E.ON chief Paul Golby strives to generate debate about green goals

Energy says Britain needs a policy roadmap if it is to achieve carbon emissions targets

David Teather
The Guardian, Friday 19 June 2009

If you are anxious about the prospect of a new generation of nuclear power stations, then Paul Golby, who runs the British operations of the energy firm E.ON, has an offer that he hopes will calm your nerves: come and take a look for yourself.
E.ON has plans for two nuclear plants that Golby expects to be up and running towards the end of the next decade, part of a massive programme of investment to replace the nation's ageing generators. The German power firm promulgates the need for a mix of energy sources and is also behind the London Array wind farm planned for the Thames estuary and a controversial coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth in Kent, the first new coal station in Britain for more than 20 years.
But if Kingsnorth has become a lightning rod for environmentalists, nuclear remains for many the most chilling option. E.ON, in partnership with another German company, RWE, is building nuclear plants at Wylfa in Anglesey and at Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
In Sweden, where the company operates the only nuclear waste storage facility, E.ON turned public opinion around by being as open as possible, Golby says, and that included guided tours - an idea it would import to Britain. "If someone rings up and says can I please see the nuclear waste, the answer is yes," Golby says.
How close can you get? "Well, I was on the same tour that other people are given and I certainly have stood above storage tanks with a few metres of water between me and the spent fuel rods. That's fairly close." Suddenly, that makes me more nervous. "Firstly," he says, "the plants are secure. We have airport-like screening processes so somebody can't wander in there with weapons or anything of that nature. And nuclear material, nuclear waste, actually is quite stable."
He says safety and technology have also improved significantly. "It is fair to say that the nuclear industry in the UK hasn't covered itself in glory and we need to just be far more transparent and open and when minor or major things go wrong, we ought to stand up and report it and be prepared to talk about it. Some people are worried about nuclear but the other side of the coin is irreversible climate change."
Takeovers
When Golby took the job of chief executive at East Midlands Electricity, back in the very different climate of 1998, he was warned by a friend that the job would be one of the most boring in the world. Nothing, he said, ever happened in the energy sector. Several takeovers later - E.ON bought Powergen, Powergen bought East Midlands - and Golby finds himself quite literally at the coalface of some the most pressing issues of our generation: as well as climate change, the very real threat that a lack of investment might cause the lights to go out over the next decade as one-third of the UK's existing power plants close.
The industry needs to invest £100bn to replace the capacity. E.ON, Golby says, is investing £1bn a year. "The scale of the build programme is unprecedented. If there was a silver-lining to the recession, it may have bought us a bit more time because energy consumption has reduced, so that has given us breathing space. But I think it would be criminal if we wasted that time and put off decisions because we felt we were under less pressure."
Like the industry at large, he also faces the ire of consumers over rising utility bills. One thing he knows for certain, he says, is that a long-term increase in energy bills is "inevitable" as finite resources run out and demand continues to rise.
Golby was raised in Hinckley, Leicestershire; his mother sewed knickers and his father worked in a factory, and there remains a matter-of-fact quality about him. His parents pushed their three sons (he has an identical twin) into education - they all trained as engineers and all became chief executives. The other two are now retired.
Kingsnorth has turned Golby into something of a bete noire for climate change campaigners. The site in Kent, where E.ON has an existing station due for closure, has come under siege from protesters vehemently opposed to any new coal plants being built. Golby argues that the replacement generator could be the last chance to save the planet, by demonstrating that still-untested technology to capture and store the carbon emissions from burning coal is achievable. Plans for Kingsnorth have been put in abeyance until the results are known of a government competition to decide which companies will be funded to deploy the technology, and are likely to be delayed for at least a decade if it fails to win.
Golby says that on many issues, he finds himself on the same side as the environmentalists but suggests that on coal "they are a little naive". China, he notes, is building two coal-fired power plants the size of Kingsnorth each week.
"If there were just one climate change issue you were tackling, it would be carbon capture and storage [CCS], on the simple basis that China and India are sitting on 200 years' worth of coal and they are going to burn it. And whatever you, I, Greenpeace or anybody else says to them, or Copenhagen [December's UN climate change summit] says to them, they are going to continue burning coal, because that is their indigenous fuel and that is the only way they can get their population to a decent standard of living. What we have got to do is de-couple coal from carbon.
"If we can cut the link from them growing their economy and improving the life of their people from destroying the planet at the same time, that's something we ought to be really interested in," he says. "Globally, we have to get it to work. It really is game over if we don't."
Golby has welcomed the government support for CCS, put out for consultation this week, although his arguments for Kingsnorth can seem a little revisionist. Plans were originally submitted in 2006 for an unabated coal plant, the justification then being made on the basis of energy security. "Since we started on the journey we have clearly seen the need for CCS become far more important and I guess I might argue that when we started, we were maybe one step behind public opinion. I now think we are one step ahead."
Renewables
Almost a third of the company's current investment is going into renewables. E.ON has focused on wind and biomass and is planning to begin work on the £2.2bn London Array in 2011. The wind farm will be built 12 miles off the Kent and Essex coasts, the first phase featuring 175 turbines, each the height of the Big Ben clock tower. Nevertheless, Golby reckons it will be "incredibly difficult" to hit the target of generating 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Golby describes the government's overarching energy policy as too "event-driven" and lacking a real strategic vision. There is, he says, the need for a form of "Marshall Plan" to reach the 2050 target to reduce emissions by 80%."There is a need to take our energy policy from what I describe as a series of sticking plasters, to a more holistic view with a roadmap of how to get to 2050. Merely setting targets and hoping they are going to be achieved isn't a very clever way to set policy."
Matters are often more complex than they first appear, he adds. "I was struck by some analysis I saw by Dieter Helm [professor of energy policy at Oxford] a little while ago, where he was pointing out that of course our politicians are congratulating themselves that we are doing so well against our Kyoto targets, but in reality if you measure our carbon from a consumption point of view rather than a production point of view, actually our emissions have increased by 20% rather than decreased. All that we've done is exported a lot of our production to the developing world. We just have to keep reminding ourselves of that. There is a big picture."
The CV: Paul Golby
Born 26 February 1951
Education Hinckley grammar, Leicestershire. Aston University - BSc in mechanical engineering, PhD in mechanical engineering
Career
1972-86 BTR/Dunlop
1986-90 Early's of Witney
1990-92 Grovewood Securities
1992-98 Clayhithe
1998-2001 Managing director of networks, East Midlands Electricity, later full managing director
2001-02 Director, UK operations, Powergen
2002- Chief executive, E.ON UK
Family Married with three children