As global energy prices skyrocket, and fears rise of a direct blow to British households’ bills, my mind returns to the most infuriating video on the internet.
The year is 2010 and Nick Clegg – fresh-faced, soon to become Deputy Prime Minister, and yet to encounter the depths of tuition-free betrayal or the highs of a Silicon Valley payday – is talking about plans for new nuclear power stations in Britain. New nuclear, he declares, is “not even an answer” to the need for more energy supply because “there’s no way they’re going to have new nuclear come on stream until about 2021 or 2022”.
Well, it’s 2026 and he got his wish, and we are living with the consequences. The last new nuclear power plant in this country opened in 1995, and the next – after much vacillation, delay and additional regulatory cost – won’t open until 2030.
Domestic British electricity generation in 2025 was 321.85 Terawatt-hours according to OurWorldInData – down from a peak of 406.67 in 2005. Shockingly, that means that this country currently generates as much electricity as it did back in 1989.
Renewable energy has grown massively as a share of supply, for reasons which are extremely well-rehearsed. But renewables also need baseload power provision; that is, a back-up to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. By phasing out coal while keeping nuclear only as a dwindling portion of the picture, we remain heavily dependent on gas as a keystone of our supply.
Without nuclear to take the strain, that exposure to gas is costing us dear. We are a paper boat of consumers and industry, bobbing on the world energy markets and left at the whim of any storm, squall or current which might catch hold of us. Never is that more clear than right now, with Donald Trump’s assault on the dictatorship in Iran driving prices up as the conflict threatens transit through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s backlash disrupts production in the wider Gulf.
Seen through that lens, having new domestic nuclear generation – clean, secure and carbon neutral – on-stream by 2021 or 2022 would have been just great. We would have been better insulated from such turbulent geopolitics, and even in more peaceful times we wouldn’t be so reliant on shipments from less than ideal regimes in dangerous places.
This is why I find that 2010 video clip so enraging. What comfort, what privilege, to sit in a parliamentary office back then and blithely wash one’s hands of the problems of future Britain on the flimsy grounds that the 2020s feel like a long way off. Short-termism, sadly, is in plentiful supply in our politics, but it’s rare to see it boiled down so effectively into a mere 43-second clip.
We’re not alone in suffering the impact of such foolishness, of course. Angela Merkel’s unhinged decision to shut down German nuclear production in a panic after the Fukushima disaster (which took place in a country on the other side of the planet, after a natural disaster the type of which Germany does not experience) left her country reliant on Russian gas at a vital time for European security.
Britain has made energy bungling into a national sport, however. Despite our continued use of gas, Ed Miliband then decided to forbid new extraction from the North Sea, making us more reliant on imports even while we have the stuff waiting for us beneath our own sovereign waters.
Nor is the blind failure to develop our energy independence the only way in which the errors of our politicians underpin the pain that will shortly hit millions of British households. Over the last 20 years, all of our major parties have in effect colluded to increase the cost of energy in this country.
Extra taxes and levies, shifting to more expensive forms of supply and increased regulation have all served to drive up this most fundamental input cost of all aspects of life. Heating and lighting your home, running a business, manufacturing anything at all, and operating the smart, AI-driven economy they all say they want to see are all made more difficult when energy becomes more expensive.
The scale of this self-harm is hard to imagine. Last autumn, the Chief Executive of E.ON UK told a parliamentary committee that even if the wholesale price of gas fell to zero by 2030, energy bills might not fall as a result of the high costs of Government policy decisions. That’s shocking: even if gas were free, Government policy would keep your energy bill high.
Industry is suffering too. Many forms of chemical manufacturing are energy-intensive and have become unaffordable. British production of ammonia fertiliser ended in 2023, for example (and the Government, ingeniously, is set to slap an import tax on ammonia fertiliser from January 2027).
It should be a basic tenet of politics that cheap and plentiful energy underpins a successful economy with a high standard of living. Yet, by a series of deliberate actions and decisions in favour of inaction, we have ended up with the very opposite. Our people and our economy are suffering as a result, and are uniquely exposed to the energy shock of a new war in the Gulf.
Sadly we can’t build a time machine to go back and show Nick Clegg the error of his ways. But we can decide today not to repeat it. High-flown aspirations are all well and good, but when it comes to keeping the lights on hard reality is what matters.
Build sovereign, independent energy generation, right now. If the future brings more conflict, we will be far better prepared, and if it brings peace, we will be wealthy.
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