accelerate the deployment of other low carbon technologies, both renewable and nuclear. We would like to see the Government produce a comparative study of nuclear technologies, including the many proposed designs for small modular reactors, and make decisions according to viability and price, rather than following the agenda of the companies which have its ear.”

Elsewhere, you’ve made the case for the Integral Fast Reactor, and your colleague Stephen Tindale (a former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK) is out there proselytising passionately about the Molten Salt Reactor. Others bang on and on about Pebble Bed Reactors, or a variety of new reactors based on thorium technologies *.

Now, time to support the real solutions!

Give yourselves a break, guys! It is indeed just about possible, tens of billions of dollars and decades down the line, that one of these nuclear will-o’-the-wisps may materialise in such a form as to produce a few usable electrons.

In the meantime, that big old fusion reactor in the sky, known as ‘the sun’, will go on producing the wherewithal to revolutionise every aspect of our energy systems down here on Earth at a price that everyone will be able to afford.

And then bring in all the other renewables, reducing in price all the time, as well as a whole generation of new technologies driving both energy efficiency and storage, set to work through distributed micro-grids and the explosion of investment in electric vehicles, and you can see the future emerging right here and now in our everyday lives.

It took you all a very long time to recognise the EPR as the humungous white elephant it has been all along. So, please, think again before backing another whole herd of tomorrow’s white elephants, and get back to doing what you once did really well: advocating for the kind of radical decarbonisation on which our future depends.

That means killing off coal and kerosene first, and then oil and gas, through technologies that are already doing the job, in an increasingly affordable way, for rich countries and poor countries alike.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book, ‘The World We Made‘ is available from Phaidon.

This article was originally published on Jonathon’s blog.

* Author’s note: If you’re interested in reading more about these variegated nuclear pipedreams, then just follow ‘The Ecologist‘. Time after time, Editor Oliver Tickell and his fellow authors have painstakingly dispelled these false hopes and endless promises of nuclear jam tomorrow. For example:

• ‘New reactor types are all nuclear pie in the sky‘ by Jim Green.
• ‘Nuclear power – small isn’t beautiful, safe, or cheap‘ by  Justin McKeating.

A new study carried out by Sheffield University shows that wind and solar power saved consumers a massive £1.55 billion in 2014.

And this year it will save us even more money – an estimated £2 billion, according to the researchers.

The saving arises because when wind and or solar power kick in with no minimum price (as they have no fuel cost to pay), the most expensive generation on the grid at the time is pushed off.

And under electricity market rules, that pushes down the wholesale power price across the entire system. This is known as the ‘Merit Order Effect’ and has also been observed in other countries including Germany.

The result is to more than halve the cost of the support going to renewable generators under the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) – by a massive 58%.

In 2014 these support payments cost energy consumers about £2.67 billion. But after subtracting the £1.55 billion benefit in lower prices, the net cost of supporting renewable power generation was only £1.12 billion.

The study was commissioned by leading green energy retailer Good Energy, whose chief executive Juliet Davenport said: “This analysis puts the bill payer at the centre of the debate around renewable energy subsidies. Let’s give them the full picture and not just half of it.”

Government mission to cut costs is also cutting benefits

Chancellor George Osborne is on a mission to cut the cost of supporting renewable power generation under the ‘Levy Control Framework’ (LCF). That’s the name for the budget allocated to subsidising low carbon energy through the RO, FITs and other mechanisms.

Thanks to the unexpected surge in renewables, the sums paid out under the LCF have increased faster than expected, leading to a projected £1.5 billion ‘overspend’ in the current financial year.

This is why the government says it has announced a series of massive cuts to renewable energy support. At the same time, they have also imposed a carbon tax, known as the Climate Change Levy, onto renewable energy, while also bringing in planning restrictions on onshore wind farms.

As a result large parts of the once thriving UK renewable energy industry are going bust, costing thousands of jobs – 27,000 are at risk or already lost in the solar sector alone – and wiping out the value of companies that are being forced into liquidation.

However the government does not include the benefit to consumers of the lower wholesale power prices, but only the direct cost of the support, which is added onto energy bills – even though the actual cost to consumers is 58% less than it appears thanks to the lower energy prices.

“What is not taken into account is the fact that renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has actually been bringing the cost of energy down for consumers”, commented Davenport. “The bill payer money invested into supporting renewables yields significant benefits, let’s be very clear about that.”

