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Task Force should condemn subsidies

An excerpt from an article on energy options for a cleaner world, featuring Gráinne Ryder:

Toronto based Probe International analyzes Canadian government and corporate investment in large hydroelectric dams, nuclear power stations and other energy megaprojects. Probe International is a prime mover in Canadian and world campaigns to stop the Three Gorges hydroelectric megaproject in China.

Probe’s policy director Gráinne Ryder told Natural Gas Market Report that "we are quite skeptical about the G8 Renewable Energy Task Force. Most governments support conventional central station power plants, and some, including Canada, also promote nuclear energy. They fear huge stranded costs if they open their system to competition from private interests in renewables and high efficiency natural gas fired combined cycle and cogeneration plants and other appropriate technology.

"Probe International and other safe energy groups have told governments for years that one of the biggest obstacles to the spread of renewables and other advanced energy technologies is state monopolies and subsidies for large hydro dams, nuclear power stations, and coal-fired generating plants. Yet govemments are still pushing these old style developments onto the developing world as market forces and public opposition are driving them out of business in the G8 countries.

"From my first hand experience in Southeast Asia and elsewhere on the continent, it is clear that Asian governments don’t yet see renewables as anything more than supplemental suppliers to central energy monopolies. As such, renewables are not yet allowed to compete for customers.

"In Canada, CIDA and the Export Development Corporation are still subsidizing the expansion of large scale hydro dams and nuclear power in China and elsewhere in the developing world, because it helps keep Canadian companies in business overseas when their market is shrinking at home and they can’t attract private capital.

"The Task Force should call for an end to subsidies for conventional central station and nuclear power plants. It should also recommend the introduction of competition in electricity markets. May the cleanest, lowest cost, highest quality service providers win!"

Ryder concluded that "Shell’s commitment to sustainable energy must extend to clean up the environmental degradation its oil extraction operations have left behind in Nigeria’s Ogoni region and elsewhere."