We have, as a nation, become used to falling down international lists for a variety of things over the years. I was, however, staggered to read an article by the Adam Smith Institute about our energy situation.
We, the country with coal for 700 years. One of the first nuclear power stations in the world. With North Sea oil still to be extracted. And we are screwed.
How can that be, you ask. It’s simple. Allow politicians to have their woke ways and very rapidly things go to hell and gone.
It’s not only Labour politicians. I have to believe that the Tories softened their approach to being green under David Cameron with the Lib Dems pushing for supposedly popular policies (“Hug a tree”).
But the outcome has been truly disastrous and exacerbated by Labour policies and Net Zero over the last few years. Just to take one thing, Jackdaw – basically ready to roll since 2024 – has just received approval. But probably won’t be able to produce very much this winter. Understandably, despite it being more than 99% ready, and what Boris might have described as “Oven ready,” it will still take time to come online. Despite competing counterclaims, there would be an immediate uplift from 2-6% of UK gas production – not enough, admittedly, to affect prices but absolutely enough to stave off power outages this winter if it is as cold as predicted. NESO – another moronic acronym for a useless body – is already getting predictions massively wrong resulting in over £500million being spent on “grid balancing” in September. That’s before winter appears properly. And no, I’ve know idea what that means, except it appears to mean paying France and Belgium to sell us power.
Personally, I’m pretty sure I can afford the costs of keeping warm this winter, but I’m by no means sure that everyone in the UK is in the same boat. Of course, if there are actual outages, then everyone will be cold. And I haven’t mentioned fracking which would solve all the problems for the foreseeable future – and don’t tell me about earthquakes. There are more than 300 a year in the UK as I have said before with more than 10% actually causing damage.
But what does the ASI (Adam Smith Institute) say about our energy situation? It doesn’t bear thinking about. There are 174 countries in the world who are better at it than we are and as of now we are in the bottom 7%. I’ll repeat that – bottom 7%. How in God’s name did we get to be there?
The latest list for energy “ability” – let’s call it – covers 4 areas. Dispatchable power,energy diversity,import security and finally ability to pay. This last is particularly important for us. Without it instead of being overall 41st (for goodness sake FORTY FIRST) we would be 91st. As a comparison, Norway is 1st, USA 2nd, Canada 3rd – and Switzerland 5th. Remember Switzerland has not a joule of domestic fossil fuels whatsoever, yet we, with all our advantages, are at number 41. But those top three are drilling baby drilling and all the better for it
Let’s go back a bit. In 2005, 99.3% of dispatchable energy in the UK came from domestic production. That has now fallen to 66.5%. But that includes some 30 odd percent of “renewables” which are pretty unreliable. In 2004 we only relied on 4.5% of imported energy. That has climbed to over 44%. Do you see the problem? We are more and more reliant on others to keep the lights on. And why would they, if their own situation became difficult, bother to help us? The present malaise in France has all the makings of a total breakdown in energy supply to the UK. This last week in the UK a balancing cost for the UK grid was about £48 million. That means that renewables were SHORT that amount of energy production to keep your mobile phone charged. It was made up with imports. As of now some 36% of all energy sold in the UK is imported - it varies from 25-36%. Every time the wind drops below whatever the magical figure is, it costs the UK balance of payments. In the simplest terms, getting Jackdaw working should save £1.25 -1.5 billion in imported gas per year. That might not sound like a lot but it is significant for our future as gas prices will continue to climb as long as the present wars continue. And this is gas that is OURS not being imported at a cost to our balance of payments nor our Green credentials.
What has happened is that as we have phased out coal (fair enough) and nuclear (fairly stupid as the Germans will definitely tell you) we have come to rely on renewables and imports.
And we are screwed.
The only way to get out of this bind is to do two things. Firstly, build more nuclear. Secondly let North Sea and UK sovereign areas be properly explored and brought into production. Quite apart from anything else we could get rid of Net Zero which has to be the biggest disaster ever visited on the British way of life, industry and commerce ever perpetrated.
I’m perfectly happy for you to disagree and say we must save the planet. Just remember it isn’t you who will pay (although we already are). It’s your children and grandchildren. And I’m absolutely certain they will go ballistic when they can’t charge their mobile phones.
John Maynard Keynes wrote: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” That is what has been and is happening right now in every aspect of the lives we lead. Inflation hits the poor the hardest as they spend more of their income on food and our politicians go on about their moral superiority to right wing policies. No wonder people are angry. It was following the tenets of Adam Smith that enabled the Victorian era of British hegemony, now completely abandoned. Energy inflation could be controlled if there was a commonsense approach to energy pricing. Sadly, I don’t believe there is about to be such an outbreak of sense and sensibility.
