Writing exclusively for The Independent, Martin Freer, Director of the Birmingham Energy Institute, has urged Theresa May to ditch her “baffling” plans to leave Euratom, the EU’s nuclear agency, or risk derailing the government’s plans to replace diesel and petrol cars with electric vehicles.
Professor Martin Freer said quitting Euratom will hit the UK’s nuclear-driven power supply, just as demand for electricity explodes due to a soaring number of battery-powered cars.
The award-winning academic said pulling out of the agency is “short-sighted, counterproductive and dangerous” as he implored the Prime Minister to rethink the move in favour of a “sensible position”.
Professor Freer concurs with other experts who say the announcement to ban all new petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is set to put a huge strain on the UK’s power grid, with increasing numbers of new electric cars needing charging. He then writes: “We will need to meet this huge increase in electricity demand with a range of low-carbon technologies: wind-power, solar, tidal, batteries and crucially nuclear power.
“If we leave Euratom without the necessary arrangements in place, then we will be unable to import the material to power our nuclear power stations.”
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Featured image: “Electric Car Charging Pavement Marking” by Paul Krueger is licensed under CC BY 2.0
