Your electricity bill will soar as the power supply becomes greener and more radioactive, in line with government policy. The proof lies in a single number buried in the White Paper on Nuclear Power, published yesterday.

The number is 36 and it will soon represent the meaning of life for the forseeable future. It is not the price per kilowatt hour of electricity, nor is it the billions to be spent on nuclear waste management or even the cost of printing the 192-page White Paper. It is the cost of a tonne of carbon traded on Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) as forecast by the Government.

The White Paper concludes that nuclear power is commercially viable, that power companies will rush to build nukes without need of subsidy. In other words, it believes that the cost of producing a megawatt of nuclear electricity will be competitive with fossil-fuel alternatives, such as coal and natural gas.

Unfortunately, new-build nuclear power just treads water. In order to make uranium more sexy than fossils, gas and coal power generators must pay a penalty for emitting greenhouse gases and the price of permits to emit CO2 must truly bite. The cost on the ETS of a permit for a tonne of CO2 is currently €24 — the government assumes in its White Paper that it is €36 per tonne — 50 per cent higher.

How do we get from €24 to €36? How do we get a carbon price that ends our addiction to cheap coal and creates a mad dash for whizzy atoms — without bungs from the Treasury or stealth taxes?

Expensive carbon is not in the government’s gift because Brussels regulates the ETS, which sets a market price for CO2. Too many allowances were issued gratis to power companies in the initial phases of ETS and because permits are cheap, there is no incentive to reduce carbon emissions. Coal is still king.

The Government wants the third phase of ETS, beginning in 2013, to auction permits, creating a shortage and a high carbon price. In order to do so, it faces a huge political battle in Brussels, against Germany which generates much of its power from coal. The Commission is on Britain’s side but there is no certainty it will win.

If we win we must also lose because we will in the end pay for expensive power. Industry will suffer, rendered uncompetitive by the burden of expensive electricity — more manufacturing will relocate to China. A high carbon price is a huge social experiment — it is a punitive tax on the thing that has made our lives easy and worth living — cheap energy. It’s a luxury we will sorely miss.

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