Renewables – a victim of their own success

Another reason why the LCF budget is being overspent is that the ‘top up’ payments to renewable power generators increase as the market price of power falls, in order to pay them the price that’s guaranteed under FIT and the newly introduced ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CFDs).

And average wholesale power prices have been declining from a mid-2012 peak of around £50 per MWh (megawatt hour) to under £40 today.

However one of the reasons for the decline is precisely … the surge in renewable power generation. Solar capacity in the UK has increased from just 96MW in 2010 to over 8,200 MW today. The latest figures show that, in the second quarter of 2015, 25.3% of electricity was generated by wind, solar, hydro and other renewables.

And the greater the success of renewable generators in pushing down the wholesale power price (paid to all generators), and thus the benefit to consumers, the greater the ‘headline’ cost of the renewable energy subsidies they receive.

In other words there is a deep systemic problem at the heart of the UK’s system for renewable energy support. The more successful renewables are, and the more they are reducing our bills, the more they appear to cost. It could be described as ‘designed to fail’.

The report also explored the value of the reduction in overall electricity spending achieved for each additional unit of wind or solar generation, concluding that “if current Merit Order Prices are maintained, new large-scale renewable generation will deliver a net benefit to consumers.”

So allow renewable energy capacity to keep on growing, and the subsidies paid for renewable energy generation will not just pay 58% of their cost as they do today, but will pay over 100% of their cost, putting more money into our pockets than they take out. How’s that for a bargain?

Paul Barwell, Chief Executive of the Solar Trade Association said: “With the Government’s consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closing this week (October 23rd), this report is very timely. This analysis shows that the net effect on bills of supporting new rooftop solar – under the STA’s ‘Solar Independence Plan for Britain‘ – is zero.

“The £100m we need added to consumer bills over three years will be completely offset by the savings from solar lowering the wholesale price. This is just the evidence that the Government needs.” 

The report: ‘Wind and solar reducing consumer bills An investigation into the Merit Order Effect‘ is published by Good Energy.

Consultation: DECC’s official Consultation on the Feed-in Tariff review closes this Friday 23rd October.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Renewable energy sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit‘.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

I wonder what our pro-nuclear greenies will be thinking this week as they listen to President Xi Jinping and George Osborne bombastically declaring ‘a new nuclear dawn for the UK’.

I hope they’ll be feeling as ashamed as they should be.

It may be just a little harsh to blame the meltdown in UK energy policy on a handful of well-meaning but monumentally misguided environmentalists, who chose some time ago to lend their voices to the nuclear establishment here in the UK.

They were warned that it would probably end in tears, and so it has turned out. Here’s the indictment against them.

1. Creating confusion

They were warned that their high-profile support would prove to be massively confusing for many people, including a large number of environmentalists who were persuaded (often against their better judgement) that if the likes of George Osborne and his pro-nuclear buddies had decided that nuclear is ‘a necessary evil’, then that was good enough for them.

Personally, I suspect that this may even have influenced Friends of the Earth as it went through a hugely damaging ‘review’ of its own anti-nuclear stance a couple of years ago. Happily, under new CEO Craig Bennett, that deeply damaging equivocation has been set aside – and FoE will be first to be tweeting its disdain for George Osborne’s latest nuclear shenanigans this week.

There are even those who think that the pro-nuclear greenies are one of the reasons why Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear power here in the UK has been anaemic at best, and utterly irrelevant at worst.

2. A failed technology

They were warned that EdF’s EPR (the reactor of choice for Hinkley Point) had already proved to be a total plonker at both Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland. And that it would inevitably prove to be a total plonker here in the UK. And so it has turned out.

To be fair, even they eventually woke up to that ineluctable reality, shamefacedly putting out a statement on September 18th:

“Hinkley C bears all the distinguishing features of a white elephant: overpriced, overcomplicated and overdue. The delay that was announced recently should be the final straw. The Government should kill the project.”

3. Devastating impact on sustainable energy alternatives

They were warned that any kind of pro-nuclear positioning would be devastating for the genuinely sustainable alternatives they simultaneously purport to support.

And that any kind of ‘both / and’ story (ie we need both lots of nuclear and lots of renewables) would be totally abused by a Government that cares only about nuclear – and about fracking.

And so it has proved to be, as Osborne has trashed the prospects forrenewables here in the UK, has consigned to history our zero-carbon agenda for the built environment, has ridiculed the importance of energy efficiency, and, in the process, has guaranteed that we have literally no chance whatsoever of achieving our statutory targets under the Climate Change Act.

