Climate activists and some European climate ministers have slammed the EU’s long awaited “taxonomy on sustainable activities” which includes gas and nuclear in its new “green investments guidebook”. The guide is designed to channel billions of EU subsidies into projects that help the EU reach its target of zero carbon emissions by 2050. The inclusion of gas torpedos that effort. The issue is live in the British labour movement too, since the GMB union supports gas as “green”.
The original taxonomy, agreed through a long process of scientific debate and negotiation in Brussels, excluded both gas and nuclear. This started to set a world standard. Even the Russian government investment bank followed the EU example and excluded gas from its own “Russian taxonomy”. After pressure from France, Italy, and East European states, the final taxonomy (released on New Year’s Eve in an attempt to bury the news) included both gas and nuclear.
EU politicians opposed to the measures are not confident they have the numbers to vote down this taxonomy, though Austrian climate minister Leonore Gewessler has said the plans “destroy the future for our children” and has threatened to sue if the plans go ahead.
In our view it is problematic to oppose nuclear as well as gas. These are fundamentally different technologies associated with different environmental problems. There are some CO2 emissions associated with nuclear energy, from construction, operation, fuel production, dismantling, and waste disposal. There is no scientific consensus about the size of these emissions. An authoritative review of the literature found estimates ranging from 3 to 200 gCO2/kWh; the IPCC gives a median estimate of 12. The processing of lower grade uranium ore significantly increases the carbon footprint.
However, all energy generation, including renewables, has some carbon footprint, because construction, maintenance, etc. rely on fossil-powered machines and industrial processes. The carbon footprints should reduce as broader industry is transformed. The UK Committee on Climate Change have said that by 2030 all electricity should be generated with less than 50 grams of carbon dioxide emitted for each kilowatt-hour (50 gCO2/kWh). For inclusion in the EU taxonomy, the target is less than 100 gCO2/kWh.
The opposition of prominent climate scientists like Michael Mann to nuclear is based on concerns about safety, the difficulties of waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation, rather than on CO2 emissions. Mann also argues that nuclear is a distraction and the technology exists now for a transition to 100% renewables.
But, at the very least, that transition will take some time. For now, in Britain for example, the ongoing rundown of nuclear will mean more fossil fuels for “baseload” electricity generation (capacity to be used when winds and sun are low).
Nuclear could play an important role in a transition to 100% renewables, and each project should be judged on its own merits. The UK government’s particular plans forn new nuclear power plants at Hinckley Point C and Sizewell C appear particularly foolhardy given the risk posed by sea level rise, but that does not mean opposition to all nuclear.
The carbon footprint of fossil gas — methane - is on average 450 gCO2/kWh or more. And its extraction, increasingly via fracking, involves some of the methane leaking into the atmosphere. Methane is over 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 (and then degrades into other greenhouse gases - CO2 and water - after a few decades). Since 2011 some scientists have argued that this leakage means that fossil gas is dirtier than coal.
That view is contested, but recent research suggests the alarming spike in atmospheric methane in the last decade is linked to the boom in fracking.
Carbon Capture and Storage technology can be added to gas-fired power stations to scrub CO2 out of emissions, but thus far the recovered CO2 has mostly been used in enhanced oil recovery rather than placed in long term storage. The fossil-fuel industry’s claim that fossil gas can provide a “bridging fuel” in fact projects more like a bridge to catastrophe.
The Labour Party retains a pro-gas policy, in part under pressure from the pro-gas GMB. Sectionalism and social partnership ideology means that in recent years the GMB bureaucracy has been a powerful conduit for climate change denial within the UK labour movement.
In his 2019 speech to Labour Party conference former general secretary Tim Roche spouted denialist scare-mongering worthy of Fox News. He claimed decarbonising the economy would lead to “confiscation of petrol cars”, “state rationing of meat”, and “limiting families to one flight for every five years”. In September 2021 the Tories’ extremely mild proposals to encourage the replacement of redundant gas boilers with low-carbon alternatives led to a wild-eyed GMB press release: “Ripping out existing boilers across 24 million homes across the UK… will lead to heating chaos for millions”.
Transforming the labour movement into a force that could win governmental power to implement a rational energy policy involves contesting the government’s plans and setting out our own workers’ vision for big infrastructure projects.
