Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!’

Lewis Carroll

Like most adults, I stopped believing in fairies and Father Christmas a long time ago. Unfortunately, many of our politicians seem unable to throw off their childhood fantasies. Ed Miliband is the prime exemplar of his class. It is astonishing that someone in charge of energy policy can have so little understanding of his brief. It does not help that he is surrounded by people who reinforce his beliefs, in a supercharged echo chamber, formalised in the form of the Climate Change Committee. For comparison similar issues arise constantly in the NHS, which is run by people who have never emptied a bed pan or wielded a scalpel - but I digress.

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In this short post I’d like to pick up on the quote from Lewis Carroll and list the 10 impossible Net Zero things that you must believe in order to support decarbonising our economy at breakneck speed.

1. Reducing our CO2 emissions will reduce global temperature despite accounting for less than 1% of global emissions.

2. Offshoring our manufacturing (and its emissions) will not destroy jobs, particularly in high skilled offshore, steel, aluminium and car-manufacturing sectors. Or green jobs will replace these jobs despite most renewable technology being made in China.

3. We can close down all fossil fuel generation despite electricity only accounting for 20% of energy use and being vital to maintain grid security during long gaps in wind and solar generation. Essentially, we need to believe that new physics and economic models can fill the gap, along with massive investments in grid infrastructure and/or carbon capture and storage.

4. Battery storage will replace fossil fuel generation and imports, despite the environmental, economic and engineering challenges of delivering grid scale storage that covers many days. None of these challenges have been solved yet but they will be any day now.

5. Renewable energy is the cheapest energy available as long as we ignore the massive public subsidies. Just give them long enough and somehow the subsidies will come down, despite having gone up again in AR7 (the latest Contracts for Difference allocation round).

6. We will all switch to EVs despite half of us not being able charge at home and the technology being unsuitable for commercial use, such as road haulage. We also need to ignore stagnant sales, plummeting residual values, safety concerns, an electricity grid creaking at the seams, and the cost of replacing batteries.

7. Covering agricultural land with turbines, solar panels and batteries is a price worth paying despite the loss of home grown food production and increased reliance on imported food, along with their extra emissions. It is even worth destroying our peat uplands and losing their massive potential as carbon sinks.

8. Energy security can be managed by importing oil, gas and electricity whenever we need it, despite what goes on elsewhere in the world and that prices are set globally despite the fact that US energy prices are much lower than ours.

9. We can ignore the thousands of things, other than energy, which rely on oil for their existence, including: clothing, medicines, plastics, synthetic rubber, lubricants and fertilisers.

10. The astronomical costs, both economic and societal are a price worth paying, despite all of the above.

I could go on but hopefully you get my point. I’d like to think that any reasonably intelligent person would come to the same conclusion I came to 20 years ago. But it appears not.

In my experience, those supporting NetZero believe all these things are going to work or are a price worth paying to save the planet. Others simply won’t engage because these facts do not fit their mental model of how the world is. Overcoming the cognitive dissonance required it just too painful emotionally, and so they avoid any discussions that could help them understand what is really happening.

What is the solution? I have no idea other than to keep plugging away with these articles. If you have any friends who might benefit, please do consider sharing with them - but don’t hold your breath. They will come round in the end but it is going to require an existential crisis. Perhaps one where we experience rolling blackouts, patients dying in operating theatres, public services closing down, flights being cancelled - you get the idea.

Unfortunately, when this happens, I don’t see people sitting back and quietly accepting their new lifestyle. When they realise how much they have been lied to they will probably be outraged. And who knows where that might take us?

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We keep hearing that AI could reach a level of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). In this stage it could take on life of its own. In a so called singularity it would have no more need for the soft human forms that gave birth to it. In this article I am going to explain why this is not as likely an outcome as many believe. Or, at least, I will explain why it is not the outcome to be feared most.

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Some Background

I began working in AI in 1987. At the time I joined British Gas who had just got started a large European project called COGSYS (Cognitive System) with 35 partners. Our goal was to develop a real-time expert system for process control and fault diagnosis. As project leader for our test site, I led our trial of the system. It went well, sufficiently so that British Gas decided to spin out a commercial company called Cogsys Ltd., in conjunction with Salford University.

I became a director and was responsible for delivering commercial applications using COGSYS. During my time there we got involved in a wide variety of fascinating and challenging applications. Some of these combined advanced simulation models and neural networks.

Today, it is in the area of neural networks or “machine learning” that recent breakthroughs in Generative AI, based on Large Language Models (LLMs), have caught the attention of the public, businesses and venture capitalists. If you are an engineer or manager in any organisation, your boss will probably be pushing the implementation of AI.

I am not going to dwell on what is driving this. I have been following the hype around AI for many years. If that hype had been true in the early days we would all by lying on the beach by now, with nothing better to do than worry about developing skin cancer.

In this article I am going to concentrate on what is happening in software development, but the arguments hold more generally for any field of endeavour with reliance on LLMs.

The Vibe Coding Revolution

“Vibe coding” describes a supposedly more intuitive, almost conversational approach to programming. Instead of carefully planning every line of code in advance, you build things by experimenting, tweaking, and responding to how the software behaves in the moment. It involves using AI assistants to quickly generate or adjust code, then refining it based on what “looks right” as you go along.

For a non-programmer, you can think of it a bit like cooking without a strict recipe with the help of the world’s best chefs. You start with an idea, get advice from a chef, mix your ingredients and taste as you go, letting the chef know what you think. You keep adjusting until the result matches the appearance and taste (vibe) you were aiming for, rather than following a rigid set of instructions from the start.

Many traditional programmers use vibe coding tools to work faster rather than replace themselves. Surveys suggest that most developers now use AI coding tools daily. Vibe coding can also be highly democratising, in that journalists, product managers, and hobbyists can now build simple apps by describing what they want in plain English.

For the remainder of this article I am going to concentrate on professional software engineers. This is because these users are building systems that millions of people use every day and where the greatest risk lies. Before I go into the risks, I first need to explain how LLMs work, so that their short-comings become apparent.

How LLMs Work

LLMs are a type of artificial intelligence designed to understand and generate human-like text - one form of Generative AI. At their core, they don’t “know” things in the way a person does. Instead, they’ve been trained on vast amounts of written material (books, articles, websites) to recognise patterns in language. When you ask a question, the model looks at your words and predicts what words are most likely to come next, one step at a time, based on everything it has learned.

Imagine an extremely well-read autocomplete system. When you type a message on your phone and see suggested next words, that’s a very simple version of what’s going on. An LLM does this on a far more sophisticated level. It considers not just the last word or two, but the whole context of your sentence or paragraph. This allows it to produce responses that feel coherent, relevant, and often surprisingly insightful.

Another useful analogy is to picture a librarian who has read millions of books and has an extraordinary memory for how ideas are expressed. He or she isn’t actually thinking or reasoning in the human sense. When you ask a question, the librarian doesn’t “look up” a single correct answer. Instead, they compose a response by drawing on patterns and associations they’ve seen across many sources. That’s why LLMs can explain concepts clearly and write in different styles.

However, it is also the reason why they can sometimes be confidently wrong. They’re generating output based on what they have learnt, but they have no way of knowing whether what they have been trained on is nonsense, other than through the aggregation of more material that is hopefully “correct”. You may already have come across this yourself - it’s called AI hallucination. And this is the key reason why you should never rely on everything that an AI tells you, particularly if it relates to things like your personal finances or health.

In essence, LLMs are powerful pattern-recognition and text-generation systems. They’re good at language because they’ve seen so much of it, not because they truly understand the world. This is what makes them incredibly useful for tasks like explaining ideas, drafting text, or answering questions. However, it also means that you should treat their advice as helpful suggestions rather than unquestionable facts.

What has this got to do with vibe coding? Well, programming involves the construction of software programmes written using computer languages. There are many programming languages, but all of them boil down to writing textual instructions explaining sequences of operations on inputs to produce outputs. Therefore, existing software programmes are incredibly valuable sources of input for LLMs. Applications like Chat-GPT, Claude and Gemini have been trained on large software repositories, such as open source code bases in GitHub, and coding knowledge bases such as StackOverflow.

