Cheap plentiful energy is crucial to GDP growth and to the success of any industrial strategy. China achieves it both by relying too much on dirty coal and by buying plenty of discounted oil and gas from countries that are sanctioned by the West for their wars and aggressions in world politics. The USA has achieved it by finding and producing huge quantities of relatively cheap oil and gas for her domestic market, and exporting the surplus to an energy short Europe. Europe has bene lefty struggling with scarce and dear energy. Germany for a time did well out of reliable piped gas from Russia, only to have to make fundamental changes in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Relying more on spot market prices rather than agreed long term contract gas proved expensive and troublesome.
The UK has gone for some of the dearest energy in the world by adding to the market costs of the oil, gas and renewable electricity it produces or imports substantial carbon taxes and windfall taxes on producers, and VAT on fuel users. The UK decision to run down its own North Sea oil and gas fields earlier than nature requires has added to costs and imports. The decision to make it difficult or impossible to look for more oil and gas and produce it onshore has added to the strains. The m sot obvious thing a government should do that gives priority to economic growth is to be positive about finding and producing more domestic oil and gas top replace imports. This would not add to world CO2 but reduce it, saving the transport and gas liquefaction generated CO 2 on the imports. A larger UK oil and gas sector would generate a lot of better paid jobs, boost overall UK productivity and contribute substantial tax revenue to the Treasury.
The UK needs to be realistic about the costs of early switching of electricity to renewables from gas. There needs to be more progress globally with improving and lowering the cost of storage of power generated when the weather is good for the purpose. There needs to be proper accounting for the costs of stand by gas power stations for days when wind and sun disappoints. Maybe there needs to be a general move to synthetic fuels s is planned for aviation, so the extra renewable power can be used to manufacture hydrogen and other derivatives that are storable fuels. Green jobs or green led growth will require decisions on what are the winning and affordable technologies and then government assistance in their roll out. Do we, for example, want a full roll out of charging points for electric cars, or would it be better to roll out hydrogen fuel distribution as it will be needed for trucks and could be sued for cars as well, just as petrol and diesel are today.
The immediate task for an Industrial strategy must be to get the taxes and prices for fuel down for manufacturers. The UK is losing its steel industry, has lost all but one of its aluminium plants, is losing ceramics, cement, paper and other heavy energy users thanks to skyhigh energy costs.
July 18, 2024
The voice of sanity which for reasons unknown is not on your diary site as yet. We have the means beneath our feet and seas, plus vast resources around the Falklands. Thou shalt not be self suffucient in cheap energy is the first commandment on the millipede’s stone from Ararat. The big question is how long will Starmer listen to such nonsense before it sinks his ship.
July 18, 2024
The new Labour government has announced a review into the whole UK energy industry. This will include the windfall tax regime on hydrocarbon profits, the green levies on energy bills, the costs of decarbonisation, the upgrade of the national grid and other issues likely to affect the price of energy for UK businesses and consumers
The new Labour government has announced a review into the whole UK energy industry. This will include the windfall tax regime on hydrocarbon profits, the green levies on energy bills, the costs of decarbonisation, nuclear energy, the upgrade of the national grid and other issues likely to affect the price of energy for UK businesses and consumers
It is likely that Ed Miliband, the new SoS Energy Security and Net Zero’s review will include setting up Labour’s Great British Energy scheme, which is intended to build and own onshore and offshore renewable energy generation infrastructure, EV charging networks and grid-scale energy storage systems developed by British Universities
July 18, 2024
Other varieties of flying pie will be added.
July 18, 2024
What Sir John says is so blindingly obvious I do question the sanity of the Ed Miliband in trying to close down the North Sea.
July 18, 2024
MS, Those questions re sanity should of course be directed to SJR and all his former colleagues who sat on their hands for 14 years and kept their mouths Zipped. Net Zero my rse! And they know it. Shame on them all.
July 18, 2024
John you never fully persuaded the Tory government of this wisdom – and nor did I. I spoke personally to Rishi trying to persuade him that we should allow fracking until such time as it did any ACTUAL damage rather then refuse from fear. And may parents’ home is <10 miles from the Lancashire site.
You have NO chance with the present lot.
My spell check wants to replace "rishi" with "sourish"
July 18, 2024
The thing is that they don’t want existing energy replaced in the same amount.
We’ve already been told that the plan is for us to live on reduced energy with no carbon footprint, so if we are being told otherwise then something deceitful is going on.
What does netzero mean – are we forgetting the suggestion in the name?
It means no more creation of Co2 in our daily lives, which in turn means what energy is available will be very limited — BUT that’s OK, by then the population will be decreased in line with netzero plans.
July 18, 2024
How is the design for the new site coming on – looking forward to seeing it.
Just one thought – and we know you are still pretty busy.
To make it more of a live discussion site it would be very useful to either skip approvals (and remove bad posts later) or use some fancy coding to limit what can be posted under given subjects.