I have often argued that cheaper energy available in plentiful supply is crucial to any industrial strategy. Much of industry needs large quantities of energy to heat, cool, transform materials and power machine tools. Petrochemicals needs fossil fuels as feedstock. Many manufactures contain fractions of oil transformed into materials.
President Trump oversaw a major expansion of domestic oil and gas production in his first term. This helped keep prices of energy, especially gas, lower in the US. It gave US industry a huge competitive boost compared to the U.K. and EU.
When Putin invaded Ukraine the EU was desperate to replace Russian gas and oil with imports from elsewhere. The Trump increased output saved them as the US made available more exports to them.
The U.K. has substantial potential resources both on and offshore but this government is determined to keep them in the ground. It means we import instead. All that tax revenue and well paid jobs go abroad.World CO 2 goes up. It is a deeply damaging economic policy and a stupid environmental one. Will President Trump persuade the U.K. government to copy his America First example?
November 7, 2024
Good morning.
And congratulations to President Trump on his second, or is it third, victory.
No ! We have here in UK Eco-religous zealots. Not only that, all the laws and agreements with the EU have been crafted with combating Climate Change (SCAM). We are in a bind of our political classes making.
We are going full on South Africa.
November 7, 2024
+1. Yes, unthinkable they will “drill baby, drill” here. Instead they will tut-tut at Trump, while buying his hydrocarbons. At least ours are still underground/sea for our future use – if the zealots had a means of destroying our reserves, they would do so.
November 7, 2024
+1
November 7, 2024
All the while that carbon accounting lets us offset our usage by buying in from elsewhere we will continue to claim that we are a “carbon reducing country”.
Carbon is either bad and its use should be curtailed (unlikely but a good soundbite for politicians) or its not and we can continue to use it (as suggested by carbon accounting).
If we are going to use carbon (and we should because it is the cheapest form of gas and electricity production when all factors are considered) then we should produce as much of our own as possible.
There is no climate crisis, there is just a change in the weather due to the sun’s activity.
November 7, 2024
Yes cheap energy from sources under ones own control are essential to industrial survival, and therefore the enhancement of individuals quality of life.
The insanity of political thinking in the UK is the delusion that we can do without it. The longer we do the further down the personal GDP world league table we fall.
The greatest advantage Donald Trump has is that he is not a politician, who have become a tainted species on both sides of the Atlantic, visible by their abject failure to achieve anything useful. Running a country is a busines, not an outlet for political fantasy.
What a joy it was to see the distraught disarray on the faces of the guardianista media commenteriati, as the reality of the Donalds success dawned on them. They had gone to the USA to celebrate their cause, and were left ravaged as the people spoke. Additionally it left our own government in disarray, their hollow congratulations desperately attempting to balance their previous bile on the subject of Donald Trump. In a sense it was the writing on the wall for their continued existence, and cannot come soon enough. It bodes well for Nigel Farage, another essentially businessman who can see beyond the crapfest that is Westminster, and those that sail in her, to the exclusion of reality. It is now rats in a hayrick time as the height of said hayrick falls and the panic of facing the terriers gets closer. Amen to to all that.😂
November 7, 2024
“What a joy it was to see the distraught disarray on the faces of the guardianista media commenteriati, as the reality of the Donalds success dawned on them.”
Indeed it upset all the right people all those deluded net zero loons, the BBC types and celebs in “The Arts” and the daft William Hague, Rory Stewart…
November 7, 2024
Alastair Campbell, Lammy, May, Milibrain, the green loons, the LibDims, SNP, Plaid, almost the whole of the. BBC, SkY, Channel 4…
November 7, 2024
Net Zero has become a religion and in the UK with the idiot Milibrain incharge nothing will change. Deindustrialising the country is seen a positive by this government as it takes us back to the cold dark days pre the industrial revolution.
Importing vast amounts of energy at spot prices would in any sane world get you sectioned when you have abundant resources of your own. This is the Kafaesque world we must look forward too.
Badenoch made no reference to net zero in her speech because as with mass immigration she believes in it.
Farage is our only salvation.
November 7, 2024
Does Kemi believe? I am not sure perhaps she just knows most of her deluded MPs do and circa 90%+ of MPs do? Excellent performance by Kemi at PM questions yesterday, well worth listening to. Starmer was pathetic as one would expect.
Reply Kemi has appointed Claire Couthino to the Shadow energy brief. She supports the U.K. supplying more of our own oil and gas.
November 7, 2024
But Claire (who has a half maths degree from Oxford – no physics alas) must surely know or be able to work out the whole agenda is a total scam? Yet she was pushing the net zero lunacy for the deluded Sunak. The war on CO2 is hugely damaging and totally insane. The ways to reduce CO2 do not even do that in the main. EV cars increase it the other policies just export it. And a bit more CO2 is a net good anyway.
November 7, 2024
Farming too requires loads of fossil fuel energy to farm, grow, process, freeze and store human food. Cheap reliable on demand energy is vital to compete. The war on CO2 plant, tree and crop food – the gas of life is am insane religion. The idea that the way to stop flooding, forest fires, huricanes and the likes is mad. The idea that CO2 is a world thermostat is for the birds. World cooperation over CO2 reduction is for the birds too. The world had ice ages with far higher levels of CO2. CO2 is one of very many factor that affect temperature we live in a relative dearth of CO2 in historical terms.
