FRANKLY, I shall be glad to see the back of fossil fuels. For the whole of my working life they have caused trouble – or rather have been weaponized by an assortment of troublesome men.
Just after the war the Labour Government and the National Union of Mineworkers were at odds during a fierce winter. Coal, or the lack of it, was persistently a source of trouble and cost the taxpayer a bomb until Margaret Thatcher’s epic struggle with Arthur Scargill and his private army. It was in part responsible for the formation of the Department of Energy to which I was sent in 1974 because both the miners and the oil producers were playing up
OPEC’s behaviour as an oil and gas cartel produced such a crisis that I flew with Lord Carrington to the USA for an international conference. Vladimir Putin has now got his hands on Europe’s gas tap, thanks largely to the strategic incompetence of Angela Merkel, and our Government is dithering over the development of a North Sea oil and gas field and a new coking coal mine in Cumbria.
Yet at the same time it is subsidizing the Drax power station in Yorkshire to burn imported CO2- producing biomass (wood chips) while phasing out wood-burning stoves. Yet there is a case on environmental grounds alone for more investment in the North Sea and in Cumbria’s coking coal that is needed by the steel industry. If we do not develop our resources we shall have to import them with all the consequent cost and CO2 production
All this would be funny if it were not so serious. And that goes, too, for Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business and Energy Secretary, saying it is unacceptable for thousands of consumers to be still without electricity after Storm Arwen while presiding over an energy policy that increases the risk of blackouts.
This is why I am, if the truth be told, somewhat Augustinian in my approach to fossil fuels: “Oh Lord make me pure, but not yet”. The argument is not over ends but about how to achieve that “purity”. The plain fact is that we are at present exposed without them.
Do not get me wrong: I believe we should cleanse the atmosphere as soon as we prudently can for two reasons: health and global warming leading to climate change. Urban pollution does nobody any good and intensifies the pressure on the NHS. But – and this is a very big but – we must do so in a calculated, practical and economic way.
There is no virtue in trying to reduce the frequency of extreme weather if, in the process, we induce hypothermia in thousands of people temporarily without power. In fairness, I should say that Mr Kwarteng cannot be held entirely responsible for the “totally unacceptable” consequences of Storm Arwen.
The distress from the damage wreaked by storm’s 100mph winds is a direct result of 30 years’ political incompetence by successive Governments who have caved in to the multiplicity of environmental zealots.
We may not be able to do much more about the security of our electricity grid in violent weather but the drive for electrification has exposed more to the risks of power cuts. As things stand, gas boilers are on their way out. Oil and gas central heating is going to same way, even though costly heat pumps are an inadequate substitute.
And, as I say, the death knell has been sounded for wood burning stoves while the system generates electricity supply from wood. At the same time the drive for petrol and diesel vehicles to be replaced by electric goes on apace, progressively raising demand without our knowing where the power is to come from, even in normally calm conditions.
Britain’s energy resilience is steadily being eroded and there is not the slightest sign of anybody doing much about it. Boris Johnson’s ambition to build another 30,000 ugly wind turbines on land and offshore is virtue signalling of the worst kind.
Wind is unreliable at the best of times and can also be knocked out by gales. Similarly, solar panels are no use at night or on the sort of deadly dull days we are currently experiencing as winter tightens its grip.
Coal has virtually been phased out of power generation – and now North Sea oil and gas and the proposed mine in Cumbria look like going to same way as fracking for oil and gas which has never really got under way.
Yet the one, proven, reliable and CO2 free source of power – nuclear – is still neglected after 25 wasted years. Of course, the French EDF company is building a big nuclear station at Hinkley Point but it is anybody’s guess when it might provide 7.5 percent of our electricity given the interminable delays in bringing on stream similar plants in Finland and France. In short, Storm Arwen should have hit the Government with unblinding light.
https://www.express.co.uk/…/fossil-fuels-definition…
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