PowerSwitch

Anyone here notice 'Green Britain Day' last week? Apparently organised by 'Team Green Britain' with the help of their 'equally inspired supporters': EDF, the Eden Project, London 2012 and Global Action Plan.

I noticed it splashed all over Metro last Friday and thought, hmmm... EDF. Green. Not sure how well those two sit together.

Lo and behold:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/c ... cal-living

and even more interestingly:

http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/200 ... more-like/


The overt aims of the campaign are all very laudable, but using a 'green' front organisation created by an energy company who make a very tidy profit from coal and nuclear is underhand behaviour to put it mildly. For the record I should mention what 'Team Green Britain' say about EDF on their website:

'As part of EDF Group, Europe’s largest, lowest carbon, energy producer, EDF Energy is now the largest producer of low carbon electricity in the UK. We plan to invest billions of pounds over the coming years in new, low-carbon plants to power British homes.'

I think they meant to say 'nuclear', but 'low-carbon' looks nicer...

It's handy that EDF are one of the major sponsors for London 2012, though I feel sure that had no influence on the organising comittee in making the decision to be involved. I'm not entirely sure what the Eden Project hope to get out of it, but, as I say, the overt aims are laudable. Shame it has to be bundled in with a corporate branding exercise.

Metro stated that they were giving the subject so much prominence (even turning their logo green for the day - every little helps, after all) because EDF were their 'commercial partners' (Metro's words). So Associated Newspapers, who also run the Daily Mail, are therefore in partnership with EDF.

All very curious.

would that be the same EDF whos the country's largest coal trader? IE selling it to someone else to burn

That's right guys, sit there and carp why don't you, that will do much more to tackle carbon emissions and keep the lights on than will the billions of pounds that EDF are investing in low carbon electricity generating capacity. Yes, that includes (although not exclusively) nuclear. Why not? Nuclear is low carbon, and the French have been building and running nuclear power plants for many years with an impeccable safety record.

Why don't Greens get how utterly counter-productive is their constant sniping and looking for reasons to criticise and devalue efforts by business people - people who actually have significant resources at their disposal, and could therefore make a real difference? They seem actively to want to drive the business community into thinking, well if nothing I do is ever going to be good enough for them, then sod them - I might as well not do anything at all. Oh well done Greens, I hope you'll be pleased with that.

Keepz wrote:and the French have been building and running nuclear power plants for many years with an impeccable safety record.

Associated Press wrote:PARIS — First, an overflowing tub at a French nuclear plant spilled uranium into the groundwater. Then a burst pipe leaked uranium at another nuclear site, raising an alert on Friday.

The two accidents within two weeks, both at sites run by French nuclear giant Areva, have raised questions about safety and control measures in one of the world's most nuclear-dependent nations, and given fodder to anti-nuclear activists.

Environmentalists said the incidents are a wake-up call, raising doubts about an industry in which France has staked out a leading role internationally.

Catweazle wrote:

Keepz wrote:and the French have been building and running nuclear power plants for many years with an impeccable safety record.

But they still don't know what to do with the waste. This is true. They took to nuclear because, in their words, no oil, no coal, no choice. They genuinely believed they'd have the waste problem sorted by now (i.e. decomission time). It's not happened. And given that France can throw all the State's money at it, I guess that means it's a genuinely difficult, expensive problem.

Keepz wrote:That's right guys, sit there and carp why don't you, that will do much more to tackle carbon emissions and keep the lights on than will the billions of pounds that EDF are investing in low carbon electricity generating capacity. Yes, that includes (although not exclusively) nuclear. Why not? Nuclear is low carbon, and the French have been building and running nuclear power plants for many years with an impeccable safety record.

Why don't Greens get how utterly counter-productive is their constant sniping and looking for reasons to criticise and devalue efforts by business people - people who actually have significant resources at their disposal, and could therefore make a real difference? They seem actively to want to drive the business community into thinking, well if nothing I do is ever going to be good enough for them, then sod them - I might as well not do anything at all. Oh well done Greens, I hope you'll be pleased with that.

I think I stated in my original post that the aims of the campaign are laudable, which is presumably why the Eden Project have supported it. If it gets more people interested in thinking how to lower their personal carbon emissions, great.

The problem I have is with an energy company who primarily deal in coal and nuclear initiating it, because it appears to be an underhand attempt by them to rebrand themselves as 'green' without showing any evidence that they intend to abandon coal and significantly invest in renewables. Referring to themselves in the third person on the Team Green Britain website (registered from their office) in such glowing terms merely makes it all the more suspicious.

It would have been better if the campaign had been undertaken by the leadership of London 2012 directly. Even though they are sponsored by companies such as EDF they could have taken a more neutral line.

I'd love to believe that 'low-carbon' nuclear is a significant part of the answer to our problems, but the history of the industry leads me to conclude otherwise. I think the report available here sums it up fairly well.

No doubt the Great British Taxpayer will spend vast sums bailing out the nuclear industry for many years to come, as they have been for many decades already. There will continue to be safety concerns, such as the leaking pipe at Thorp and the near accident at Sizewell in 2007. Meanwhile we have both proven and possible lower-carbon-than-nuclear alternatives available, and what they need is investment of the kind that EDF could make yet choose not to. I am full of admiration for businesses like Ecotricity who actually put their money where their mouth is.

This is not carping for carping's sake; this is a serious debate about the best direction for our country to take in view of the problems we face. Nuclear is a tempting illusion that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

I'm sure this is of no relevance here but probably worth mentioning

The Director of Corporate Communications of EDF Energy is Andrew Brown - Gordon Brown's younger brother.

http://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/c ... ndex.shtml

http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Gordon_Brown

Pennsif

Pennsif wrote:I'm sure this is of no relevance here but probably worth mentioning

The Director of Corporate Communications of EDF Energy is Peter Brown - Gordon Brown's younger brother.

http://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/c ... ndex.shtml

http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Gordon_Brown

Pennsif

Hell and the other brother Andy is in the Nuke industry somewhere (or is it the same guy?)

Gordon Brown's brother Andrew has been head of PR for EDF since 2004. His other brother John doesn't do anything that could be construed as politically sensitive (to the best of my knowledge). He doesn't have a brother called Peter.