Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is to review energy prospects for the 21st century and their environmental implications. The aim is to identify the actions required in the years immediately ahead to develop a sustainable strategy for energy provision and use.

Growing concern over climate change has helped bring energy to the top of the environmental agenda. In December this year international negotiations will take place in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

This study by the Royal Commission will compare the environmental consequences of different methods of providing energy. It will examine the scope for radical reductions in energy requirements.

The principal focus will be the UK and Europe. The global context will be considered in order to identify the constraints and opportunities likely to arise.

Rather than undertake new work, the intention is to draw to the fullest extent on analyses of particular aspects already carried out by other bodies, together with the Royal Commission's own work on energy use in transport.

As the first stage of the study the Commission Secretariat will assemble and collate existing material on some key topics. The Royal Commission is inviting interested organisations and individuals to draw relevant analyses and work in progress to its attention. It will also commission some studies by consultants.

The topics identified for initial study are:

1. overall scenarios for future energy demand and supply in the UK, in Europe and globally;
2. the environmental implications of such scenarios, especially in terms of pollution produced by the energy sector;
3. technological, economic and social assessment of the scope for reducing demand for energy, including the possibility of radical changes in technology or in design practices under approaches such as Factor Four and Factor Ten;
4. the potential contributions to energy supplies from various sources and the constraints on their development;
5. environmental, economic and social assessment, on a life-cycle basis, of alternative technologies for energy supply;
6. how governments can best interact with energy markets to ensure the development of those markets reflects environmental costs and risks;
7. the effectiveness of present institutions in framing and delivering energy policies that are environmentally sustainable.

Early next year the Royal Commission will define specific issues for investigation, and will invite written and oral evidence on these. It intends to publish its report in the first half of 1999.

Additional Information

The Commission has published nineteen reports on various aspects of environmental policy. Two of these dealt with energy sources:

Nuclear Power and the Environment (the 'Flowers Report') was published in 1976; Oil Pollution of the Sea was published in 1981.

The Commission's Eighteenth Report, Transport and the Environment, was published in October 1994. The Commission has been carrying out a review of developments in the transport field since 1994, which will be published next month. The original report is available from the Stationery Office (Cm 2674) or in an Oxford University Press edition published in 1995 (ISBN 0-19-826065-2).

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