4. Supping with the Devil, eat with a long spoon

They were warned that when you sup with these nuclear devils you can never be sure what you’re going to end up with. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that our pro-nuke greenies have been keeping very quiet about the now inevitable prospect of a huge part of our energy system in the UK being handed over to the Chinese.

Neither Osborne nor Xi Jinping is particularly persuaded by EdF’s case for the EPR at Hinkley Point. But they’re both salivating with excitement at the prospect of giving the Chinese nuclear industry control over future developments at both Sizewell and Bradwell.

How can that possibly work from a sustainability point of view, let alone an energy security point of view? Even the Tories have started to wake up to this particular horror story.

Once captured by the nuclear industry, you don’t get to choose what you think might be the best (ie least problematic) option: you get what you’re given. And as pro-nuclear environmentalists, you get stitched up by an industry that gobbles up people like you for breakfast, that has lied, inveigled and bribed its way into the heart of umpteen governments over decades, often off the back of its still undeniable links to the nuclear weapons establishment.

So just how naïve can you be?

That’s some indictment. Five years ago, the UK was seen to be an indisputable leader in the international diplomacy of climate change. In Paris in a few weeks’ time we will be seen as an out-and-out pariah, sitting alongside the carbon-intensive horror stories of Canada and Australia.

To be sure, that’s primarily down to the Tories, and George Osborne in particular, with a lot of rather forlorn aiding and abetting from the Lib Dems under the last Coalition Government. But maybe they wouldn’t have got away with all that quite so easily if the Green Movement had been a lot more resolute in its advocacy of genuinely sustainable energy solutions.

So for God’s sake, think again before you shift your allegiance to the latest ‘just over the horizon’ dreams now being peddled so enthusiastically by the nuclear industry. In your recent recantation on the EPR front, here’s what you said:

“We urge the Government to scrap this plant (Hinkley C), and use the money promised to its investors to accelerate the deployment of other low carbon technologies, both renewable and nuclear. We would like to see the Government produce a comparative study of nuclear technologies, including the many proposed designs for small modular reactors, and make decisions according to viability and price, rather than following the agenda of the companies which have its ear.”

Elsewhere, you’ve made the case for the Integral Fast Reactor, and your colleague Stephen Tindale (a former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK) is out there proselytising passionately about the Molten Salt Reactor. Others bang on and on about Pebble Bed Reactors, or a variety of new reactors based on thorium technologies *.

Now, time to support the real solutions!

Give yourselves a break, guys! It is indeed just about possible, tens of billions of dollars and decades down the line, that one of these nuclear will-o’-the-wisps may materialise in such a form as to produce a few usable electrons.

In the meantime, that big old fusion reactor in the sky, known as ‘the sun’, will go on producing the wherewithal to revolutionise every aspect of our energy systems down here on Earth at a price that everyone will be able to afford.

And then bring in all the other renewables, reducing in price all the time, as well as a whole generation of new technologies driving both energy efficiency and storage, set to work through distributed micro-grids and the explosion of investment in electric vehicles, and you can see the future emerging right here and now in our everyday lives.

It took you all a very long time to recognise the EPR as the humungous white elephant it has been all along. So, please, think again before backing another whole herd of tomorrow’s white elephants, and get back to doing what you once did really well: advocating for the kind of radical decarbonisation on which our future depends.

That means killing off coal and kerosene first, and then oil and gas, through technologies that are already doing the job, in an increasingly affordable way, for rich countries and poor countries alike.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book, ‘The World We Made‘ is available from Phaidon.

This article was originally published on Jonathon’s blog.

* Author’s note: If you’re interested in reading more about these variegated nuclear pipedreams, then just follow ‘The Ecologist‘. Time after time, Editor Oliver Tickell and his fellow authors have painstakingly dispelled these false hopes and endless promises of nuclear jam tomorrow. For example:

• ‘New reactor types are all nuclear pie in the sky‘ by Jim Green.
• ‘Nuclear power – small isn’t beautiful, safe, or cheap‘ by  Justin McKeating.

I wonder what our pro-nuclear greenies will be thinking this week as they listen to President Xi Jinping and George Osborne bombastically declaring ‘a new nuclear dawn for the UK’.

I hope they’ll be feeling as ashamed as they should be.