Thank goodness we will have a climate realist in the white house. Perhaps some of the more sensible unions can force Starmer to fire Lammy and the deluded Zealot Miliband and start drilling, fracking, mining and go for cheap, reliable on demand energy. Carbon capture is bonkers a waste of money and energy, burning imported wood (young coal) at Drax is expensive and also absurd.
Prof. William Happer explains this very well indeed in his many sensible videos.
November 7, 2024
People, especially older people, also need affordable energy to comfortable survive UK winters. Far more deaths are caused by the cold than by excess heat – even in hotter countries than the UK.
November 7, 2024
Starmer and Lammy have been so rude about Trump that I doubt if they will see anything good in any of his policies.
November 7, 2024
They have both been very foolish. Lammy needs to go in the national interest. The Conservatives should press this point.
November 7, 2024
Trump’s job is simple, destroy woke Marxism before it destroys the west. All else is subsidiary.
November 7, 2024
++ Amen to that
November 7, 2024
Senseless
November 7, 2024
The wholesale price of electricity is currently about 7 pence per kWh. I pay 24 pence per kWh. Seems like a huge markup.
November 7, 2024
Mike
Well those foreign owned companies, some owned by national governments, have git to find a way to subsidies their own domestic consumers.
November 7, 2024
Today we’re not importing net any electricity from Europe because there’s no excess. Gas and nuclear are providing 68% of demand as I type and this will probably increase as the day goes on. It’s very mild today so we can look forward to rationing this winter as our 40gw of renewables will be museum pieces.
November 7, 2024
Mike if we used our own resources it would be about 3p per kwh. If you’re only paying 24p you’re lucky I’m paying 31p.
The mark up is to finance the relentless March to net zero.
November 7, 2024
Cheaper energy would be nice, but in our company it’s dwarfed by the tax bill. We need cheaper government. Why is there an employer’s NI at all? Get rid of it. It’s bigger than the energy bill on its own.
November 7, 2024
Sir John, when yu say ‘this government’ is determined to leave our own energy resources in the ground. Let us not forget who was in power for 14 years prior who also legislated to lea e our energy resources in the ground no fracking for gas, no coal mining, slow walking oil extraction in the North Sea etc.
It was Theresa May, a Tory (sic) PM that put Net Zero on the statute book. It was Tory policy to import essential fossil fuels, which we have massive indigenous supplies of. Only Liz Truss in her brief period of tenure lifted the fracking ban and we all know what became of her.
The tentacles of Climate Alarmism are long and all embracing in the Western World the socialists are the main drivers of the anti energy movement. The BBC the Guardian, keep up the denigrating rhetoric aided by sister organisations across the Western World ABC, NBC, CBC, Washington, Post NY Times. Those organisations have been part funded by anti fossil fuel vested interests. Mega wealth influencers,(etc Ed)
Thank heaven the West will have a chance to roll back the madness of Net Zero over the coming years.
As the electricity generating data has shown this past four days here in the UK has been windless with virtually zero power coming from our fleet of wind turbines now with a capacity over 30GW none of which was being generated.
Ed Miliband want to treble that often idle intermittent fleet and increase solar arrays that produce zero on days like these, zero at night, and zero from November to March at latitude 52 deg. north.
The madness has to stop.
November 7, 2024
Our whole industrial history and material comfort is based on cheap energy. The current bunch of green MPs (of all parties with a few honourable exceptions) will learn the lesson the hard way but unfortunately take us all down with them.
Kemi Badenoch has stated she is against Net Zero but says that she she believes in “Climate Change”. I too think climate change is real, and always has been, but think anthropogenic global warming is a globalist scam and that decarbonisation is pointless, expensive and dangerous (the latter because CO2 is the basis of all life on earth). I suspect that she, like many others, is afraid to challenge the groupthink that prevails.
In the long term, fossil fuels will run out and the only serious way to provide energy is through nuclear. Both the last and the present government continue to drag their feet on the small nuclear reactors. Meanwhile we should be drilling for our own oil and gas, digging coal and stop worrying about carbon dioxide.
November 7, 2024
Importing unneeded gas and oil at great cost when we have our own resource.
Importing unneeded cheap labour at great cost when we have our own resource.
Government is good at making the tough decisions isn’t it?
November 7, 2024
The current Labour government and a majority of MPs are utterly clueless about the consequences of their net zero policies ( they will propel the country to third world status) or the significance of oil and gas not only as a source of low cost energy but also as a feedstock for the manufacture of numerous products. For any manufacturer who relies on low cost energy or oil and gas as a feedstock the message is loud and clear. Get out of the UK as fast as you can and relocate to the USA – such as the Permian basin area where you will be welcomed with open arms.
November 7, 2024
I hope President Trump now strives to better articulate his objections to climate alarmism. Previously these seem to have been confined to describing it as all as ‘a hoax’, which is superficial and plays into the hands of the alarmist commentators and their well heeled funders. There are plenty of informed scientists in the US whose healthy scepticism could now be highlighted for the benefit of all who live in the western world.