Professional Vibe Coding

My own reservations about vibe coding are based on personal experience developing a series of hobby projects. I have had mixed results. Sometimes the results are astounding, but other times, much less so. Over time I have changed my view from one of “this is great - anyone can programme now!” to “this could be a disaster - anyone can programme now!”

As a tool for getting started, vibe coding is great. Developing prototypes and MVPs (Minimal Viable Products) has never been easier. The problem is that as the code gets closer to actually being deployed, questions and concerns come to the fore. For example:

• How good is the code?

• Is it secure?

• Does it cover all use cases?

• Is it maintainable?

The problem is that vibe coding can generate a lot of code very quickly. That’s great if you can trust the code. However, it’s clear now that just as when you ask Chat-GPT for the best way to invest your savings, you have to be sceptical about the results.

To put this into real world terms of what happens when AI coding goes wrong, here is a quote about what happened at Amazon recently (Times Now News):

Just when everyone thought that AI is going to replace every profession, something or the other comes up which proves it can't - at least in its entirety. A recent report by Financial Times suggests that Amazon engineers asked the internal AI bot dubbed Kiro to fix some issues related to Amazon Web Services […] resulted in a massive 13-hour-long outage.

The problem was that Kiro decided the best way to fix the problems was to delete the deployed system and re-build using its suggested changes. You might argue that the programmer should have checked the code and vetoed the deployment method that Kiro recommended. This is true, but what this example shows is that as AI coding becomes more prevalent, the requirement to validate the output does not go away. In fact it becomes critical.

Problems like this are all the less surprising when you consider that Amazon are pushing the use of Kiro whilst laying off thousands of software engineers. In this case the outage was a commercial problem for Amazon. However, vibe coding is popular everywhere and is already starting to have potential consequences for systems deployed in many different businesses and organisations.

Where is this going to end?

In my beginning is my end.

T.S. Elliot, from the opening to East Coker in the Four Quartets

Unfortunately it gets worse. LLMs are trained on existing code repositories. And guess what sort of code is increasingly being added to those repositories? The logical outcome is that AI models will be trained on code bases made up of a growing proportion of AI generated software.

Going back to the discussion of AI hallucination, if vibe coding tools become overwhelmed with AI generated code, then the chances of new generated code being reliable will decrease.

Now imagine what happens as such code gets increasingly deployed in banks, hospitals, nuclear power plants, air traffic control and defence systems. If we are lucky, only small things will go wrong. If we are unlucky? It’s impossible to guess the consequences.

And more practically, how will these programs be fixed if no human engineers have ownership of the code?

You might remember the Millennium Bug which was highlighted as a potentially existential problem if computer clocks failed to handle the transition to the year 2000. I remember the years leading up to that very well and the enormous amount of time and money spent on validating systems to make sure that the transition would be smooth.

Now think about the hundreds of thousands of systems deployed in every walk of life which may have hidden issues, with no way to anticipate whether or when they might have serious consequences.

What is likely to happen with the AI coding revolution is going to be much worse because it is unclear whether anyone is seriously thinking about the consequences. People may be worried about the problem of AGI but the real risk is much more prosaic.

Let’s be clear. AGI based on LLMs is a fantasy. LLMs simply predict words in sequences based on what they have been trained on and what they have been asked. This does not mean that AGI is impossible using other models of AI. In fact, we could have the worst of all worlds. However, my money is on more mundane problems stemming from the spread of more and more degenerate software.

The old computing adage of garbage in garbage out has never been more true. As more AI code (and other forms of knowledge) are increasingly generated from an increasingly corrupt pool, the buildup of dangerous code will be insidious and ultimately, potentially catastrophic.

Other issues

We should also be sceptical of LLMs being capable of real innovation. LLMs can give the impression of novelty, but in the end they are simply reproducing text from what they have been trained on.

A separate issue relates to the morality of this. There are no rewards for those engineers who freely shared their code in public repositories. Therefore, engineers may be less likely to share their code in the future - cutting off potential new sources of good quality software.

What can we do about the problem?

For a start, more people need to understand the short-comings of LLMs. This will require training and education.

Secondly, any organisation that generates software using LLMs needs to take a step back and analyse whether my concerns are valid in the way they are using them. Building prototypes and MVPs is a sensible and advantageous way to exploit generative AI. However, when it comes to deploying systems, there needs to be a complete different mindset. Highly skilled and experienced programmers will always be vital an any organisation serious about delivering high quality, reliable and safe software.

Thirdly, as well as avoiding future problems, organisation like Amazon will need to perform a Millenium Bug style audit of their systems to track down any existing issues due to deploying degenerate software.

None of these actions will happen quickly or cheaply - but they are vital. Of course, the longer we leave it, the more difficult and expensive it will be to fix.

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Summary

I have discussed how LLMs in the coding domain could lead to the spread of poorly coded systems that may have catastrophic real-world consequences as their deployment spreads.

Additionally, I rate these practical risks to be greater than the theoretical risk of AGI taking over the world. That doesn’t mean AGI won’t happen, but it will not occur through the development of LLMs, at least not as currently architected.

And finally, it is worth considering the bigger picture for a moment. As more and more people come to depend on applications like Chat-GPT, the creation of new and innovative human knowledge will plummet. And these problems start early on in schools and universities. The following quote from a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute highlights my concerns:

The proportion of students using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT for assessments has jumped from 53% last year to 88% this year.

This is not to say that all students are engaged in plagiarism, but the risk is increasing and the potential loss of actual learning should be taken seriously. I use Chat-GPT and other applications a lot for research needed for my articles, but I’d like to think I was already good at research before these tools came along. It is hard not to wonder what it would be like to grow up with these tools available from the start.

I may be wrong, but based on my experience, I have a strong feeling that this is going to be an increasing issue. It is also one that that we should take extremely seriously.

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Acknowledgement

This article was stimulated by a YouTube video by Mo Bitar called “After two years of vibe coding, I’m back to coding by hand.”

In this podcast, my AI companions (sad I know!) provide a deep dive into my recent article on Inertia and Reactive Power.

The original script was created by feeding my article into Google’s NotebookLM in order to generate a two-host podcast. I used the same tool to transcribe the audio and then to customise the script.

Lastly, I generated the final dialogue using Google’s AIStudio, and then put it together into a video, podcast using CapCut. I created the images and video using Grok.

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I would love to discover that the universe is teeming with alien life. And someday, despite the odds, we will meet “them”. As a species, we have pondered this question for at least 100 years. The most famous examples of thinking about “life out there” are Fermi’s Paradox and the Drake Equation. But what possible relevance could these have to understanding the state of democracy? In this article I will attempt to answer that question. This will involve equations, but trust me, they won’t be scary.

Fermi’s Paradox and the Drake Equation

In 1950 Enrico Fermi posed his now famous paradox, when he asked “where is everybody?” This was in response to there being billions of stars in the galaxy, each with many planets. And a fraction of them might support life. The question is “what fraction”?

In 1961, the astronomer Frank Drake created a framework to help answer this question. He presented it at the first scientific meeting on the “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence” (SETI). His now famous Drake Equation looks like this:

R = R_* ⤬ f_p ⤬ n_e ⤬ f_l ⤬ f_{i ⤬} f_c ⤬ L

This is not an empirical formula derived from first principles. It predicts the number of civilisations in the Milky Way. It does this by breaking down one unknown into a set of smaller ones. We can measure, estimate and debate the parameters on the right-hand side. For example, f_p is the fraction of stars that may have planets. This equation gives rise to estimates ranging from zero to millions.

This brings me onto the question posed in the title “What does this have to do with UK democracy?”

My answer is to propose the Democracy Equation to assess intelligence in parliament as a proxy for good policy making and a healthy democracy.

The Democracy Equation

This is my Drake-style equation to determine a Capability Index for our MPs:

CI = (R_e + R_p+ R_m + R_l + R_t + R_c ) / 6

Each parameter is a capability ratio describing the following capabilities:

R_e = Education

R_p = Professional experience

R_m = Military experience

R_l = Life experience

R_t = Public trust

R_c = Communication skills

Each R value is a ratio of assumed capability over desired capability:

R = assumed / desired

We combine them to calculate an average capability index. The best way to appreciate this is to go through an example. To begin, we will consider each parameter in turn.