It may be just a little harsh to blame the meltdown in UK energy policy on a handful of well-meaning but monumentally misguided environmentalists, who chose some time ago to lend their voices to the nuclear establishment here in the UK.

They were warned that it would probably end in tears, and so it has turned out. Here’s the indictment against them.

1. Creating confusion

They were warned that their high-profile support would prove to be massively confusing for many people, including a large number of environmentalists who were persuaded (often against their better judgement) that if the likes of George Osborne and his pro-nuclear buddies had decided that nuclear is ‘a necessary evil’, then that was good enough for them.

Personally, I suspect that this may even have influenced Friends of the Earth as it went through a hugely damaging ‘review’ of its own anti-nuclear stance a couple of years ago. Happily, under new CEO Craig Bennett, that deeply damaging equivocation has been set aside – and FoE will be first to be tweeting its disdain for George Osborne’s latest nuclear shenanigans this week.

There are even those who think that the pro-nuclear greenies are one of the reasons why Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear power here in the UK has been anaemic at best, and utterly irrelevant at worst.

2. A failed technology

They were warned that EdF’s EPR (the reactor of choice for Hinkley Point) had already proved to be a total plonker at both Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland. And that it would inevitably prove to be a total plonker here in the UK. And so it has turned out.

To be fair, even they eventually woke up to that ineluctable reality, shamefacedly putting out a statement on September 18th:

“Hinkley C bears all the distinguishing features of a white elephant: overpriced, overcomplicated and overdue. The delay that was announced recently should be the final straw. The Government should kill the project.”

3. Devastating impact on sustainable energy alternatives

They were warned that any kind of pro-nuclear positioning would be devastating for the genuinely sustainable alternatives they simultaneously purport to support.

And that any kind of ‘both / and’ story (ie we need both lots of nuclear and lots of renewables) would be totally abused by a Government that cares only about nuclear – and about fracking.

And so it has proved to be, as Osborne has trashed the prospects forrenewables here in the UK, has consigned to history our zero-carbon agenda for the built environment, has ridiculed the importance of energy efficiency, and, in the process, has guaranteed that we have literally no chance whatsoever of achieving our statutory targets under the Climate Change Act.

4. Supping with the Devil, eat with a long spoon

They were warned that when you sup with these nuclear devils you can never be sure what you’re going to end up with. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that our pro-nuke greenies have been keeping very quiet about the now inevitable prospect of a huge part of our energy system in the UK being handed over to the Chinese.

Neither Osborne nor Xi Jinping is particularly persuaded by EdF’s case for the EPR at Hinkley Point. But they’re both salivating with excitement at the prospect of giving the Chinese nuclear industry control over future developments at both Sizewell and Bradwell.

How can that possibly work from a sustainability point of view, let alone an energy security point of view? Even the Tories have started to wake up to this particular horror story.

Once captured by the nuclear industry, you don’t get to choose what you think might be the best (ie least problematic) option: you get what you’re given. And as pro-nuclear environmentalists, you get stitched up by an industry that gobbles up people like you for breakfast, that has lied, inveigled and bribed its way into the heart of umpteen governments over decades, often off the back of its still undeniable links to the nuclear weapons establishment.

So just how naïve can you be?

That’s some indictment. Five years ago, the UK was seen to be an indisputable leader in the international diplomacy of climate change. In Paris in a few weeks’ time we will be seen as an out-and-out pariah, sitting alongside the carbon-intensive horror stories of Canada and Australia.

To be sure, that’s primarily down to the Tories, and George Osborne in particular, with a lot of rather forlorn aiding and abetting from the Lib Dems under the last Coalition Government. But maybe they wouldn’t have got away with all that quite so easily if the Green Movement had been a lot more resolute in its advocacy of genuinely sustainable energy solutions.

So for God’s sake, think again before you shift your allegiance to the latest ‘just over the horizon’ dreams now being peddled so enthusiastically by the nuclear industry. In your recent recantation on the EPR front, here’s what you said:

“We urge the Government to scrap this plant (Hinkley C), and use the money promised to its investors to accelerate the deployment of other low carbon technologies, both renewable and nuclear. We would like to see the Government produce a comparative study of nuclear technologies, including the many proposed designs for small modular reactors, and make decisions according to viability and price, rather than following the agenda of the companies which have its ear.”

Elsewhere, you’ve made the case for the Integral Fast Reactor, and your colleague Stephen Tindale (a former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK) is out there proselytising passionately about the Molten Salt Reactor. Others bang on and on about Pebble Bed Reactors, or a variety of new reactors based on thorium technologies *.

