Every sector of society is facing the huge and costly challenges to meet climate change targets advocated by environmental campaigners but the Green Party and their allies are now facing their own moment of truth – the growing expert consensus that nuclear energy is the only way of driving down carbon emissions.
Ireland’s European Commissioner, Mairead McGuinness, who will have a key role in framing a new approach by the European Union to energy policy, has given a strong hint that nuclear power will be classified as a green energy source as part of the drive to achieve carbon neutrality.
The soaring price of Russian gas across Europe has resulted in a massive rise in electricity prices and made energy policy a live political issue. As well as causing political problems for governments across the EU, as consumers react angrily to a sudden jump in the cost of living, the dependence on Russia has raised fundamental strategic issues.
Over the past decade as the worries about global warming have become ever greater some environmentalists have begun to face up to a stark choice
French president Emmanuel Macron is behind the drive to make nuclear power a key element of the move to decarbonise the EU. France produces about three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear energy and has a strong nuclear industry with a good safety record. It has been leading the push to put nuclear power at the heart of the EU climate strategy and has secured the backing of a group of mainly eastern-bloc countries for the move.
This will leave the Green parties across the EU in a quandary. In Ireland, as in Germany, the Greens made their first big breakthrough into public consciousness by campaigning against nuclear power. In Ireland the campaign to prevent the ESB building a nuclear power station at Carnsore Point in Co Wexford back in 1979 was the catalyst for a surge of environmental activism.
In Germany the Green campaign against nuclear power propelled the party into the political world. That campaign had its greatest moment when Chancellor Angela Merkel stunned her allies by announcing in 2012 that nuclear power was to be phased out as a source of energy. She cited the Fukushima accident in Japan a year earlier as the reason or her decision but it was widely regarded as a political move to cut the ground from under the Green party in regional elections.
In the event the political ploy didn’t work, but the result was that Germany started to reduce its nuclear industry and became more dependent on electricity generated from coal, by far the worst form of carbon pollution. It also led to greater reliance on Russian gas, not nearly as bad as coal as a source of carbon emissions, but a strategically dangerous move.
Over the past decade as the worries about global warming have become ever greater some environmentalists have begun to face up to a stark choice. If they are truly serious about reducing carbon emissions they have to reconsider their opposition to nuclear power.
The deal will give this country the best of both worlds; we will be able to avail of French nuclear power while avoiding getting our own hands dirty
The widely acknowledged father of the green movement, the scientist James Lovelock, caused a great deal of heart-searching among his followers when he declared in 2004 that the Earth was heating up so rapidly that "only nuclear power can now halt global warming".
Many environmentalists refused to believe it but as the international community failed to meeting one set of emissions targets after another there has been a growing realisation that he was on to something. Irish Green Party leader Eamon Ryan recently acknowledged in the Seanad that nuclear power will have to be considered as an option.
He still maintained that nuclear energy was not as economically competitive a choice for Ireland as wind energy but his acknowledgement that it might be part of the solution was a significant move. Ireland has a good record on wind energy but the lack of technology to store such energy means that on days when the wind does not blow electricity has to be generated from other sources.
Plans are afoot to build an interconnector between Ireland and France. The State-owned Eirgrid and its French equivalent, Réseau de Transport d'Électricité, are joining forces to build an electricity line, dubbed the Celtic Interconnector, from Cork to Brittany, that will carry 700 megawatts of power. The project will cost €1 billion but over half the cost could come from EU funding. If approved the deal will give this country the best of both worlds; we will be able to avail of French nuclear power while avoiding getting our own hands dirty by focusing on developing wind energy.
The rest of the EU does not have that luxury, and decisions need to be made on whether or not to incentivise the development of the nuclear industry across the continent. The key decision to be made by McGuinness is whether the commission decides to make nuclear energy projects eligible for funding by green bonds. Germany is seeking to have gas included in the scheme as well during the transition process to carbon neutrality.
So it is not only farmers, consumers and motorists who will be confronted with difficult and costly choices in the years ahead. Environmental campaigners will have to decide which is more important, cutting carbon emissions to slow global warming or clinging to anti-nuclear dogma.