Education

The first capability relates to education. I had difficulty finding an official, up-to-date figure for this parameter. There are some credible data from a 2015 Campaign for Science and Engineering study. This data includes medical degrees as well as STEM subjects. These are subjects in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The study provides an estimate of 95 MPs (15%).

For our desired education target, I propose that we should have 70% of MPs with a strong education in STEM subjects. This gives us the following capability ratio:

R_e = 0.15 / 0.7 = 0.21

This scale of STEM education is vital to building a modern technological economy.

Professional Experience

Here we are looking for significant experience starting and running businesses. According to an Industry and Parliamentary Trust report, 20-30% of MPs come from business or commerce backgrounds. Only a few dozen are likely to have been responsible for a large number of employees. So let’s assume there are 50 MPs in this category, or about 8%. I would not argue, though, if you felt this is too high.

It is unrealistic to expect much higher than this, so I will set a desired target of 16%, giving us a ratio of:

R_p = 0.08 / 0.16 = 0.48

Military Experience

According to the same report, there were only 4 MPs (0.61%) with a military background! I find this incredible, and also a challenging one to think of a sensible target. We have been underspending on our military for many years. Our treatment of veterans is shocking. It is obvious that only 4 MPs with military experience is not working and we need to boost the proportion. That said, I don’t think we should be on a permanent war footing, so I propose increasing to 5%(32 MPs), giving us:

R_m = 0.062 / 0.05 = 0.12

Life Experience

For life experience, I am interested in which MPs have worked in real, demanding jobs. For example: mining, fishing, building, caring, policing or farming.

It turns out that independent research and parliamentary data tells us a lot. And no surprises here. Experience in traditional working-class, or labour-intensive jobs, is rare among MPs. According to a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), only about 7% of MPs come from a working-class background. So 45 in total.

A UK Parliament paper “Representatives of Society” backs this up. This suggests the number is less than 10%. For example, in 1945 there were 45 ex-miners in the Labour party. This came down to 6 in 2010.

This deficit undermines how parliament operates. So few MPs seem to grasp how their policies will impact their constituents. For example, would a farmer have supported an inheritance tax increase on farms? I will target a large minority of MPs, i.e., 195 or 30%. This gives us a life experience capability ratio of:

R_l = 0.07 / 0.3 = 0.23

Public trust

Assessing the number of MPs trusted by the public is difficult. I found a paper suggesting only 9% of the public trust politicians in general. Trust is not a direct proxy for honesty in politicians, but it is reasonable to equate the two. More honesty would engender more trust. 9% equates to 60 MPs. We could of course interpret this as 100% of MPs are honest 9% of the time!

With higher trust, parliament could better deliver policies. When people believe in what they are being told, they are more likely to agree. And this is most important for unpopular policies. At least that’s how I would like the world to work!

What do you think should be a realistic upper target? 100% is never going to happen, but imagine how things might change if we could trust most politicians. I am going to assume a stretch target of 80% of politicians, giving us a capability ratio of:

R_t = 0.09 / 0.8 = 0.12

Communication

I struggled to assess this parameter and AI did not help. Chat-GPT’s top example of a strong communicator was Keir Starmer! This is what AI sceptics refer to as an hallucination. Worse, it made no mention of Nigel Farage! Love him or hate him, he is one of the best communicators in politics today.

A good communicator is confident, passionate, knowledgeable, quick-thinking, and persuasive. Nigel Farage receives an almost perfect score on this basis. Poor old Sir Kier would struggle to get into my top 50%.

I am going to make an educated guess that at least 30% of MPs are good communicators, i.e. about 195 in total, and I am not expecting all MPs to compete with Nigel. But we should have at least 50% of MPs (325) with good communication skills. This gives us a communication capability ratio of:

R_c = 0.3 / 0.5 = 0.6

This is the highest capability index we have found and is not surprising. When standing for election, prospective MPs go through a rigorous selection process. Their communication skills are one of the key qualities assessed.

So what does this tell us?

Feeding this into the equation gives us the following average capability index:

CI = (0.21+0.48 + 0.12 + 0.23 + 0.12 + 0.60) / 6 ≈ 0.29

I had no idea what would fall out of this equation when I started. However, this result feels about right. I certainly would not have expected anything over 0.5.

In an ideal (but unrealistic world), each ratio would be at least 1. In theory, it is possible to overshoot. In practice, chance would be a fine thing!

In any case, I never claimed this would be the correct value. This type of analysis breaks down a large problem into manageable chunks. Then we can concentrate on each part in isolation. In effect, the answer is less important than the discussion and argument it gives rise to.

Another way to think about this result is that to tackle this low capability index, we don’t need to have 650 MPs. Our index applies to any number of MPs. I am not sure how many we should have, but often, less is more. Smaller teams tend to be more successful than large teams. If we tackle the identified deficits, a smaller team should do a better job!

The same argument would apply to the House of Lords. However, this involves more complex constitutional issues beyond the scope of this analysis.

Final thoughts

As I came to the end of this article, I remembered that Reform UK have proposed having unelected members in cabinet. This would include industry experts and leaders with vital skills and experience. My first reaction was negative. On reflection, this could be an excellent way to improve the capability index of the cabinet. This would also reduce need to make improvements across the House of Commons. There could be science behind this controversial policy!

The main short-coming in this approach is using older, unverified data and setting subjective targets. To address the data issue we could carry out a research project amongst current MPs. But we cannot avoid subjective targets. In my defence, my “democracy equation” does what Frank Drake intended in 1961. It provides a structured framework around which to have a sensible debate.

I will finish with a few questions:

1. Did you find assumptions realistic?

2. Have I missed any obvious capabilities, such as leadership for example? I found this one too hard to pin down and so relied on communication skills as a proxy.

3. What do you think about my preference for STEM subjects?

4. How does a need for more STEM education compete with the need for more life experience?

5. Is it worth weighting the relative importance of some capabilities?

6. Should we weight cabinet member capabilities higher than back bench MPs?

7. Did any of the results surprise you?

Introduction

The UK’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan has the target of producing at least as much clean electricity as the UK consumes over a year. Clean electricity should primarily come from renewables (wind and solar), along with nuclear and other low-carbon technologies. No more than 5% should be produced by unabated fossil fuel sources, i.e. generation coupled with carbon capture or some other offset mechanism.

In terms of progress towards this target, Carbon Brief explained that by September 2025, the UK had run solely on clean power for 87 hours. Rounding this up to 100 hours for the year, this equates to just over 1% of total electricity use, leaving a long way to go by 2030.

I don’t want to dwell on the achievability of this target; the answer to that question is thankfully obvious. However, as I pointed out in my previous article discussing Kathryn Porter’s warnings about energy security, there is a more fundamental reason why the clean power target is unrealistic. It comes down to the basic physics of power generation. In this technical article, I will attempt to explain why this is the case.

I appreciate that this will be a more challenging read than some of my articles, but it is essential that more people understand that there are no shortcuts when it comes to power generation. Adding more renewables to the grid represents a major challenge in both economics and engineering. Ed Miliband can spend as much of our money as he likes, but he cannot side-step the principles of physics that underpin power generation and transmission. If more people understood this, then perhaps they would change their minds about supporting renewable energy.

In the next section, I will describe the physics behind power generation and, in particular, explain the difference between active and reactive power.

In the third section, I will talk through a typical blackout scenario to demonstrate how increasing renewables makes the grid less secure.

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The fundamental physics of power generation

Electromagnetic induction (the core principle)

Almost all large-scale electricity generation is based on Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction:

A changing magnetic flux through a conductor induces an electromotive force (voltage).

In a power station:

• A prime mover (steam turbine, gas turbine, water turbine) spins a rotor.

• The rotor carries a magnetic field (from field windings or permanent magnets).

• The magnetic field rotates relative to the stator (the fixed part of the generator), which has copper windings.

• This induces an alternating voltage (AC) in the stator windings.

The frequency of the generated electricity is directly tied to the rotational speed as follows:

where:

f = electrical frequency (50 Hz in the UK)

p = number of magnetic poles

n = rotational speed (rpm)

The key point here is that electrical frequency is a mechanical phenomenon in traditional generators.