Now, time to support the real solutions!

Give yourselves a break, guys! It is indeed just about possible, tens of billions of dollars and decades down the line, that one of these nuclear will-o’-the-wisps may materialise in such a form as to produce a few usable electrons.

In the meantime, that big old fusion reactor in the sky, known as ‘the sun’, will go on producing the wherewithal to revolutionise every aspect of our energy systems down here on Earth at a price that everyone will be able to afford.

And then bring in all the other renewables, reducing in price all the time, as well as a whole generation of new technologies driving both energy efficiency and storage, set to work through distributed micro-grids and the explosion of investment in electric vehicles, and you can see the future emerging right here and now in our everyday lives.

It took you all a very long time to recognise the EPR as the humungous white elephant it has been all along. So, please, think again before backing another whole herd of tomorrow’s white elephants, and get back to doing what you once did really well: advocating for the kind of radical decarbonisation on which our future depends.

That means killing off coal and kerosene first, and then oil and gas, through technologies that are already doing the job, in an increasingly affordable way, for rich countries and poor countries alike.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book, ‘The World We Made‘ is available from Phaidon.

This article was originally published on Jonathon’s blog.

* Author’s note: If you’re interested in reading more about these variegated nuclear pipedreams, then just follow ‘The Ecologist‘. Time after time, Editor Oliver Tickell and his fellow authors have painstakingly dispelled these false hopes and endless promises of nuclear jam tomorrow. For example:

• ‘New reactor types are all nuclear pie in the sky‘ by Jim Green.
• ‘Nuclear power – small isn’t beautiful, safe, or cheap‘ by  Justin McKeating.

I wonder what our pro-nuclear greenies will be thinking this week as they listen to President Xi Jinping and George Osborne bombastically declaring ‘a new nuclear dawn for the UK’.

I hope they’ll be feeling as ashamed as they should be.

It may be just a little harsh to blame the meltdown in UK energy policy on a handful of well-meaning but monumentally misguided environmentalists, who chose some time ago to lend their voices to the nuclear establishment here in the UK.

They were warned that it would probably end in tears, and so it has turned out. Here’s the indictment against them.

1. Creating confusion

They were warned that their high-profile support would prove to be massively confusing for many people, including a large number of environmentalists who were persuaded (often against their better judgement) that if the likes of George Osborne and his pro-nuclear buddies had decided that nuclear is ‘a necessary evil’, then that was good enough for them.

Personally, I suspect that this may even have influenced Friends of the Earth as it went through a hugely damaging ‘review’ of its own anti-nuclear stance a couple of years ago. Happily, under new CEO Craig Bennett, that deeply damaging equivocation has been set aside – and FoE will be first to be tweeting its disdain for George Osborne’s latest nuclear shenanigans this week.

There are even those who think that the pro-nuclear greenies are one of the reasons why Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear power here in the UK has been anaemic at best, and utterly irrelevant at worst.

2. A failed technology

They were warned that EdF’s EPR (the reactor of choice for Hinkley Point) had already proved to be a total plonker at both Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland. And that it would inevitably prove to be a total plonker here in the UK. And so it has turned out.

To be fair, even they eventually woke up to that ineluctable reality, shamefacedly putting out a statement on September 18th:

“Hinkley C bears all the distinguishing features of a white elephant: overpriced, overcomplicated and overdue. The delay that was announced recently should be the final straw. The Government should kill the project.”

3. Devastating impact on sustainable energy alternatives

They were warned that any kind of pro-nuclear positioning would be devastating for the genuinely sustainable alternatives they simultaneously purport to support.

And that any kind of ‘both / and’ story (ie we need both lots of nuclear and lots of renewables) would be totally abused by a Government that cares only about nuclear – and about fracking.

And so it has proved to be, as Osborne has trashed the prospects forrenewables here in the UK, has consigned to history our zero-carbon agenda for the built environment, has ridiculed the importance of energy efficiency, and, in the process, has guaranteed that we have literally no chance whatsoever of achieving our statutory targets under the Climate Change Act.

4. Supping with the Devil, eat with a long spoon

They were warned that when you sup with these nuclear devils you can never be sure what you’re going to end up with. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that our pro-nuke greenies have been keeping very quiet about the now inevitable prospect of a huge part of our energy system in the UK being handed over to the Chinese.

