A Bright New Energy Dawn In The UK

It was just a couple of weeks ago — October 3 to be precise — that I reported that the long-running “net zero” political consensus in the UK was finally “crumbling.” In the intervening two-plus weeks, the slow crumbling has turned into a rapid collapse.

The biggest roadblock for opponents of a green energy transition in the UK has been that the Conservative Party, which should have been the natural home of opposition to net zero, has instead long (and foolishly) allied itself with the net zero cause. In June 2019, the Conservatives (under Prime Minister Theresa May) put through an ambitious amendment to enhance the net zero targets of the 2008 Climate Act, and then proceeded to a general election that December where they won a substantial majority of 365 seats (in a parliament of 650). In subsequent years, a parliamentary faction in the House of Commons called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group struggled to get to about 50 or so Conservative members, who were far outnumbered by the opposing faction of the same party called the Conservative Environment Network. The UK voters had surely demonstrated their climate virtue.

But unfortunately things did not work out quite as they had anticipated. Energy bills accelerated until, as reported in the Telegraph on September 30 and then here on October 3, UK electricity bills have become the highest in the world. De-industrialization has set in and worsened. Britain’s last primary blast furnace steel works at Port Talbot closed in September 2024. A final rolling mill at Scunthorpe, now under Chinese ownership, threatened to close earlier this year until the government intervened. Similar reports of factory closures come regularly from all energy-intensive industries.

On October 6, immediately after my prior post, the Conservatives held a party conference in Manchester. One of the speakers was Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary. Her speech was an incredible breath of fresh air, and marked a dramatic u-turn from prior Conservative energy policy. The title was “Energy Is Prosperity.” Some excerpts:

In the last few decades, we’ve lost sight of a simple truth. Energy is a good thing. Conservatives know that great eras of British growth and prosperity happen when we have an abundance of cheap, reliable energy. . . . [E]nergy is not just part of the economy. It is the economy. It feeds into the costs of every business, every journey, every loaf of bread. . . . That’s why right now, the cost of energy is one of the biggest problems we have. It’s a stealth tax that is making us all poorer. And it’s killing our industry.

The Conservatives have finally figured out that the net zero agenda is a program to make the people poorer in sacrifice to the climate religion. More from Coutinho’s speech:

[H]ere’s the problem with the Left – they’re infected with a poverty mindset. They believe that Britain has a duty to make itself poorer on the altar of Net Zero. And they think that ordinary people should be the servants of their climate targets. So, take air conditioning. In America, nearly every single home has air con. Here in Britain? Just 5%. But Sadiq Khan’s London Plan effectively bans air con in all new homes - why? Because it uses too much energy. Rather than people fitting into the Government’s policy on energy, I believe a Conservative energy policy should serve the needs of the people.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I suspect that opposition to a program of intentional impoverishment of the people ought to be an electoral winner. The Labour Party and its Energy Minister, Ed Miliband, continue even now to claim that building more wind turbines will make electricity cheaper. But that claim is based on pretending that huge costs of intermittency, backup, storage, and transmission don’t exist. It has taken a long time for the reality of those costs to become clear, but the truth is now out.

The change in direction from the Conservative Party has come none too soon. On October 10, Bretibart News reported that the UK’s grid manager, National Energy Systems Operator, was forecasting reduced safety margins for electricity generation this winter, at the same time as the Labour government proceeds with dynamiting coal plants that could still be used for backup. The headline is “‘Tight Days’ For Electricity This Winter Says Network Operator as UK Presses on With Dynamiting Potential Backup Power Stations.” Excerpt:

Most notable was the revelation that the gas supply margin this winter is the lowest in years and down by 34 per cent over last year, a change [National Gas] attributes to the dwindling supply of gas being extracted from the North Sea. . . . 1960s-vintage power plants were brought online on command to cover tight margins several times in recent winters. Yet they have now all powered down for good, cut off from the national grid and are being demolished. Indeed, just days before today’s announcement of potential “tight days”, fresh footage of some of the final coal-powered power stations in the UK being dramatically dynamited was published.

I’m not going to predict that Britain will definitely experience major blackouts this winter. But the risk is far higher than it was just a few years ago, and that risk will continue to increase in coming years, until Britain can get itself to build more dispatchable generation, which in anything less than 15 years means natural gas or coal.

And it is not just the Shadow Energy Minister who has caught on. In today’s New York Post there is an op-ed by Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative Party leader and prospective PM should the Conservatives win the next election. (It is not obvious that they will do so, since the next election could be years away, and another party called Reform UK — also net zero opponents — leads both Labour and the Conservatives in the polls.). Ms. Badenoch’s op-ed covers multiple topics, including immigration and the Middle East as well as energy. Here are some things she has to say on the topic of energy:

[A] place I agree with this White House is on energy. Cheap energy is the foundation of a growing economy. No serious politician can talk about putting money in people’s pockets if they’re also doing things that make energy bills more expensive. . . . [I]n Britain, Labour ministers are so obsessed with chasing net-zero targets that they’re making life harder for ordinary families. . . . We’re sitting on North Sea oil and gas, yet the government refuses to grant new licenses.  We’re now in the crazy position of importing gas from our near-neighbors Norway, who are getting stuck into those same oil fields in the North Sea.

The Conservatives came close to destroying the party by joining the Left’s net zero crusade. The current u-turn may or may not be enough to save the party. However, adding the Conservatives’ position in the polls to that of Reform UK would indicate that opposition to net zero is now close to if not an absolute majority electoral position. That represents an enormous swing in a few short years.