Real (active) power vs reactive power

In power generation, there are two types of power:

1. Real (active) power

2. Reactive power

Active power does the actual work and is measured in watts (W). It represents the actual energy transferred to the grid to power homes and businesses. Physically, it corresponds to torque on the generator shaft, and it slows the rotor unless mechanical input increases.

Reactive power supports the electromagnetic fields, which are fundamental to the operation of induction motors, transformers and generators. It is measured in volt-ampere reactive (VAR) units and does not transfer net energy over time.

Instead, it builds and sustains magnetic and electric fields. Physically, reactive power oscillates energy back and forth between magnetic fields (inductors, motors, generators) and electric fields (capacitors). Without reactive power, AC systems collapse, which is the key point to keep in mind for later.

Why synchronous generators need reactive power

In a synchronous generator, the rotor magnet field is produced by direct current (DC) flow through the windings in the rotor. The size of the magnetic field strength determines the generator’s terminal voltage. This field requires reactive power exchange with the grid, i.e. it is not free energy, and it must be supported continuously.

By increasing the rotor excitation (DC current flow), the generator supplies VARs to raise the terminal voltage. Decreasing the excitation means that the generator absorbs VARs, and the voltage drops.

The key point is that reactive power controls voltage, not frequency.

Inertia is the key to stable energy generation

In layman’s terms, inertia represents the physical property of a rotating system that describes how hard it is to start and stop it rotating. In mathematical terms, it can be represented by the following equation:

where:

J = moment of inertia of turbines + generator rotor

⍵ = angular velocity

The moment of inertia describes how far the rotating mass is from the centre, so the further from the centre, the greater the inertia will be. Large synchronous generators store enormous kinetic energy due to their physical size and speed.

Electric grids must balance mechanical input (the rotation of the turbine) with the electrical output. If a large load suddenly connects, electrical torque instantly increases, but mechanical torque cannot change instantly. The energy deficit has to be supplied by rotor inertia. This causes a small frequency drop and allows time (seconds) for governors and controls to respond.

Without inertia, several problems arise:

• Frequency changes rapidly

• Protection systems trip

• Generators lose synchronism

• Cascading blackouts occur

Therefore, inertia acts as a shock absorber or energy buffer.

Why reactive power is essential

Reactive power is not optional because generators and transmission lines need magnetic fields. Transmission lines are inductive, so reactive power must be supplied continuously. This supports the transfer of energy between the electrical current flowing in the wires and the magnetic field that forms around the conductor. If reactive power is not supplied by the generator, then the voltage will decrease with distance.

Reactive power is also vital for load stability. Electric motors stall at low voltage, and stalled motors draw huge reactive current. This leads to voltage instability and ultimately to collapse. The April 2025 voltage collapse blackout in the Iberian Peninsula is a classic example of this situation in practice, when a single solar farm inverter failed. The problem was compounded by non-adherence to grid code standards. However, the fact remains that a single fault triggered a massive blackout across two countries with several fatalities.

As more renewable energy generators are added to the grid, the likelihood of cascading faults and blackouts increases significantly. More importantly, “black-starting” (restarting all generators from scratch) becomes exponentially harder due to the lack of a stable reference frequency.

Therefore, a power system is not just “wires and electrons”. It is a continent-scale rotating machine in which all synchronous generators are locked together at one frequency. Inertia couples them mechanically, and reactive power couples them electromagnetically.

In summary, inertia stabilises frequency by storing kinetic energy, while reactive power sustains the electromagnetic fields that allow generators to produce voltage and stay synchronised. Without either, an AC power system cannot remain stable.

Why synchronous generators are hard to replace

Synchronous generators simultaneously provide:

1. Energy

2. Inertia

3. Voltage reference

4. Reactive power

5. Fault current

6. Synchronising torque

Inverter-based resources can provide some of these, but not all at once, at least without compromise. Therefore, as more and more renewable energy is added to the grid at the expense of traditional synchronous power generation, the ability to maintain system stability necessarily decreases. We have limited solutions to this issue.

The first would be a massive expansion of nuclear power generation, which is synchronous.

The second solution is to maintain fossil fuel power plants, to support grid stability as well as provide backup (for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining). Building sufficient nuclear capacity by 2030 is impossible. Retaining fossil fuel generators would negate the plan’s objectives without considerable expenditure on carbon capture or offsetting.

Anatomy of a grid scale blackout

So far, this has been a theoretical discussion, so let’s consider how a grid-scale blackout might happen in practice. I’ll base it on a credible modern grid scenario, but without tying it to one specific incident. In this way, we can focus on cause and effect.

Stage 0 – Normal operation (everything looks fine)

• System frequency: 50.0 Hz

• Generation ≈ demand

• Mix:

  • Some synchronous generation online

  • High penetration of inverter-based wind/solar

• System inertia: lower than historical norms

• Voltage controlled by a mix of:

  • synchronous generators,

  • SVCs (thyristor-based devices that provide dynamic reactive power compensation) and STATCOMs (more advanced devices based on power electronics).

Nothing appears abnormal to consumers.

Stage 1 – The initiating event (seconds)

A credible single fault occurs:

• A large generator trips (e.g. 1–2 GW).

• OR a major transmission line becomes faulty and disconnects from the grid.

• OR lightning causes a short circuit that is cleared by protection, such that the faulty section is isolated.

This is normal; grids are designed to survive this.

Stage 2 – Immediate power imbalance (milliseconds)

Suddenly:

and physics kicks in instantly:

• Electrical torque > mechanical torque.

• Synchronous rotors begin to reduce rotation speed.

• Frequency begins falling.

No controls have acted yet; this is pure Newtonian mechanics.

Stage 3 – Rate of Change of Frequency (RoCoF) spike (first 200–500 ms)

Because inertia is low:

• Frequency plummets.

• RoCoF exceeds safe thresholds (e.g. -0.5 to -1.5 Hz/s)

Consequences:

• Loss-of-mains protection activates on embedded generators.

• Some wind and solar inverters trip and go offline.

• Continuous Heat and Power (CHP) gas turbines disconnect because they have built-in protection that monitors frequency.

Therefore, the generation falls further, worsening the imbalance. We enter a critical positive feedback loop where one generator loss leads to others, and so on, in a cascade.

Stage 4 – Inverter control stress (0.5–2 seconds)

Inverter-based resources (such as wind and solar farms) react:

• Phase-locked loops struggle to track frequency.

• Current limits activate to protect semiconductors.

• Some inverters momentarily reduce output.

• Others trip entirely due to grid code protection (the set of technical rules and requirements that govern connection to and operation on the electricity transmission/distribution system)

At the same time, synthetic inertia responds, but too late to stop the rate of change of frequency. It does help increase the frequency nadir (i.e. prevent the frequency dropping lower than it otherwise would), but cannot prevent the initial collapse.

Stage 5 – Frequency thresholds crossed (2–10 seconds)

System frequency falls through key thresholds:

• 49.5 Hz - Primary frequency response fully deployed

• 49.0 Hz - Industrial motors draw more current

• 48.8 Hz - Some generators trip

• 48.5 Hz - Automatic load shedding (customers being disconnected) begins

But load shedding is staged, not instantaneous. Frequency keeps falling faster than shedding can help.

Stage 6 – Voltage collapse begins (parallel failure)

While frequency is falling, voltage problems emerge:

• Induction motors slow down and draw more reactive power.

• Transmission lines consume reactive power.

• Tripped generators no longer provide reactive power.

• Voltage drops locally.

Low voltage causes:

• More motor stalling.

• Even higher reactive current.

• Further voltage collapse, i.e. another positive feedback loop.

This is now a frequency-voltage coupled failure.

Stage 7 – Generator loss of synchronism (seconds to tens of seconds)

Some remaining synchronous generators experience:

• Excessive rotor angle swings, i.e. the rotor frequency becomes out of step with the grid. Therefore, the rotor frequency becomes unstable.

• Loss of synchronising torque, which would otherwise tend to bring the generator back into synchronisation.

• Pole slipping, whereby the generator gets out of step with the grid by a full electrical cycle, causing mechanical stress.

Protection acts and generators disconnect to protect shafts and turbines.

Each trip removes inertia, real power and reactive power to the point that the system is now unrecoverable without separation.

