COMMENT Like last week's Stern review onclimate change, the International Energy Agency is trying to use economic logic in its latest World Energy Outlook to spur the world into early action to avoid future catastrophe. Claude Mandil, the IEA director, yesterday described the world's current energy trajectory of rising carbon emissions, geopolitical insecurity and energy poverty for 2bn people as "not only unsustainable but doomed to failure". But such Cassandra-like warnings need backing up with some solid cost/benefit analysis of alternative policies. So the IEA has made a brave, though not wholly convincing, stab at providing this in two areas: nuclear power and energy efficiency.
Even though nuclear power is an issue that still divides its member governments, the agency makes its biggest pitch ever for the building of more reactors. Its argument for low-carbon and relatively indigenous and reliable nuclear power should carry political weight in a week that has seen a widespread black-out in Europe and resumed negotiations to extend the Kyoto protocol on climate change. Less convincing is its claim that the economics has moved in favour of nuclear power, particularly given the agency also calls on governments to help nuclear power overcome its inherent handicap in liberalised electricitymarkets.
