Urgent: new energy policy needed

This is the weekly newsletter from editor Iain Martin for Reaction members.

In little more than three weeks the global political carnival will roll into Glasgow and COP26 will get underway. Presidents, Prime Ministers, religious leaders, a cornucopia of climate campaigners and lorryloads of lobbyists will gather in Scotland to thrash out the elite response to climate change. Look out for a furious Greta Thunberg sailing up the River Clyde and disembarking on the quayside in front of the waiting media hordes. No doubt Scotland’s First Minister will be keen to get in on the act, elbowing her way to the front of the throng to ensure that it is Nicola Sturgeon who is pictured welcoming a grim-faced Greta to Glasgow.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson (who has recently switched to Catholicism) will miss out on posing with the Pope, who is too ill to travel.

To accommodate this mega-conference, a vast security operation will shut down parts of the road network in Scotland’s central belt. President Biden is staying 50 miles away, so the US secret service will need the M8 motorway that connects Edinburgh and Glasgow for their exclusive use at points, it seems. The anti-global warming jamboree will be a huge story with even bigger hype. Television anchors there will say repeatedly that the eyes of the world are on Glasgow. Will the leaders do a deal? Will there be a piece of paper to wave around with a meaningful agreement scribbled on it?

This is how COP26 was supposed to play out. Boris Johnson, as real host rather than Sturgeon because Scotland is still in the United Kingdom, would undertake a last minute scramble to pull together a deal to save humanity. Even if not very much is agreed, a joint statement will be produced, of course, at the last minute with talks running late into the night. The politicians will announce that they are even more committed to getting rid of nasty old gas, though don’t mention coal because that’s where around 55 per cent of China’s energy comes from.

Yet by one of those quirks of timing, COP26 will be happening against a backdrop very different from that envisaged by the organisers and activists and governments. Historical justice you might call it considering the extraordinary mess the political class in Britain and continental Europe have made of energy policy by not investing in nuclear and a properly diverse range of power sources to guarantee energy security.

Such is the mess, that far from fossil fuels being surplus to requirements, we need as much of them as we can get this instant going into a tough winter with supplies low. If that is we want to keep the lights on and poor and vulnerable people from freezing. This will be even more obvious by November and COP26, when Greta is getting off her yacht and Sturgeon is nodding along with the suggestion that we must go back to living in huts and ditch economic growth as a model.

We’re getting a real time lesson in what energy shortages look like. There is an explosion in energy prices, with China using its buying power to divert supplies of gas.

The economic disruption that flows from this has already started to be felt, while the political parties were off cavorting at their navel-gazing conferences. As I write this a nice-sounding but desperate man from Pilkington, the glassmakers, has been on the BBC 10pm news explaining what a disaster the energy crisis is for this important business. The furnace they use can’t be turned off. It runs continually for several decades, making glass. If the energy input costs go up by several million quid a month, as is happening, you don’t need to be Adam Smith to work out what happens next when production becomes uneconomic.

I am not – I stress – what they term a denialist. I’m for conservation and minimising harm to the environment. Let’s accelerate innovation, and draw on the experience in the pandemic when many of us experienced the benefits of a reduction in pollution. I can see the sense in the Bjorn Lomborg worldview, though. His book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, is the calmest explanation of a more balanced outlook. That means accepting climate change is happening and mitigating or adapting for its worst effects to limit the impact.

What we have now instead is a crazy national energy policy driven by Boris Johnson soundbites that have landed Britain in a highly vulnerable position, waiting to see if we have enough gas to get through the winter.

At some point, surely, political leaders or their colleagues and subordinates will have to decide to be grown-up and demand some manner of sensible rebalancing during or after the COP26 circus. Essential greenery must be balanced with energy security and the needs of industry and employment. Especially when a study out this week suggests that wind power, in which Britain has invested so much, may not be as reliable as thought if the recent decline in wind speeds in our European  neighbourhood (perhaps a consequence of climate change itself) persists. Britain should have done more on nuclear twenty years ago.

This week, the energy regulator also decided that Royal Dutch Shell cannot go ahead with its Jackdaw gas project in the North Sea, first discovered in the mid-2000s. There are an estimated 120-250 million barrels of oil equivalent. The company is deeply disappointed, and no wonder.

Rather than Britain having access to this resource, and then perhaps investing in carbon capture, it will stay unused to help meet the net zero targets just when everyone is scrambling for energy. This ruling seems like another unwise decision, given all that is happening and about to happen.

What I’m reading

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, by Vladislav M. Zubok has just landed. Thirty years on it offers a major reinterpretation of the end of the USSR. Collapse wasn’t inevitable, Zubok says. The Gorbachev reforms were ill-conceived and unleashed pent-up nationalist impulses. On an initial flick through it seems to be light on jokes, but it’s a serious subject and this is a book about Russian history. I’ll launch into it this weekend.

Speaking of revisionist history, the new George III by Andrew Roberts is as terrific as everyone is saying. I introduced Andrew at our launch dinner on Monday and he explained how the myth of George the Hanoverian horror became the consensus view, unfairly. If you know someone you think might enjoy Reaction, or you’re a member of Reaction on a monthly plan and want to switch to annual membership, we’re sending out hardback copies of George III (worth £35) as a welcome gift with every annual membership bought.

Watching

Blair and Brown: the New Labour Revolution is the addictive five part series from the BBC on the centre-left surge that swept the party to power and kept it there for 13 years. Goodness it was an exciting period, if you like that sort of thing. Politics seemed almost glamorous then, but also stately and elevated, or up to a point. There were things called proper press conference. Even the unveiling of a shadow cabinet necessitated a media photocall in those days. The hacks and snappers turned up to capture the scene with the feuding politicians all grinning and pretending to get along. Look, there’s Robin Cook in a nasty tie! Is that Jack Cunningham talking to Patricia Hewitt? Yes, it is.

This week for Reaction on YouTube I discussed the Blair years with John Rentoul and Professor Jon Davis. They set out more than a decade ago to rehabilitate or reassess the reputation of that government, feeling it was viewed too harshly. We talked for an hour on the personalities, economic policy, public services and foreign affairs, but could have gone on for four and a half times that, the equivalent of three full length speeches by Sir Keir Starmer. We had fun though and they took my rude question about Blair – wasn’t his premiership the most expensive work experience programme in history? – in good part.

John and Jon are advisers on the Beeb documentary series. It was inspired by their groundbreaking book Heroes or Villains? (now available in paperback.) Our “in conversation” is out tomorrow on YouTube, you can watch here.

Have a good weekend.

Iain Martin,
Editor and Publisher,
Reaction