Stage 8 – System separation (islanding)

To protect what remains, transmission protection splits the grid into islands. The outcome is that some islands have too much load, leading to frequency collapse and blackout. Other islands have too much generation, leading to over-frequency and trips. Only islands with sufficient inertia, balanced load and strong voltage support remain energised. Most do not.

Stage 9 – Blackout state (minutes)

Large areas are now dark with:

• Frequency is undefined (no reference).

• Voltage is absent.

• Supervisory control systems are partially blind.

• Telecoms are running on batteries.

Inverter-based generators cannot restart on their own because they have no voltage or frequency reference. The grid is now electrically dead metal.

Stage 10 – Black start (hours to days)

Recovery is slow and manual:

1. Black-start units (such as hydro, diesel and gas) energise.

2. Small islands are formed.

3. Voltage is built up.

4. Frequency is established.

5. Loads added cautiously.

6. Islands synchronised together.

Restoration speed depends on the availability of synchronous plant, operator skill and communication reliability.

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Conclusion

The national grid is a highly coupled system that depends on maintaining both voltage and frequency stability. Introducing increasing amounts of low-inertia power generation, such as wind, solar and batteries, is making the grid less stable. This is unavoidable unless Ed Miliband knows something about physics that I have missed.

Remarkably, the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan is simultaneously unachievable and undesirable!

Worse still, as Kathryn Porter highlighted in her excellent article, “2025: the year energy security threats began to manifest”, investment in new renewable power generation is being prioritised over maintaining the existing boring grid infrastructure, such as transformers.

This combination of factors means that grid-scale blackouts are increasingly inevitable. The question is not if, just when. Make sure you are prepared, and as Wittgenstein apparently said:

To understand is to know what to do.

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In her latest article 2025: the year energy security threats began to manifest, Kathryn Porter provides a sobering account of systemic failures across Europe, from near-misses on the British grid to full-scale blackouts in Iberia. To understand why her assessment demands the immediate attention of policymakers we have to recognise Porter’s unique vantage point.

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The Credibility of the Messenger

Kathryn Porter is not just a commentator. She is a multidisciplinary expert with a background in complex physics and high-stakes finance. Holding a Master’s degree in Physics and an MBA, her career spans senior roles at Deloitte, Barclays Capital, EDF Trading, and Centrica. With this combination of scientific literacy and financial expertise, Porter can dissect the energy market not just as a series of policy goals, but as a physical system governed by engineering limits and an economic asset governed by risk management.

Furthermore, as an associate member of the Executive Council for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies, Porter is deeply embedded in the UK’s policy infrastructure. Crucially, she operates as an independent consultant, which she notes allows her to speak “far more openly than most” because she has no investors or corporate masters to appease. When Porter identifies a threat, it is rooted in a career spent managing multi-million euro revenue streams and complex commodity exposures.

Systematic Forecasting Failures: The NESO Crisis

A central pillar of Porter’s critique is the alarming inaccuracy of National Energy System Operator (NESO) demand forecasts. She highlights a near-blackout on 8 January 2025, where balancing the market cost £23 million! This is ten times the norm and as Porter explained, due in large part to forecasting failures.

Her analysis of NESO data reveals forecast errors as high as 22.7% of demand, with absolute errors reaching 5.7 GW. To put this in perspective, such an error is four times the reserve level NESO is required to hold to protect against the loss of the grid’s largest in-feed (according to the Security and Quality of Supply Standard - SQSS).

Porter warns that while NESO has instituted audits, there is no evidence of improvement, suggesting that growing system complexity is overwhelming current forecasting capabilities. For policymakers, the message is clear: the “brain” of the British energy system is increasingly unable to predict the needs of the body it controls.

Infrastructure and the “End-of-Life” Mirage

The article exposes a dangerous disconnect between regulatory focus and physical asset health. The March 2025 Heathrow blackout was traced to a transformer that was 57 years old. Despite its age, National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) had assigned it a very low “end-of-life” (EoL) score of 12.7 out of 100, meaning it was treated as nearly new!

Porter argues that Ofgem’s prioritisation of “load” (new connections for net zero) over “non-load” (maintenance of legacy infrastructure) has encouraged network operators to neglect the backbone of the grid. With 30% of switchgear and nearly two-thirds of overhead lines now over 45 years old, the UK is entering a high-risk window where elderly assets are failing faster than they are being replaced.

The Inverter Problem and the Iberian Collapse

The April 2025 Iberian blackout serves as a “canary in the coal mine” for highly renewable grids. Porter identifies the root cause as a widespread failure of inverter-based generators (wind and solar) to comply with grid codes during a voltage disturbance.

She provides a sophisticated technical critique of the industry’s reliance on VArs (Volt-Ampere reactives), the measurement unit for reactive power. This type of power maintains voltage and magnetic fields in the power system. VArs are supplied by large rotating machines such as synchronous generators (providing system inertia), and electronic systems called inverters. The latter convert the direct current output by renewables into the alternating current required by the grid. Technically, most modern wind turbines generate variable frequency alternating current, but this must be rectified into direct current and then inverted back to alternating current at a stable frequency.

Unlike traditional plants that provide grid support automatically via electromagnetic coupling, inverters must “divert current away from powering loads” to support the grid, which can lead to catastrophic frequency collapses. Porter warns that “grid-forming” power electronics are not yet a proven solution at scale, leaving the system vulnerable as traditional inertia is phased out.

The Fiscal Dead-End

Perhaps most critically for policymakers, Porter links energy security to the deteriorating sovereign debt landscape. With UK debt near 96% of GDP and borrowing costs rising above those of many G7 peers, the financial capacity to “spend whatever it takes” to keep the lights on is evaporating.

She critiques the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as an inflationary tool that raises the cost of foundational inputs like steel and electricity without solving the core issue of high energy costs. This creates a “debt trap” where red tape and high energy prices strangle the growth needed to service the very debt used to fund the energy transition.

Why Her Article Demands Action

Policymakers should take this article seriously because it demonstrates that energy security is a multidisciplinary failure. It is not just a lack of wind or sun; it is a failure of:

• Engineering: Aging transformers and the loss of physical inertia.

• Forecasting: Chronic errors that exceed safety margins.

• Economics: A regulatory framework (Ofgem) that disincentivises basic maintenance.

• Governance: The delegation of authority to arm’s length bodies that have lost “operational control”.

Porter concludes that the current direction of travel is physically and financially constrained. Ignoring these “hard physical realities” in favour of political targets like Clean Power 2030 risks not just economic stagnation, but actual fatalities, as seen in the 167 excess deaths following the Iberian blackout.

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Summary

Relying on current energy policy is like driving a vintage bus at 100mph while the dashboard instruments are malfunctioning. We are so focused on reaching the “Net Zero” destination that we have ignored the fact that the tyres (infrastructure) are 50 years old, the speedometer (forecasting) is lying to us, and we have replaced the traditional, reliable engine (synchronous generation) with digital motors that stop working the moment the road gets bumpy. Eventually, the laws of physics will override the driver’s intentions.

In a dramatic announcement today in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP announced plans for a mega service station in the Orkney Islands. This will be constructed as part of plans to boost economic development in the Northern Isles. Finlay Campbell, Scottish Minister for Regional Equity, released the following statement:

For too long the people of Orkney have suffered serious inequalities in terms of their access to convenient and cheap fuel. The transport infrastructure of the islands has lagged sadly behind our major cities. This massive investment of £500m will provide a tremendous boost to the island economy. Moreover, the new service station will attract drivers from all over Scotland, as the fuel will be heavily subsidised to ensure that it is a commercial success, as well as enhancing social justice.

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Many people were caught completely off-guard by the announcement and are already asking searching questions. I caught up with the Minister shortly after the announcement and asked him: “Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to build the service station much closer to centres of population, and more easily accessible by motorway?” The Minister’s reply was scathing:

There are already many service stations on our mainland motorway network, but these are simply not accessible to the Orkney Islanders. How is that fair? And don’t forget, this investment will encourage many more tourists to visit the Orkneys. As well as cheap fuel, they will enjoy a range of other facilities, such as a 500-cover restaurant and gift shop, serving locally sourced produce. No-one should be surprised by this announcement. Scottish Independence and Regional Equity are the corner stones of our manifesto.

