Energy: villain of the piece

By Richard North - October 16, 2024

It may be only a impression, but I sense that the likes of the Telegraph are more favourably disposed to criticising net-zero, now that its main champion is Labour’s Ed Miliband.

The paper and other voluble Tory critics seem to have quietly forgotten that it was a Conservative administration under Theresa May who introduced the legislation which – in the terms of the press release – put the UK “on the path to become the first major economy to set net zero emissions target in law”.

And, of course, it is a source of constant embarrassment that the paper’s favourite son became a born-again advocate for this economy-destroying measure, pledging that the UK would become the Saudi Arabia of wind.

Nevertheless, the consequences the Oaf making “a big bet” on renewables were inevitable – and easily predictable – so, as a close watcher of subsequent developments, it came as no surprise that on Monday we saw the National Energy System Operator (Neso) issue a warning of a potential power shortfall, the so-called Electricity Capacity Market Notice (CMN), the first in two years.

That this came so early in the cold season, with winter not even upon us yet, must have come as something of an embarrassment to the system operator (although it took care not to show it), especially after its optimistic winter outlook, which had the Guardian burbling: “Winter blackouts risk in Great Britain ‘lowest in four years’ despite end of coal”.

The CMN was quickly followed up by an article in the Telegraph by industry editor Matt Oliver headed: “Britain ‘critically vulnerable’ to energy crisis”, with a sub-heading stating: “Experts warn over gas dependency after blackout prevent system mobilised for first time in two years”.

Acknowledging the CMN, Oliver went on to describe a warning by the Energy Crisis Commission, an informal body set up by Energy UK, Citizens Advice and the Confederation of British Industry, the thrust of which was to assert that the country’s high dependency on gas for heating and electricity generation had left us more exposed than other European countries to swings in market prices.

This was not quite as described by the label on the tin, as the focus was on the measures directed at securing energy price stability and keeping costs down, with the Commission actually recommending that the government should “develop a clear strategy for shifting away from fossil fuels, particularly gas”.

The full report runs to 73 pages, complaining of “years of underinvestment in demand reduction measures like insulating homes and clean energy technologies, including power generation, storage and modernising the grid.

These failures, it said, “alongside a lack of crisis planning”, had left the UK “critically vulnerable”. Specifically, Great Britain was not prepared for a challenge to its energy security and, “without decisive, urgent action and investment”, the Commission asserted that the UK remained “dangerously underprepared” for a future crisis of the like of that brought about by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In what must have been music to Ed Miliband’s ears, amongst the measures it proposed were “massively cutting energy demand through better insulated homes, switching to heat pumps and electric vehicles”.

A few days earlier, though, Matt Oliver, with Jonathan Leake, had lodged an article with the Telegraph headed: “The age of energy rationing is looming for Britain”, its sub-heading stating that: “UK warned of blackout risk as nuclear power shrivels and Ed Miliband races towards net zero”.

Noting the recent closure of the country’s last coal-fired power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, the authors record that, as Britain’s nuclear reactor fleet shrivels, the amount of nuclear capacity will fall from 6 GW today to just 1.2 GW by 2028 or soon after.

Along with rising demand from power-hungry data centres and technologies of the future, they write, it will make it even harder to keep the lights on when wind and solar generation is low. Offering their own tour d’horizon, they refer to the efforts of Neso, which is turning to households and businesses to help balance the system, paying consumers to cut their electricity consumption when supply is tight – the so-called demand-side management.

This, they say, has been billed as a forward-looking way to manage an increasingly complex and “smart” system, as we move from using a small number of large coal and gas-fired plants to relying on a plethora of intermittent sources of wind and solar power – backed up by batteries, energy-storing giant flywheels, interconnectors and other gadgets, but the downside is that some critics warn this all looks strikingly similar to rationing, something which the country might not tolerate.

This brings us to today and a further piece in the Telegraph, this one by columnist Robert Taylor, who writes under the heading: “The self-inflicted energy crisis isn’t just coming – it’s already here”, telling us in his sub-heading: “The horrible threat of blackouts continues to hang over us, however much Neso might deny it”.

With an amount of candour, Taylor admits that his instinct is to blame Labour, but he then concedes that the Tories are at least as responsible. They started all this shoot-yourself-in-the-foot madness, enshrining net-zero targets in law (thanks Mrs May) and fetishising Britain’s world leadership at Cop 26 in Glasgow.

He regards Neso’s assurances about blackouts as looking “very hollow”, suggesting that we might be better off listening to Tom Greatrex of the Nuclear Industry Association, who says that because we’re going gung-ho for renewables, blackout notices might become more commonplace, not less, with energy prices going up yet higher.

Greatrex, the chief executive of the Association, features in the earlier piece by Maatt Oliver, who has him warning that the notices risked becoming more commonplace as Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations were switched off.

On current schedules, he says, the Hartlepool and Heysham 1 nuclear power stations are scheduled to be retired in March 2026, followed by Heysham 2 and Torness in March 2028. EDF, the plant operator, has said short lifetime extensions may be possible but no decisions have been made yet.

Of those in use, only Sizewell B is currently expected to stay online beyond 2030. Hinkley Point C, the only new nuclear power station under construction, is not expected to come online until 2030 at the earliest.

Greatrex thus warns that: “Without fresh investment and decisions on new nuclear projects at Sizewell C and Wylfa as well as small modular reactors, these warnings will become more commonplace and we will have to continue relying on volatile gas markets to fill the gaps in supply, threatening out energy security and driving up bills and emissions”.

The trouble is that this is all so drearily familiar. In January 2009, I was expressing concern about the rundown of our nuclear industry, warning about the excessive reliance on natural gas for electricity production.

Returning to theme later in the year, I referred to the energy expert Tony Lodge who had written to the Telegraph complaining that the lack of strategic planning for energy policy meant that Britain was over-reliant on imported gas.

In the January, I had already written that we must reduce our reliance on natural gas for electricity production, and rapidly expand our coal and nuclear generation capacity. But, I asked, “which politicians are going to be brave enough to say that?”

The answer there came none, so here we are fifteen years down the line looking at the very real prospect of power cuts, with newspaper columnist waking up to the lack of investment in nuclear, coal having long since been abandoned.

Therefore, if we are to look for the real villain of the piece, we should go back not to Mrs May but to “hug a husky” David Cameron in 2010, which was the last real opportunity to formulate an effective energy policy. When the lights go out, this is something to ponder.