[cdn-nucl-l] Green levy politics

[AtomicRod@aol.com]

Group:

I thought you might be interested in the below article from the other side of 
the Atlantic. Notice that there is no science being discussed, it is pure 
financial politics.

Nuclear tax break `would kill green levy' 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sep 21 - Independent - London -

THE GOVERNMENT has been warned that exempting the beleaguered nuclear 
electricity generator British Energy from the Climate Change Levy would, in 
effect, spell the end of the controversial tax. 

Rival electricity producers have told ministers that if British Energy is 
allowed to escape the levy then 85 per cent of all the industrial and 
commercial users who currently pay the tax at the full rate will be able to 
get their electricity from nuclear generating stations. 

British Energy says exemption from the levy would save it pounds 100m a year, 
helping it survive the financial crisis which now threatens to force the 
company into administration. 

But rival producers say it would destroy the market for non- nuclear 
generators and hand British Energy a captive industrial customer base 
equivalent in volume terms to 18 million domestic consumers. 

It would also strike a blow at the environmental gains the levy is supposed 
to produce by disadvantaging renewable energy and combined heat and power 
producers, they say. 

Coal and gas-fired electricity producers would, in effect, be frozen out of 
much of the industrial market because they would still have to charge 
customers an additional 4p per unit to cover the levy on top of the 16p a 
unit market price. 

TXU Europe, one of the generators which would be hit by an exemption from the 
levy for nuclear, has written twice to Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of 
State for Trade and Industry, setting out its concerns. TXU is expected to 
meet the Government next week in advance of next Friday's deadline for 
pulling the plug on British Energy or rolling over an emergency pounds 410m 
loan facility. 

Paul Marsh, the chief operating officer of TXU Europe, said all generators, 
not just British Energy, were suffering from low wholesale prices. "Anything 
which further destabilises the electricity industry by reducing one player's 
costs at the expense of everyone else is only going to exacerbate the 
situation," Mr Marsh said. 

Industrial and commercial customers paying the levy at the full rate account 
for about 120 terawatt hours of electricity output. Of this, about 100 
terawatt hours could be met from nuclear - 70 TWh from British Energy's eight 
stations and the remainder from British Nuclear Fuels' Magnox reactors and 
the cross-Channel interconnector which supplies French nuclear power. 

The Chancellor Gordon Brown is vigorously opposed to exempting British Energy 
from the levy and now the full ramifications of such a move are beginning to 
sink in too among DTI ministers. 

Brian Wilson, the Energy Minister, this week played down fears the Government 
had decided to push British Energy into insolvency stressing that no 
decisions had been made.