Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 490

reflect those by others that the UK was not striving as it might to develop alternatives
(for instance, see section 7.5.3). The other criticism, made less vocally at the time,
was that the UK was leaking carbon (in the economic as opposed to the ecological
sense). Since the 1980s it had been shutting down some of its energy-intensive indus-
trial processes such as steel manufacture and so was importing such energy-intensive
goods instead. This meant that the carbon emissions were being generated overseas.
Over the 25 years up to 2005 the UK has struggled to reduce its reliance on
fossil imports and - for much of this time, from the mid-1980s onwards - to address
greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2005 and the decline in North Sea oil production, the
UK has not been self-reliant on fossil fuels (see Figure 8.5a). It has had some success
in that total energy consumption has risen less than the USA's. Further, in a broad
sense, it managed to roughly equate fossil fuel consumption with domestic fossil
production. Again this was unlike the USA, but it did rely heavily on its North Sea
oil and gas reserves, production of which peaked around the turn of the millennium.
However, longer-term energy-policy concerns focus on the slow development of non-
fossil carbon renewables as well as the lack of a nuclear strategy. Given the absence
of the former, addressing the latter in some way was becoming an issue. Here, in
Parliamentarian minds, concern over nuclear power related to public perceptions, and
the uncertain long-term environmental impact of nuclear waste, counted against the
technology. (Here it is perhaps worth being reminded of the comparability of past
natural carbon [CIE] releases into the biosphere of the Eocene and Toarcian with
that of the timescale needed to secure nuclear power's radioactive waste, as noted
in section 8.2.5. Up to this time neither policy-makers nor the public were making
such comparisons between the environmental impact of carbon emission and that of
radioactive waste.)
By 2005 energy-policy concerns over UK security of supply, sustainability (mainly
meaning medium-to-long-term national self-sufficiency) and climate came together.
This was perhaps most strongly articulated by the UK learned community in a 2-day
discussion symposium, 'Challenges & Solutions: UK Energy to 2050', followed by a
half-day conclusion launch by a clutch of learned and professional societies led by the
Geological Society, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics,
Institution of Civil Engineers and the Energy Institute and with the support of UK
research councils. Only the absence of biological learned societies prevented nearly
all of the major disciplines being represented. One of the main conclusions was the
need for government to seriously consider a new generation of nuclear power stations
(the current stations then coming to the end of their generating lifetimes). A month
later, on 29 November 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced an energy review
based on widespread consultation that included the question of whether the UK
should embark on a new nuclear programme. This review was due to be completed
in 2006. Before then, though, there were two other documents published that throw
an intriguing light on the use of science to underpin UK climate and energy policy
and to meet UK climate-policy goals.
The first of these was a consultation launched in December 2005 on Proposals for
Introducing a Code for Sustainable Homes (produced by the Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister, 2005). The idea was that the Government was to introduce a code
of practice that would apply to all government-funded home construction and be