Boris reveals power strategy to help end fuel ‘blackmail’ but we face THREE years of pain
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Boris Johnson said the UK needed to generate its own power to stop being “blackmailed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The PM pledged “clean, affordable, secure power for generations to come” in his plan for building a secure home-grown energy industry.
Consumers will not see lower energy bills for at least three years from Boris Johnson’s energy security strategy, ministers have admitted.
The Prime Minister pledged “clean, affordable, secure power for generations to come” in his plan for building a secure home-grown energy industry.
And he insisted the UK needed to generate that vast majority of its own power to stop being “blackmailed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
But Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng conceded that the plan will do little to help alleviate soaring fuel bills over the next two or three years.
“The strategy is more of a medium-term, three, four or five-year answer, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t address this.
“It’s really important that we get an energy strategy, an energy policy, that means we can have more security and independence in the year ahead,” the Cabinet minister said.
Both Mr Kwarteng and the Prime Minister said other measures would be taken to help the public cope with the pressure of rising energy bills.
But it comes against a background of spiralling prices. Yesterday households were warned they could be £900 worse off this year because of a “historic fall” in living standards, economic experts have warned.
The lowest earners face a £1,300 blow to finances but the hit could be higher if the Ukraine crisis escalates, a report from PwC warned.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs said the increased cost of wholesale gas would impact GDP growth.
Goldman’s is assuming energy prices will rise another 55 percent rise in October, with a 90 percent increase possible in the event of a total import shutdown.
Businesses and campaigners last night expressed disappointment at the delay before the “British Energy Security Strategy” has any impact on soaring fuel bills.
Stephen Phipson, the chief executive of manufacturing industry body Make UK, said: “These projects cannot be delivered quickly and at a time of spiralling energy costs and a myriad of other financial burdens on business.
“Industry desperately needs urgent action on the part of the Government to reduce energy prices in the short term.”
Alex Veitch, director of policy and public affairs at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “The transition to the cheaper, cleaner energy sources of tomorrow is vital, however, prices are soaring today, and businesses need support now.”
Key measures in the strategy included up to eight new nuclear power stations and a streamlining of planning laws to allow an expansion of solar power and offshore wind power generation.
A new aim of ensuring 95 percent of electricity in the UK comes from low-carbon sources by the end of the decade was set. The strategy also calls for 50 gigawatts of capacity from offshore wind by 2030, enough to power every home in the country.
Some 5gw should come from floating offshore wind sites in deeper seas. Planning reforms would slash approval times for building wind farms, from four years to one.
The document was more cautious about onshore wind power generation, reflecting Tory MPs’ concerns about the effects of turbines on the countryside.
Ministers vowed to work with local communities on expanding the onshore industry. Ambitious targets were also set for high-tech future fuels. The strategy aims to double the Government’s goal of 10gw of low-carbon hydrogen capacity by 2030, with at least half in “green” hydrogen produced from renewable electricity rather than from natural gas.
A £30million contest to manufacture heat pumps will be launched, and there are ambitions to increase solar capacity with a consultation on the rules for such projects.
But Mr Johnson’s strategy also insisted that oil and gas need to play a key role in energy supply for many years to come.
A fresh licensing round for North Sea oil and gas projects is planned for the autumn to cover the “nearer term” despite a UN report this week calling for rapid substantial cuts to fossil fuel use, to stop dangerous warming.
The Prime Minister wrote in the 12-page document: “If we’re going to get prices down and keep them there for the long term, we need a flow of energy that is affordable, clean and above all secure. We need a power supply that’s made in Britain, for Britain – and that’s what this plan is all about.
“We can’t simply pull the plug on all fossil fuels overnight without the lights going out all over Europe. We’re going to make better use of the oil and gas in our own backyard by giving the energy fields of the North Sea a new lease of life.
“For years, governments have dodged the big decisions on energy, but not this one. We’ve got the ambition, we’ve got the vision – and, with this plan, we’re going to bring clean, affordable, secure power to the people for generations to come.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the energy strategy was “too little, too late” to help families with rising costs. He called it “a cobbled-together list of things that could and should have been done over the last 10 to 12 years, and it doesn’t even tackle really important things like insulating homes, which could save £400 on everybody’s bill”.
Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, said: “The Government should be credited with its scale of ambition to expand offshore wind and solar generation. The challenge is to take these stretching targets and turn them into delivery of cheaper electricity into people’s homes as quickly as possible.”
Mike Thompson, of Government advisers the Climate Change Committee, said: “The Government has doubled down on its Net Zero Strategy…by accelerating plans to secure clean, green, UK-made energy.”
Prof Peter Bruce, vice-president of the Royal Society, called the proposals “a step in the right direction, but the words are the easy bit”.
Tamara Sandoul, of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health said: “This is an ambitious plan, particularly when it comes to clean energy generation. However, energy security that is based on fossil fuels can only be short term.”
“Should we go nuclear?”
NO by Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace UK head of politics
Boris Johnson has trumpeted taking ‘big bets’ on nuclear as the answer to tackling soaring energy bills and getting the UK off Putin’s gas.
This is apt because with its new energy strategy the government is quite literally gambling away taxpayers’ money on nuclear projects that are slow, unreliable and incredibly expensive.
Looking back at past government attempts, we should have learned that nuclear does not deliver. Margaret Thatcher wanted a fleet of nuclear stations and got Sizewell B. Blair had another go, ending with only Hinkley C.
Today, despite getting approved in 2016, Hinkley still hasn’t started generating, and won’t get going until 2027 at the earliest.
And there’s Sizewell C, which EDF hopes will generate power by 2034. In fact, the only place this model of reactor ever got working was in Taishan, China.
But after just a few years of operating it closed in July 2021 and has never restarted. British people desperately need a dependable quick fix. Nuclear just doesn’t cut it.
Nuclear is also eye-wateringly expensive – while alternatives like wind and solar get cheaper by the day.
And it’s worth mentioning that if Johnson’s bet on nuclear doesn’t pay off, it’s taxpayers who are likely to foot the bill by shouldering the financial risk if things don’t go to plan with the construction.
When the average annual bill is already set to hit £2,600 by October, adding nuclear onto that tab seems a tough pill to swallow.
Beyond the delays and the costs of nuclear, there’s the inconvenient issue of dealing with radioactive waste. No one in the world has a workable solution.
What’s absurd is that this government is panicking about boosting energy supply but largely ignoring the glaring issue of cutting energy waste.
If you have a leaking bathtub, surely the smartest thing is to fix the leak? Britain is embarrassingly lagging behind on this front.
We have some of the least energy-efficient housing in Europe and the worst heat pump sales. Upgrading homes would not just ease bills and weaken Putin by getting us off Russian gas, but it’d also cut carbon emissions.
With climate change causing increasingly erratic weather in the UK and around the world, it’s hard to understand why the government wouldn’t embrace solutions that have so many benefits.
So should we go nuclear? No, we have much better options.
YES by Professor Adrian Bull, Chairman in Nuclear Energy and Society at the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute.
Despite the recent news focus on COVID and the Ukraine invasion, climate change hasn’t gone away. Britain is – rightly – committed to reaching Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050, and we need all the tools in the “energy toolbox” to stand any chance at all.
As we decarbonise our transport and switch from burning gas in homes and industry, the demand for clean electricity is only going to soar even further.
Nuclear gives us reliable, safe, low-carbon electricity 24/7 in the vast quantities we need to power homes, schools, hospitals, offices and industry. Nothing else can do that in the UK, so we should invest rapidly in new nuclear – alongside both renewables and energy efficiency improvements.
We can’t just rely on the massive reactors like Hinkley Point C though. Whilst that’s a vital piece of the jigsaw, we don’t have enough suitable sites and the costs of those massive plants are staggeringly expensive, with long construction periods.
We need to innovate – which means smaller, cheaper, quicker to build reactors, such as the Small Modular Reactor developed by Rolls Royce.
And beyond that, other more advanced designs can be more flexible. For instance, using high-temperature heat to produce not just electricity but also hydrogen – another crucial part of our low-carbon future.
Such a massive programme will need support and a huge influx of skilled people. But there’s nowhere better than the UK to do this.
We built the world’s first commercial nuclear reactor and with a strong supply chain and our track record in nuclear over many decades, we’ve the chance to return to the world’s “top table” of nuclear nations. The question isn’t “can we afford to have new nuclear?”.
If we’re to reach Net Zero and have secure energy supplies, we simply can’t afford not to.
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