Green Energy and Dirty Money

A Good-News Story

As we read the account below, we could barely repress a chuckle.  They say that necessity is the mother of invention and it appears to be true in the UK.  A recession, coupled with a desperate need to restrain wasteful, profligate, debt-driven public spending have forced the government to turn to the private sector to fund much needed infrastructure spending.  At the edge of the dark cloud is a burnished silver lining.

This from the Telegraph:

Ministers have previously been accused of cutting government spending on major capital projects too sharply as part of their austerity programme. They have responded by trying to encourage private investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds, to invest in large projects, offering government guarantees as incentives. . . .

Mr Alexander [the Chief Secretary to the Treasury] will say: “The announcement today that six major insurers will invest £25 billion over the next five years is a massive vote of confidence in the UK economy. It supports the wider £100 billion public investment to rebuild Britain over the next seven years that I announced at the Spending Round 2013.  Underground, overground, onshore, offshore, wired or wireless, tarmac or train track. You name it, we’re building it right now. This is great news for the people of the UK.”

In New Zealand, amongst the Commentariat, private capital funding is usually regarded as dirty money, filthy lucre.  The only good money is government money, extracted from the public via taxes, or their children via burgeoning public debt.  On this matter, New Zealand is positively antediluvian, lost in the Dark Ages. 

But to add cruel insult to mortal injury, part of that dirty private money in the UK is going to be used to build nuclear power stations.

The second of a new wave of nuclear power stations will be built by private investors with government support, the Treasury will announce on Wednesday. The power station, at Wylfa on Anglesey in Wales, is among the major infrastructure projects that will go ahead after ministers promised to support commercial interests.

The station, to be built by Hitachi and Horizon, follows an agreement earlier this year for French and Chinese investors to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Suffolk. Ministers have suggested that as many as a dozen nuclear reactors will be built in the coming years as fossil fuels are phased out and public hostility to renewables such as wind turbines mounts.

Now, there are some enlightened greenists in the UK (such as George Monbiot) who strongly advocate for nuclear power.  No doubt he and his ilk will be pleased, whilst regretting that it is not beatific gummint money being put to such holy work. 

But Greenists in New Zealand are so far in the Dark Ages they regard nuclear energy to be equivalent to the Black Death.  For them, Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile Island collectively represent an actual, literal Armageddon.  We acknowledge these historical debacles to be serious, albeit it due to human error, malfeasance, and neglect.  Which is to say, of course, that such debacles are preventable and rectifiable.  Such is the necessary and appropriate rebuke of these melt-downs to us all.  The orthodox Christian view is that nuclear energy is a wonderful, divine gift from a generous, beneficent Creator.  It is our responsibility   to manage it properly in the way He intends and requires of His stewards.  

We await the howls of outrage from the Luddite left. Some things are boringly predictable.

Hat Tip: Whaleoil