Buyer’s remorse already making itself felt, amongst all those whose votes enabled the accession of our new government?
Let’s look at energy generation. On 5th July, around 60% of our national energy needs were provided by wind power; not bad, but not conclusive. By 8th July, unfortunately, less than 2% came from wind power. The balance was made up by gas - you know, that reliable fuel that we can extract from our own territorial waters; well, at least half of our needs, the rest is imported. Those imports come from a variety of sources, including Norway, the US and the middle east; some stable, friendly allies, some not so much. But we need the gas, wherever it comes from, for the days when wind and/or solar can’t fulfil the demand, and the gap will be greater in winter than in summer, as the population tends to prefer to be warm and to have light, quite apart from industry preferring to be able to keep factories operational.
So what has our new Energy Secretary, the hapless Ed Miliband, done? He’s issued an order to ban all new oil and gas drilling. That includes bids for 35 areas that were already being prepared, so there’s a fair chance of legal action from those whose time and money has just been dumped in the refuse bin. Of course, Ed won’t concern himself with that, since obviously - as private-sector companies - the bidders fortunes are a matter of indifference to him.
What he - and his bunch - might like to consider though is how much extra CO2 will be pumped into the atmosphere as a result of the diesel powered ships that will be necessary to transport the gas to replace what will not in the future be able to come out of the North Sea. And then they might like to think of the 100,000-odd people estimated to be heading for the dole queue as they lose their jobs in the oil and gas drilling industry.
The previous government was undoubtedly pretty much of a shambles, but I really can’t buy into the “the grown-ups are back” rhetoric that large parts of the media are peddling. If this kind of energy policy is persisted with, I’m afraid power outages are going to get more and more frequent.
Still, I’m off to France for the next couple of weeks - that should show me country in political chaos; that’s something we Brits are not familiar with, isn’t it?
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