Neither Osborne nor Xi Jinping is particularly persuaded by EdF’s case for the EPR at Hinkley Point. But they’re both salivating with excitement at the prospect of giving the Chinese nuclear industry control over future developments at both Sizewell and Bradwell.

How can that possibly work from a sustainability point of view, let alone an energy security point of view? Even the Tories have started to wake up to this particular horror story.

Once captured by the nuclear industry, you don’t get to choose what you think might be the best (ie least problematic) option: you get what you’re given. And as pro-nuclear environmentalists, you get stitched up by an industry that gobbles up people like you for breakfast, that has lied, inveigled and bribed its way into the heart of umpteen governments over decades, often off the back of its still undeniable links to the nuclear weapons establishment.

So just how naïve can you be?

That’s some indictment. Five years ago, the UK was seen to be an indisputable leader in the international diplomacy of climate change. In Paris in a few weeks’ time we will be seen as an out-and-out pariah, sitting alongside the carbon-intensive horror stories of Canada and Australia.

To be sure, that’s primarily down to the Tories, and George Osborne in particular, with a lot of rather forlorn aiding and abetting from the Lib Dems under the last Coalition Government. But maybe they wouldn’t have got away with all that quite so easily if the Green Movement had been a lot more resolute in its advocacy of genuinely sustainable energy solutions.

So for God’s sake, think again before you shift your allegiance to the latest ‘just over the horizon’ dreams now being peddled so enthusiastically by the nuclear industry. In your recent recantation on the EPR front, here’s what you said:

“We urge the Government to scrap this plant (Hinkley C), and use the money promised to its investors to accelerate the deployment of other low carbon technologies, both renewable and nuclear. We would like to see the Government produce a comparative study of nuclear technologies, including the many proposed designs for small modular reactors, and make decisions according to viability and price, rather than following the agenda of the companies which have its ear.”

Elsewhere, you’ve made the case for the Integral Fast Reactor, and your colleague Stephen Tindale (a former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK) is out there proselytising passionately about the Molten Salt Reactor. Others bang on and on about Pebble Bed Reactors, or a variety of new reactors based on thorium technologies *.

Now, time to support the real solutions!

Give yourselves a break, guys! It is indeed just about possible, tens of billions of dollars and decades down the line, that one of these nuclear will-o’-the-wisps may materialise in such a form as to produce a few usable electrons.

In the meantime, that big old fusion reactor in the sky, known as ‘the sun’, will go on producing the wherewithal to revolutionise every aspect of our energy systems down here on Earth at a price that everyone will be able to afford.

And then bring in all the other renewables, reducing in price all the time, as well as a whole generation of new technologies driving both energy efficiency and storage, set to work through distributed micro-grids and the explosion of investment in electric vehicles, and you can see the future emerging right here and now in our everyday lives.

It took you all a very long time to recognise the EPR as the humungous white elephant it has been all along. So, please, think again before backing another whole herd of tomorrow’s white elephants, and get back to doing what you once did really well: advocating for the kind of radical decarbonisation on which our future depends.

That means killing off coal and kerosene first, and then oil and gas, through technologies that are already doing the job, in an increasingly affordable way, for rich countries and poor countries alike.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book, ‘The World We Made‘ is available from Phaidon.

This article was originally published on Jonathon’s blog.

* Author’s note: If you’re interested in reading more about these variegated nuclear pipedreams, then just follow ‘The Ecologist‘. Time after time, Editor Oliver Tickell and his fellow authors have painstakingly dispelled these false hopes and endless promises of nuclear jam tomorrow. For example:

• ‘New reactor types are all nuclear pie in the sky‘ by Jim Green.
• ‘Nuclear power – small isn’t beautiful, safe, or cheap‘ by  Justin McKeating.

One of Africa’s most volatile regions has become increasingly dry over the last century and faces a future of rising tension if this trend continues, US researchers say.

They believe the rate of drying in the Horn of Africa is both unusual in the context of the last 2,000 years and in step with human-influenced warming. And they think the drying will continue as the region warms.

“Right now, aid groups are expecting a wetter, greener future for the Horn of Africa, but our findings show that the exact opposite is occurring”, says one of the study’s co-authors, Peter deMenocal, who heads the Centre for Climate and Life at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“The region is drying, and will continue to do so with rising carbon emissions.”

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, was based on evidence stretching back for 40,000 years. The researchers used a sediment core they had extracted from the Gulf of Aden to infer past changes in temperature and aridity.