Later on, I met with Moira Mackenzie, chair of the Friends of Orkney community group. She said “All well and good, but where is it going to go? And how will people, particularly tourists, get here when there are limited ferries from the mainland?” I put this question to Campbell, who responded in his characteristic bombastic fashion:

Of course it will be sited on Orkney Mainland! Anywhere else would be completely ridiculous. Regarding access for tourists, I am pleased to announce that as well as the large investment in the service station itself, we are also going to inject more capital into the ferry services, with a multi-million-pound investment in new ferries, port facilities and training for staff. This investment will unlock many times more investment from commercial companies in a whole series of Public Private Finance Initiatives.

He also outlined plans for new coastal service stations at each ferry port, to remain on standby for those times when ferries could not depart. This would mean that anyone coming to the islands for fuel would never be caught out. I asked about the economics of this approach, but he brushed this aside, claiming that the additional investment would pay back many times over. He explained “This investment will increase tourist numbers dramatically according to model forecasts made by the boffins in my department”.

However, many welcomed the announcement. One such is Finn Leslie, CEO of the Islands Fuel Association, the advocacy group aiming to end island fuel poverty. He made it clear to me that this investment should be welcomed. He explained that the need to build on farmland would be balanced by the many benefits of the scheme, “including but not limited to cheaper fuel and no more queuing”. Farmers would be dealt with fairly since they would be offered large annual rental payments in compensation. We tried contacting the Orkney Farmers Association for a comment, but no-one was available.

Another vote of confidence came from Erin Myles, president of the Orkney Tourist Board. She welcomed how the new service station would serve not just the islanders but would attract tourists from the mainland and all across the world. “The new service station is designed to complement the rugged Orkney landscape and will provide a positive addition to the traditional heritage assets on the islands. Isn’t it about time that we Orcadians had our own Tebay?”

However, there has been a rather embarrassing leak from inside the Department of Regional Equality. A reliable source told me:

Many members of the board voiced serious concerns about the difficulty of accessing the new service station by ferry since the services are frequently disrupted by bad weather. On average, ferries only sail about 30% of the time, and actual crossings can be affected in unpredictable ways. The minister addressed these concerns by pointing to the public funds that would ensure the service station remained viable, guaranteeing 10s of local island jobs.

When I raised this issue with the minister, Campbell explained that part of the investment in the new ferry services would require larger ferries with double the capacity of the older ferries. This meant that when the ferries did cross, they would be able to carry many more vehicles. He explained:

Everyone understands that ferries sail intermittently but by providing larger ferries the average number of vehicles transported will be increased. Anyone claiming not to understand this is wilfully ignoring the consensus position on maritime logistics. I have no time for ferry transport sceptics! We are already in the process of winding down our fishing fleet through our Zero Net policy, so this maritime investment, with appropriate retraining, will completely revitalise our hard-pressed fishing communities.

So, it seems that this scheme is going ahead, at least for now, despite many objections. Whether the Minister can convince the sceptics remains to be seen but we’ll be keeping a close eye on this as we have heard from our source that this is unlikely to be the last island-based mega service station.

Post script

If you got this far thank you! Hopefully you will have realised that this story is a metaphor for our ruinous Net Zero policy. It is intended to demonstrate the futility of trying to run an economy on heavily subsidised and unreliable intermittent power.

In this post (which I may update from time to time) I have collates some interesting charts and data points concerning our climate. This data is easy to find if you are interested, but it rarely appears in the mainstream media. Everything I present comes from official sources, many from the US and UK governments and research bodies, including peer reviewed scientific papers.

The point of this collection is to stimulate questions, such as:

Q. How does this data fit in with the mainstream media presentation of climate change issues?

and

Q. How effective is global spending on climate change?

I hope this may be useful as a resource to share with people who are concerned about the climate, and possibly to the extent of feeling there is an “emergency”. Whenever I speak to anyone of this view the answer is always:

I just don’t have time to do the research to check whether you are right so I’ll have to rely on what the BBC/Guardian/CNN is telling me.

Hopefully, this data resource will provide a useful starting point to help people see the wood for the trees, without having to do their own detailed research.

Please add your thoughts in the comments including suggestions for other charts and data that could be included. If do you have suggestions, please provide links to original sources.

I have tried to credit as many people and organisations as possible that originally alerted me to the specific charts and data. If I have missed anyone, please let me know and I’ll be happy to add.

Carbon Dioxide

Variation of carbon dioxide level over time

Source: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over geological timescales

Figure 25 in the paper ‘Arkansas and Climate Change’ by the CO2 Coalition shows historical carbon dioxide concentrations:

Sources:

1. Berner, RA, Kothavala, Z, 2001a: GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 Over Phanerozoic Time. American Journal of Science 301, 182–204. https://doi.org/10.2475/ajs.301.2.182

2. Berner, RA, Kothavala, Z, 2001b: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology – GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 Over Phanerozoic Time. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, Data Contribution Series # 2002-051, NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, CO, USA. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=noaa-forcing-5778

Impact of different carbon dioxide levels on life on earth

• < ~50–100 ppm: Photosynthesis stops entirely. Plants cannot produce enough carbohydrates to sustain growth, leading to starvation. Respiration (CO₂ release) outpaces fixation, causing rapid tissue breakdown and eventual death within days to weeks, depending on reserves.

  • Source: https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/crop-management/co2-supplement.html

• 100–150 ppm: Minimal or zero net photosynthesis; plants shift to respiration-only mode, depleting energy stores. Growth halts, leaves yellow (chlorosis), and vulnerability to pests/diseases increases. Crop yields can drop dramatically (e.g., 50–100% reduction).

  • Source: https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/crop-management/co2-supplement.html

• < 200 ppm: Prolonged low CO₂ (as in glacial periods) stunts overall plant evolution and diversity, reducing biomass and altering ecosystems. Modern plants evolved under ~300–400 ppm baseline; dips below 150 ppm could end terrestrial plant life as we know it by halting the carbon cycle.

  • Source: https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03441.x

• > 5,000 ppm: OSHA Permissible Exposure Limits (PEL) for 8-hour time-weighted average, aligned with NIOSH recommendations.

  • Source: https://www.osha.gov/chemicaldata/183

• > 40,000 ppm: NIOSH Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health (IDLH) value, based on acute inhalation toxicity studies in humans.

  • Source: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html

UK emissions as a proportion of global emissions

UK emissions = 0.7% of global total

Sources:

1. Estimated total UK net territorial emissions for 2024 = 371 MtCO2e. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e4060df356a2dc0e39b4cd/2024-provisional-greenhouse-gas-emissions-statistics-statistical-release.pdf

2. Estimate global emissions for 2024 = 53206.4 MtCO2e. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

Climate change

Global mean surface temperature

A comparison of historical global temperature anomalies (from NetZero Watch) compared to average diurnal temperature variations across continents.

Source: Berkeley Earth, https://berkeleyearth.org/

Sea level rise since 1992

Source: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php

Rising sea levels and the Maldive Islands 1969-2019

• 53% of islands gained land area

• 25% eroded

• 22% remained stable

In summary, 75% of the islands gained land area or remained stable

Source: Coral reef island shoreline change and the dynamic response of the freshwater lens, Huvadhoo Atoll, Maldives, Carruthers et al., 19 June 2023

Post-glacial sea level rise

The following chart shows sea level rise since the end of the last glacial episode based on data from Fleming et al. 1998, Fleming 2000, and Milne et al. 2005. These papers collected data from various reports and adjusted them for subsequent vertical geologic motions, primarily those associated with post-glacial continental and hydro-isostatic rebound.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

Polar ice measurements

Source: Paul Homewood, 25 Sep 2025

Source: Paul Homewood, 7^th May 2025

United States annual heat wave index

Figure 7 in the paper ‘Arkansas and Climate Change’ by the CO2 Coalition shows how the contiguous US annual heat wave index has varied since 1890:

Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency 2025a: Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves

Drought

From NetZero Watch.

Source: Hao et al. 2014

Hurricanes (ACE)

ACE is accumulated cyclone energy, a measure of the total energy expended by hurricanes each season. From NetZero Watch.

Source:

1. Maue (2011)

2. As updated

Precipitation

From NetZero Watch.

