"He invited the public to take part in his review via the website 
launched today at: www.energyreview.co.uk"

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/13/nuke13.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/13/ixhome.html

Tories could drop nuclear energy option and go green
By Brendan Carlin, Political Correspondent
(Filed: 13/02/2006)

The Conservatives could be prepared to drop their historic commitment to 
nuclear power to underline their new "green" credentials under David 
Cameron, it emerged last night.

On the eve of the launch today of a Tory review of energy policy, Alan 
Duncan, the shadow trade and industry secretary, said that his party now 
had "no fixed opinion about nuclear energy".
     
Alan Duncan
Alan Duncan: review

His comments came as Friends of the Earth suggested that the Tories 
under Mr Cameron appeared to have replaced Labour as the party more 
sceptical about building new nuclear power stations.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Duncan said it was possible 
for renewable energy - such as wave and solar power - to make "a much 
more significant contribution than in the past".

Mr Duncan, traditionally sceptical about nuclear energy, even held out 
the prospect of "a new lease of life" for fossil fuels, based on 
clean-coal and carbon-capture technology. But he ruled out a return to a 
major reliance on coal reserves, saying that British deep-mined coal was 
now largely uneconomic.

A wide-ranging government energy review is already under way, following 
anxiety over rising domestic fuel bills and security of supply as 
Britain becomes a net importer of energy.

The Tory review is designed to provide what Mr Duncan, a former oil 
trader, billed as a "thorough, evidence-based" response to the 
Government's eventual proposals.

The thorny issue of whether to replace Britain's ageing nuclear power 
stations - the last of which, Sizewell B, was given the go-ahead by the 
Tories - is one of the key questions to be resolved by both parties.

Nuclear power provided almost 20 per cent of the UK's electricity in 
2004, but that will drop to seven per cent by 2020 as the existing power 
stations are decommissioned.

Many observers suspect that despite the notorious waste disposal 
problems, Tony Blair has already privately decided to build more nuclear 
plants, as they produce almost no damaging carbon emissions. Some Tories 
with a keen interest in climate change privately say it would be folly 
to rule out new nuclear power.

Mr Cameron has said he is open-minded about the issue but appointed Zac 
Goldsmith, editor of the Ecologist magazine and a well-known critic of 
nuclear power, to be deputy chairman of the party's wider "quality of 
life" review into the environment.

Martin Williams, a parliamentary campaigner for Friends of the Earth, 
said last night that in some respects Labour and the Tories "have 
swapped position" on the nuclear issue.

Mr Duncan, 49, made it clear that his inquiry would start without bias 
for any form of energy production.

"Some people in the party are very pro-nuclear, some are very anti. We 
are going to look at the facts," he said.

He said his inquiry would ask whether there was "a role for government" 
in insisting on maintaining strategic energy reserves and demanding 
guarantees from anyone investing in nuclear power.

"You are going to have to look very carefully at the decommissioning 
costs and ensure that someone who builds a nuclear plant can also take 
it down again," he said.

The Tories teamed up last month with four other political parties, 
including the Liberal Democrats but not Labour, to agree a joint 
strategy on climate change.

Mr Duncan raised hopes yesterday of a similar consensus on energy as 
"there's no great ideological divide". "The days when it was the Left 
wanting renewables and the Right wanting nukes aren't as simple and 
clear-cut as that."

He invited the public to take part in his review via the website 
launched today at: www.energyreview.co.uk.

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18 January 2006: Cameron goes green in his lunch hour

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