Dishonesty at centre of Tory nuclear claims

An extended attack today on the Scottish Government’s renewable energy policy culminated in Scottish Conservative energy spokesperson Murdo Fraser MSP slamming what he called “Alex Salmond’s relentless drive to cover Scotland in wind turbines”, while insisting nuclear power is a “key energy source” on which his party says Scotland is “increasingly reliant”.

Fraser referred to official government figures showing a 37% rise in the total output of Scotland’s two nuclear power stations between 2007 and 2011, and said: “The very fact we are using almost 40% more nuclear energy is proof that we can’t just power the country by covering the landscape in wind farms.”

But nuclear energy production in 2006 and 2007 was spectacularly low because of unplanned outages, to which the SNP have pointed as an example of nuclear energy being “unreliable”. Nuclear energy production in 2011 was in fact almost 10% lower than at its peak in 2005, and also lower than in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004.

Between 2001 and 2011, nuclear energy production in Scotland fell by 6.7% while output from renewable sources including hydro and tidal increased by 202.6%.

Nuclear power made up almost 38% of all electricity generated in Scotland in 2005, but made up less than a third in 2011.

And the UK’s Energy Minister Michael Fallon MP reported earlier this week that 40% of Scotland’s demand for electricity in 2012 was met by renewable energy, thanks to a 3.4% rise in renewable energy output from 2011.

The Scottish Government aims to generate 50% of Scotland’s electricity needs from renewables by 2015 and 100% by 2020.

The Scottish Conservatives also claim that the operating life of Scotland’s nuclear power stations was hypocritically “extended by this SNP government”, even though extensions to the running of the plants are not subject to approval by the Scottish Government.

Only the construction of new nuclear power stations is subject to Scottish Government approval, and a spokesperson for the Scottish Government confirmed in late 2012 that no new nuclear build would receive approval. Instead, “nuclear energy will be phased out in Scotland over time”.

Scotland’s nuclear stations are set to be decommissioned in 2023, subject to further seven-year extensions by the UK Government.