Source: Koutsoyiannis 2020

Snow Cover

From NetZero Watch.

Source: Koutsoyiannis 2020

Impact on humans and the environment

Population growth, births and deaths

The following chart shows a combination of two charts from Our World in Data:

• ‘Population by World Region’ shows historical population growth with projected growth for the main continents based on the UN Medium scenario. The data sources are given as HYDE (2023), Gapminder (2022) and UN WPP (2024). Historical country data is shown based on today’s geographical borders.

• ‘Births and deaths’ are overlaid and gives the historical and future projections for births and deaths world-wide. The source is given as UN, World Population Prospects (2024).

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth

Annual number of deaths from natural disasters

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters

Flooding and deaths from flooding 2000 to 2024

From the paper ‘Quantifying the climate crisis: a data-driven framework using response indicators for evidence-based adaptation policies’ by Gianluca Alimonti and Luigi Mariani, the following chart displays 25 years of flood related data. In this case the chart shows the estimated annual inundated area (Joshi et al., 2024) and number of flood disaster events (EMDAT, 1988) left axis; deaths from flooding (EMDAT, 1988) right axis.

Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2025.2571708

Worldwide grain production

This chart is from the CO2 Coalition and shows the variation of grain production with CO₂ level:

Source:

1. https://co2coalition.org/facts/more-co2-helps-to-feed-more-people-worldwide-2/

   1. CO2: Boden TA, Marland G, Andres RJ (2016) Global CO2 emissions from Fossil-Fuel Burning Cement Manufacture and Gas Flaring 1751-2013. CDIAC,

   2. Temp: HadCRUT4 (2017) The Hadley Climate Research Unit (HadCRUT4) annual global mean surface temperature dataset

Polar bear population changes

The following chart is from the report “The state of the polar bear 2021” by Susan Crockford:

Source: https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/02/StateofPolarBears-2021.pdf

The Great Barrier Reef

The following chart is a composite of coral cover data in three major Great Barrier reef regions, as measured by the AIMS Long Term Monitoring Program.

Source: State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024, Peter Ridd

Climate economics

Global climate finance 2011-22

Therefore, the 10-year spend is approximately 3.6 trillion dollars.

Source: https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2023/

Future climate finance required

For comparison with the previous chart, the future annual finance required is approximately 10 trillion dollars per annum on average:

Source: https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2023/

Global energy substitution

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution

UK Electricity Generation Costs

Figure 2 of the UK government report ‘Electricity Generation Costs 2023’ presents the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) for gas power (CCGT) compared to offshore wind, onshore wind and large-scale solar for projects commissioning in 2025 (in 2021 prices). In case you haven’t come across LCOE before you can find out more about it in my article Why the Renewables Industry Loves LCOE.

Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6556027d046ed400148b99fe/electricity-generation-costs-2023.pdf

Natural gas commodity prices in Europe and the United States

The following chart, from Statistica, shows prices from 1980 to 2024, with a forecast for 2025 and 2026 (in U.S. dollars per million British thermal units):

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/252791/natural-gas-prices/

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita vs energy use

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita-vs-gdp-per-capita

In my previous article, A Review of ‘Energy Abundance’ the SDP’s Green Paper on Energy, I concentrated on understanding the switch from a global market-driven energy system (albeit with massive state intervention) to a system managed explicitly by the state with the explicit goal of sourcing energy at home at lowest cost. I found a lot to like, including:

1. A renaissance for nuclear power as the core of our energy independence.

2. A ‘nothing off the table’ approach to power generation, opening up opportunities for any technology that can provide cheap, reliable baseload power.

3. The end of renewables for grid scale generation. Although there would be nothing to stop companies and consumers having their own renewables, such as rooftop solar, in practice this wouldn’t be economic for the next reason.

4. A fixed (and low price) for power of 10p per kWh, which would reduce in real terms over time due to inflation.

5. A complete rejection of the underlying drivers for renewables, i.e. acceptance that natural climate change can explain most of the climate change we see.

What I struggled with was the underlying policy mechanism to make a fixed price possible once we have transitioned to this new model for energy supply. Specifically, the author Matthew Kirtley and his colleague Alastair Mellon, call this new approach the ‘Energy Credit’ system. This ties the supply of energy to the Bank of England’s and the government’s tradition financial controls. I.e. Energy Credit will be managed alongside monetary policy (interest rates and quantitative easy) and fiscal policy (tax, spending and borrowing).

However, given the need to get this right (and we’ll probably only get one shot the way the economy is going) it is worth investing time to understand Energy Credit better. In my first article I listed 11 questions at the end, some of which might sound naïve to anyone with a better understanding of economics than myself. However, I sent a copy of my article to the Matthew, and he was kind enough to take me seriously and provide comprehensive answers.

I’ll go over his responses later in the article but first, for economic numpties like me, I have done a bit of digging, using the usual AI tools, and come up with a simplistic primer to help better understand Matthew’s explanations. If you are already up to speed on this topic, please feel free to skip to the next section ‘Answering my questions on the Energy Credit System’.

Overview of UK Economic Management

The UK government, in coordination with independent institutions like the Bank of England (BoE), uses a mix of tools to influence the economy, including inflation (the rate at which prices rise) and the value of sterling. These tools fall into two main categories: monetary policy (focused on money supply and interest rates) and fiscal policy (government spending and taxation). They work together but are managed separately to promote stability. The goal is often to keep inflation around 2% (target set by the UK Treasury) while supporting growth and employment.

Bond markets (including government bonds and corporate bonds) play a key role in funding government activities, especially when spending exceeds tax revenues (a budget deficit). Let’s break this down step by step.

Monetary Policy - Controlling Money Supply and Interest Rates

Monetary policy is primarily handled by the Bank of England, which operates independently from the government to avoid political interference. The BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets eight times a year to set policy based on economic data and uses two key tools:

• Interest Rates (Bank Rate): The BoE sets the base interest rate. Raising rates makes borrowing more expensive, which cools spending and borrowing, helping to control inflation by reducing demand for goods and services. Lowering rates does the opposite, stimulating the economy.

• Quantitative Easing (QE): The BoE creates new money electronically to buy government bonds (gilts) from the market. This injects cash into the economy, lowering long-term interest rates and encouraging lending/investment. It’s used when rates are already low (e.g. post the 2008 financial crisis or during COVID-19). The reverse, Quantitative Tightening (QT), sells bonds to reduce money supply.

Impact on inflation

The MPC targets 2% inflation (measured by the 12-month change in the Consumer Prices Index) using a “forward guidance” approach, signalling future moves to influence expectations. If inflation deviates, they adjust policy to bring it back. MPC performance in setting rates has been variable and generally seen as poor in recent years. This highlights a significant reason why a new approach tied to physical generation capacity may be a good idea.

Impact on Sterling

Sterling floats freely on foreign exchange markets, so its value is determined by supply and demand from global investors. Higher UK interest rates attract foreign capital (seeking better returns), strengthening the pound. Lower rates can weaken it, making exports cheaper but imports (like oil and gas) more expensive, which can feed into inflation. Hence, if we have energy independence then a key downside of lower rates goes away.

Fiscal Policy: Government Spending and Taxation

Fiscal policy is set by the UK government (via the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury) and approved by Parliament. It’s outlined in annual Budgets and Spring Statements. Unlike monetary policy, it’s more political and focuses on the overall budget. Its key tools are as follows:

• Government Spending: Increases in spending (mainly on infrastructure) boosts demand and growth but can fuel inflation if the economy is already hot. Cuts do the reverse. Incidentally, not all spending has a positive influence, since increased spending on the NHS and welfare can severely reduce growth.

• Taxation: Raising taxes (mainly income tax, VAT or corporation tax) reduces disposable income, curbing spending and lowering inflation. Lower taxes stimulate it. For example, during recessions, “expansionary” fiscal policy (more spending, less tax) supports recovery, as seen in the 2020s furlough schemes. Whether this was in fact a sound policy is open to much debate!

Link to Inflation and Sterling

Expansionary fiscal policy can overheat the economy (driving inflation) or widen deficits, pressuring sterling if investors worry about sustainability. The government aims for a “balanced budget” over the economic cycle, guided by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for independent forecasts. However, the OBR is coming under increasing scrutiny as its historical forecasts are often revised by large amounts.

