“Modernisation”: Just Say Yes

November 9th, 2009

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Posted by ChrisG at 10:06 pm

Two energy-related developments today: first, Ed Miliband continues to believe that gutting the planning system of its last vestiges of accountability is a price worth paying for getting some new nuclear capacity by (maybe) 2018.

“The truth is we’re not going to be able to deliver a 21st-century energy system with a 20th-century planning system,” said Miliband. “Saying no everywhere would not be in the national interest.”

The great leap forward, coming soon to the neighbourhood of an knackered nuclear facility near you (for us that’s Hinkley Point, just across the Bristol Channel).

Second, LNG developments across the Irish Sea. The long-running saga of the Co Mayo Corrib gas field pipeline has produced a victory for campaigners against the pipeline and associated Shannon LNG terminal who have been seeking to have the gas pipeline rerouted away from their homes.

In a letter to Shell yesterday, the board said documentation provided by the oil and gas giant did not present a “complete, transparent and adequate demonstration that the pipeline does not pose an unacceptable risk to the public”. It said that more than half the route, or 5.6km, ran too close to homes, which was “unacceptable”, and that it must be re-routed.

Debates over siting decisions often do not turn around differences of opinion between experts over the probability of an accident, i.e. debates over the correct way to interpret current scientific evidence concerning recognised safety factors. Often, the key issue is acceptability of risk, which can have nothing to do with probability – for example, the nature of possible consequences and the degree to which a risk has been imposed on someone without their consent may be cited. In other words, siting conflicts tend to turn on ethical and political questions of value, which debates that restrict themselves to issues of risk probabilities cannot address. The unacceptability for local residents of many of the siting decisions taken around the South Wales Gas Pipeline and Milford Haven LNG terminals concerned precisely the nature of the potential consequences of placing potentially dangerous infrastructure (and in Milford, with its existing petrochemical industries, of cascading risks) in close proximity to communities, and also the failure to seek the consent of those living there who would suffer these consequences should they materialise.

The decision on the Corrib pipeline is interesting (and welcome) because it locates the siting decision in its proper social and political context: consequences and consent matter more than mere probability. It’s unfortunate that Miliband and the UK Government have decided that they should base their future energy policy on doing their utmost to continue undermining this principle.