After matching the core’s record with 20th-century observations, they concluded that drying is likely to continue across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea. That contradicts other models, which have suggested that future warming might bring rainier weather patterns that could benefit East Africa.

As the world warms, the Horn of Africa gets drier

“What we see in the paleoclimate record from the last 2,000 years is evidence that the Horn of Africa is drier when there are warm conditions on Earth, and wetter when it is colder”, says lead author Jessica Tierney, associate professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona.

Global-scale models used to predict future changes as the climate warms suggest that the region should become wetter, primarily during the ‘short rains’ season from September to November.

However, the new study suggests that those gains may be offset by declining rainfall during the ‘long rains’ season from March to May, on which the region’s rain-fed agriculture relies.

The authors say the region has been racked with political instability and violence as it has dried. The Horn of Africa has suffered droughts every few years in recent decades – creating humanitarian crises as famine and violence spread. In Somalia, as the political situation deteriorated amid the droughts of the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the country, and pirates began raiding ships off the coast.

According to the study, “The recent decline in Horn of Africa rainfall during the March-May ‘long rains’ season has fomented drought and famine, threatening food security in an already vulnerable region. Some attribute this decline to anthropogenic forcing, whereas others maintain that it is a feature of internal climate variability.

“We show that the rate of drying in the Horn of Africa during the 20th century is unusual in the context of the last 2000 years, is synchronous with recent global and regional warming, and therefore may have an anthropogenic component.”

More detail needed in climate models

The study uses isotopes from leaf waxes found in the sediment sample to compare rates of drying over the past 2,000 years. Plants reflect the environment that sustains them. When the climate is drier, leaf waxes are more enriched with deuterium, or heavy hydrogen isotopes, while leaf waxes from wetter climates reflect the more abundant rainfall through the presence of the normal hydrogen isotopes.

The researchers found an increasing shift toward heavy hydrogen in the last century as the climate – which had experienced a wet period during the Little Ice Age (1450-1850 AD) – dried out.

And they argue that climate modelling, frequently done at a global scale, would benefit from region-specific studies with higher-resolution results in high-impact areas such as the Horn of Africa. “If we can simulate rainfall in these arid tropical and subtropical regions better, we can understand the future impact of climate change”, says Tierney.

The development agency Oxfam says Ethiopia is facing a major emergency, with 4.5 million people needing food aid because of successive poor rains this year. Oxfam’s representative in Ethiopia describes the situation – attributed to the El Niño periodic climate phenomenon in the Pacific – as “the start of a major emergency, which is expected to be serious and long.”

Meanwhile, parts of West Africa are suffering from the aftermath of severe floods – also attributed to El Niño – that have ruined crops and destroyed homes in Burkina Faso and Niger. 

The 40,000-year old sediment core used in the study has already yielded insights into Africa’s climate. In 2013, Tierney and deMenocal showed that the Sahara, which once used to burst into verdant life with regular rainfall, suddenly dried out over a century or two during a warm period about 5,000 years ago.

This provided evidence that climate shifts can happen quite suddenly, even if the forces driving them are gradual.

The paper: ‘Past and future rainfall in the Horn of Africa‘ by Jessica E. Tierney, Caroline C. Ummenhofer and Peter B. deMenocal is published in Science Advances.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

One photo sums up, for me, the extraordinary events that took place in Aberdeen on Friday.

In it, an SNP member is asking an embarrassed-looking young man to autograph his conference pass, saying:

“I’ve never got an autograph before, but I just had to get yours!”

The embarrassed man is Nicky Lowden McCrimmon, and shortly before I took the picture he was being cheered by a standing ovation of almost 300 SNP members.

We were at the ‘Our Land’ meeting – an unofficial fringe event of the SNP’s autumn conference – and earlier that day Nicky had led delegates in a vote to reject the watered-down land reform bill. “When you have radical land reform, then we’ll sign up to it”, he told party leaders.

570 delegates agreed with him, and the motion supporting the current bill was rejected. It’s worth bearing in mind that this almost never happens, and certainly can’t have been expected by SNP leadership.

It means that any amendments which will – undoubtedly, now – be brought forwards in the coming months will have to be very carefully considered. Minister Aileen McLeod, backer of the defeated motion, promised to listen to delegates concerns.

McLeod is the first minister to have land reform explicitly included in her portfolio – a sign of the SNP’s much-hyped commitment to a ‘radical’ land reform plan.

