F2DYX6 Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. - Alamy Stock Photo
Some things never change. Take the weather. For a country for whom the weather is a national obsession we remain remarkably ill-equipped to cope whenever it turns.
Other parts of the world seem to function perfectly well in far worse conditions than Britain ever endures, yet this country always sounds like it is on the verge of imminent economic and social collapse as soon as the mercury dips into low single figures.
In Manchester, the temperature is expected to be -1C, in London a balmy 2C, and though heavy snow is anticipated in some parts of the UK, the south of England and the Midlands are tipped to get between two to six centimetres. It’s hardly the stuff of emergencies. Yet you can be sure of widespread chaos and panic.
Meanwhile, parts of America remind us of what biblical storms really look like. In California some people have run out of food, gas, even insulin and baby formula after being trapped in their homes for a week following as much as ten feet of snowfall.
National Grid sought to play down the move, stressing that the risk of blackouts was low and characterising the addition of extra capacity as "prudent".
Fine but that sort of misses the point. The fact that whenever there is a sudden surge in demand for power, the Grid is forced to scrabble around for back-up generation, and the best it can do is to return to coal, is a shocking indictment of the Government’s ongoing failure to do anything to improve energy security.
We have been assured repeatedly that the war in Ukraine was a wake-up call for the West when it came to energy resilience.
Yet, with the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion having been and gone, there is little, if any evidence, to suggest that Britain is in a markedly better place than it was when Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled over the border.
Our energy policy remains a total disaster. We want to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 but that means building more renewables. In defiance of its own targets, the Government says we need more fossil fuels in the short-term to improve energy security because green projects take too long to build.
So we need both yet seem incapable of doing either because a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants, as well electricity generators, discourages investment across the entire energy spectrum.
France’s Total, Harbour Energy and Norway’s Equinor are pulling back from the North Sea because of the Chancellor's tax grab, and it is thought Shell is dragging its feet on proposals to develop the £2bn Cambo field for the same reason.
Separately, the bosses of some of the biggest power providers including EDF, Orsted, and RWE, have warned that the Treasury’s decision to penalise the industry with even more punishing taxes than their carbon-heavy rivals puts tens of billions of pounds worth of green investment at risk.
Dirty or green, these are all projects that would reduce Britain’s reliance on natural gas imports from around the world but no one wants to invest here, a trend that is about to be supercharged by the pull of Joe Biden’s green deal.
Earlier this week, the boss of BP’s American operations said that the promise of billions of dollars in lucrative tax breaks under the President’s new climate law made the US the “most lucrative” place in the world for green hydrogen development.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L), wearing a Sizewell C-branded hi-vis jacket, reacts during his visit to EDF's Sizewell B Nuclear power station in Sizewell, eastern England on September 1, 2022. - Outgoing British Prime Minister Johnson on Thursday promised £700 million for the Sizewell C nuclear power station project during his final major policy speech. (Photo by CHRIS RADBURN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS RADBURN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) - CHRIS RADBURN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
If it’s not Jeremy Hunt’s tax grab that is preventing the UK from becoming more independent, it is red tape. Warnings from the boss of Scottish Power that the sclerotic planning system could jeopardise Britain’s massive natural advantage in wind power will resonate with chief executives from other industries.
Keith Anderson says although it only takes two years to build an offshore wind farm, bureaucratic delay means “it takes us more like 10 years” – a quite shocking statistic.
The situation wouldn’t be half as bad if we were better at building nuclear power plants able to provide a steady supply of baseload energy but we’re not – the last time Britain built one was Sizewell-B in 1995. The next, in Hinkley, Somerset, won’t see the light of day until 2027 at the earliest but there are fears it could be delayed until 2036.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The country doesn’t even have a grid capable of handling more electricity. There are parts of London where it is impossible to build new homes because the Grid has run out of capacity to support them.
Swathes of our power supplies were built in the post-war years. Without new connections, more pylons, underground copper cables, and interconnectors, the threat of outages won’t go away.
Meanwhile, if the answer, as Labour insists, is Great British Energy, then we truly are doomed. Shadow energy secretary Ed Milliband is currently on a tour of Britain to promote the benefits of a new, publicly owned clean energy company, where he was last seen imitating Bob Dylan in a field on the outskirts of Mansfield.
