reports

Greenpeace welcomes the fact that the Government is reviewing energy policy. Current energy trends are unsustainable: greenhouse gas emissions and radioactive waste are leaving enormous burdens for future generations to deal with. The fifty year time-scale identified by the Government makes possible a visionary and bold approach which no previous energy review in the UK has achieved.

A printable map of nuclear transport routes across the UK by land and sea.

Observations on the IEEP report for the National Society for Clean Air (NSCA)

Crown Estates announcement

Map showing the proposed locations of offshore wind farms within the UK

Crown Estates announcement

The Crown Estate, in its role of landowner of the UK Territorial Seabed, has completed the processing of lease applications for sites a month ahead of schedule. Developers can now begin their preparations for seeking the statutory consents required for offshore wind farm developments and in particular, begin their public consultations.

Despite the increasing frequency of very high energy gales, the power of the wind is hard to fully appreciate, probably because it seems to come out of 'thin air'. But a single modern wind turbine of 2MW power will produce as much electricity over a year as the electricity used by 1200 households i , and offshore wind turbines are set to be 3MW and even more powerful in future.

The combined global onshore and offshore wind resource that is technically recoverable is 53,000 Terawatt hours per year about four times bigger than the world's entire electricity consumption in 1998.

Parliamentary briefing

The Global whale watching industry

Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993 despite the fact that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on all commercial whaling had been in effect since 1986. The political party in government in Norway at the time took the decision in order to stem the decline in its popularity with voters in northern Norway. It was able to do so because Norway lodged an objection to the IWC's moratorium decision in 1982 and so is not technically bound by it.

Japan's agenda within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is self-evident - it wants a return to large-scale commercial whaling and is prepared to go to extreme lengths to achieve its goal. Unable to persuade the IWC to lift the current moratorium on commercial whaling Japan has, since the early 1990s, been openly operating a "vote consolidation operation"1 . The primary purpose of this operation is to recruit new member states to the IWC that will vote with Japan in favour of commercial whaling.