Just 432 people, companies, own half of Scotland

The growing pressure for reform was bolstered by the referendum debate. The stark inequalities that damage Scottish society so much were a frequent topic, and few statistics hit you so hard as ‘432:50’ – around 432 interests own half the private land in Scotland.

That private land, incidentally, makes up 89% of our 19 million acres. Community ownership accounts for 2%. Just one man, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, owns 1% of Scotland.

Memories of clearances, and current battles with derelict land and evictions give the debate an emotive tone too – sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Land became one of the central issues in the nation-wide discussion on Scotland’s future – helped undoubtedly by the ability of commentators like Lesley Riddoch to coherently and passionately describe exactly why all this mattered so much.

So when, post-referendum, all eyes were on the SNP, they jumped at the chance to be the ‘party of land reform’, even using the word ‘radical’ to describe their agenda. This isn’t a word you would really have heard from this party until very recently, and it’s fair to point out that they’ve not exactly been land reform advocates in the past either.

So campaigners greeted the announcement with curiosity but a fair degree of scepticism. Would the SNP really deliver on an issue that requires bold, redistributive measures?

No more tax haven landowners!

As recommendations and consultation came and went and draft legislation appeared, these sceptical voices were proved right, much to their dismay. Despite the high-pitched fury coming from certain landed interests and their newspapers over ‘Mugabe-style land grabs’, the bill represented nothing of the sort.

The detailed, powerful proposals of the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) had either appeared watered-down, been dropped from the bill, or never even made it into the public consultation in the first place.

Where was the upper limit on landholdings so strongly recommended by the LRRG? The commitment to establishing a system of land value taxation? The re-establishment of business rates for sporting estates was welcome, as is the (vague) proposal for community purchase of mismanaged land. But these are sticking plasters.

The fact that 750,000 acres of Scotland will still be held in tax havens by a global, untraceable elite, is inexcusable. The removal from the bill of a measure which would have tackled this is partly what’s caused such anger among SNP members and land activists, as now even the UK government have stronger proposals for this problem.

It is suspected that the reluctance is coming from hesitant and risk-averse lawyers in the Scottish government – a poor approach for a government committed to any sort of meangingful social change.

Corporations, said Robin McAlpine, take the attitude that if you aren’t winning, you need better lawyers. We can do that too. The minimum pricing policy has resulted in lengthy court battles for the government – but they were willing to go ahead regardless, because they believed it to be the right thing to do. Why is this courage lacking when it comes to land reform?

Tenant farmers demand a ‘right to buy’

Another group looking for radical reform were tenant farmers. The whole of the agricultural holdings review – a lengthy, complicated process with so much at stake – has been addressed in one chapter of the draft Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2015.

For farmers living under threat of eviction and rent hikes, hoping for the automatic right-to-buy that their European counterparts enjoy, the draft bill was a crushing disappointment.

A stunned silence filled the church hall when tenant farmer Andrew Stoddart addressed the 300-odd attendees of the Our Land meeting. He explained that on 28 November he faces eviction from the land he’d farmed for 22 years, and will receive little compensation despite investing nearly half a million pounds in Colstoun Mains Farm over that period.

The previous night Andrew had appeared on Channel 4 News, interviewed by Alex Thomson as part of his excellent report on land reform in Scotland. Asked what his children will say about the situation, he broke down in tears.

Andrew’s three kids are at the local primary school. His farm employees, who will also have to leave, have children too. The factor and landlord are immensely wealthy men with great influence in the local area. Feudalism, it seems, survives still in East Lothian.

The current land reform bill will not help Andrew and the countless others in his situation who can’t speak out. It won’t change the fact that Scottish land can be bought and sold on a whim by those who hide behind shell companies in the Bahamas. It won’t make land affordable and accessible.

In seeking ‘balance’ and compromise, the SNP have inadvertently sided with those who have the most power – but luckily they’ve got the most incredibly clued-up, strident membership. No one could doubt the strength of feeling on Friday night’s meeting, nor the clear message sent to party leadership.

These SNP activists are a hugely potent force, and they demand a radical land reform bill worthy of its name. The coming months will be very interesting indeed.

Jen Stout is a writer and campaigner from Fair Isle, Shetland. She now lives in Glasgow, writes for Bella Caledonia on various topics, and campaigns with Scottish Land Action Movement. She tweets @jm_stout.

This article was originally published on Bella Caledonia and is republished here by kind permission of the author.