Fiscal and monetary policies interact. If fiscal stimulus is too aggressive, the BoE might raise rates to counteract inflation, creating tension between the two.

Bond Markets: Funding Government Spending

When government spending exceeds revenues (i.e. is in deficit), the UK borrows by issuing gilts (government bonds) through the UK Debt Management Office (DMO), part of HM Treasury. This is how bond markets “support” spending without printing money directly. The market works as follows:

• Issuance: The DMO auctions gilts (short-term: under 5 years; long-term: up to 50 years) to investors like pension funds, banks, and foreign governments. Buyers lend money to the government in exchange for regular interest (coupon) payments and the principal back at maturity.

• Market Operation: Gilts trade on the secondary market (e.g. via London Stock Exchange). Prices move inversely to yields (interest rates). If demand is high (safe haven buying), prices rise and yields fall, making borrowing cheaper for the government.

Bonds therefore play an important role in the economy:

• Funding deficits without immediate tax hikes.

• Influences broader rates: Gilt yields benchmark mortgage and corporate rates.

• BoE involvement: Through QE, the BoE buys gilts, keeping yields low to support spending indirectly.

High deficits can raise yields if investors demand higher returns for perceived risk (e.g., inflation eroding bond value), increasing borrowing costs. Therefore, the DMO tries to manage debt sustainably, targeting a mix of short/long-term gilts. As of the time of writing gross debt is over 100% of Gross Domestic Product and bond yields are rising. Weak investor confidence in gilts can sell off pounds, devaluing sterling, which is what we are seeing today.

Tying this to our current energy policy

Rather than ‘fine-tuning’ the economy on a daily basis, UK economic management relies on loosely rules-based approaches. Monetary policy handles short-term inflation and sterling fluctuations, while fiscal policy sets long-term priorities. Bond markets provide flexibility for borrowing but enforce discipline via yields. Challenges like energy shocks, pandemics, or wars, test this system, often requiring coordination.

Imported energy prices are hugely important to the UK’s economic performance (far more than in many other advanced economies) because the UK is a large net energy importer and energy costs feed very quickly into consumer prices, business costs, and government spending.

Energy is a fundamental input to almost every sector. When imported energy costs rise:

1. Manufacturing costs rise

2. Food production and transport get more expensive

3. Services (both public and private) face higher operating costs

Firms then pass these higher costs on, creating broad-based inflation as well as putting pressure on government spending, since public services are a major consumer of energy.

Answering my questions on the Energy Credit System

I can now turn to my questions and Matthew Kirtley’s answers.

Q1. Why 10p per kWh specifically?

10p/kWh happens to be currently roughly the cheapest grid electricity unit price going worldwide, which makes it a good target from a political perspective of electricity price correction.

But the true reason is somewhat more arbitrary: it’s a base ten figure. Our energy credit system effectively wishes to maintain this nominal fix forever, and establish an identity relationship between the sterling and entitlements to grid electricity. This means ease of convertibility for laypeople in the long-term is quite important for psychological buy-in.

This seems like a reasonable rationale.

Q2. How can the state guarantee this price forever, especially if global fuel prices or inflation rises.

Once the energy credit fix is established, the value of the sterling on global markets will become enmeshed with the state’s ability to guarantee the provision of energy - along with British state borrowing costs.

This is deliberate. The big problem facing energy provision by the state is the temptation to procrastinate on capital expenditures to expand supply (as part of the public sector’s general tendency to “deprivilege” capital spending in general). The energy credit regime means that an acute financial and economic penalty is felt by future governments who attempt to replicate this bad habit.

Critically, it also bakes in incentives for states to lean towards energy autarky, to remove exposure to global fuel price fluctuations and arbitrage.

As conceived, an energy system running largely off of imports would collapse under the energy credit - the sterling outflows for fuel that consumers do not have exposure to the price mechanism for would be ruinous. It demands domestic energy, and at maximum efficiency.

This is why the energy credit’s implementation must come at the end of our proposals, not before. It requires cheap, domestically sourced power - and leveraging maximum energy density sources.

This now makes much more sense. I better understand how the energy credit system is ‘integrated’ in economic policy setting. Unfortunately, I also appreciate now how novel this approach is and therefore how challenging it would be to implement. However, the system would not be introduced until the end of the energy independence attainment period (10 years). Therefore, there should be time to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses, and for it to be fine-tuned.

Q3. If the price of energy is fixed, it will effectively become cheaper over time due to inflation, and presumably at some point it would be effectively free?

This is exactly right. The energy credit is incredibly profound: it changes the incentive structure for economic management.

If the nominal price of energy is fixed and the state is required to maintain the credibility of the system to avoid fiscal ruin, the state must build generation capacity (along with ongoing investment in transmission/distribution infra) to match the demand forecast of the upcoming period.

That demand forecast will be a function of inflation. Which means that the monetary/fiscal policymaking that determines inflation suddenly has a new constraint: it needs to produce a long-term rate of inflation whose consequent demand forecast can be met by coming supply growth.

This “physicalist” constraint means that continued inflation is tied to improved productivity/affordability of supply. The system will always break even. In the case energy productivity/affordability falls, it conversely accepts deflationary periods.

This is all wedded to the core intuition behind the system: an economy where key metrics represent productive capacity and real value.

I strongly welcome the idea of tying economic policy to something physical and so fundamental to modern society. It harks back to the way the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 tied the value of the US dollar to the value of gold. However, like Bretton Woods, the energy credit system requires policy discipline and that’s not a quality we see in much evidence these days.

Q4. A related question, won’t this encourage more waste over time?

Absolutely. But we should consider what the problem often is with waste: its externalities and its opportunity costs.

In a system backed by cheap fission, wasteful use of energy doesn’t impose much in the way of an opportunity cost and the externality in terms of fissile by-products is (literally) microscopic.

And, critically, many wasteful activities can often conceal value creation. A lot of innovation has its birth in wasteful activities that were incredibly low-productivity, but we discovered interesting ways to scale. Or we didn’t realise were value-creating until we stopped them.

I found this to be a particularly illuminating answer. With cheap energy, think about all the many innovations that could be explored so much more cheaply than is possible today. Some might argue that this would increase CO₂ emissions. However, an emphasis on nuclear would not increase emissions proportionately, and there would be nothing inherent preventing concerned citizens and organisations from continuing to practice energy efficiency.

The other point to bear in mind is that the global population is predicted to peak around 2085. The consequences of this will be profound and challenging in ways we have hardly begun to think about. When we have a rapidly diminishing population thoughts of curtailing CO₂ emissions will make no sense whatsoever. In fact, we might well face the prospect of plummeting CO₂ emissions, with the consequent threat to life on earth.

Q5. Alternatively, will this encourage more technology investment since the cost-of-capital reduces because energy is always a significant factor?

It will encourage innovation in energy-intensive industries and energy-intensive technology that improves labour productivity significantly.

Yes. If only a small fraction of the ‘waste’ goes towards supporting innovation, then it becomes another aspect of investment in the future. When you start to think about this in detail, it’s an incredibly exciting idea and completely counter to today’s thinking constrained by ever increasing energy prices. And that is not to mention how much more secure the new system would be.

Q6. Why wouldn’t the price be impacted by major system failures, such as a nuclear power plant going off-line, or several if a major flaw was discovered in a specific reactor type?

This makes long-term planning an essential requirement for the energy credit regime to work. The planners will need to ensure use of a mix of reactors to prevent consolidation of risk. In general, we’ve been quite successful at making sure gigawatt-scale reactors are reliable and safe: there’s naturally so many eyes on each projects at every level of development.

Fair point.

Q7. If Central Energy is a monopoly, how can it guarantee a high-quality, efficient service? This is not something public bodies are well-known for.

Ultimately, it will require firm political leadership to hold Central Energy to account and ensure continuity of service provision. And critically, since the sterling’s value on global markets is now linked to continuity of provision, signalling this becomes a continuous incentive for the state.

For historical parallel, the CEGB is a good illustration of succeeding in expanding generation and transmission capacity (3% p.a. for 30+ years for the former) at a rate that was well-regarded by the public. The main area I have concern over is regional distribution, which has always been where weaknesses in quality seem prone to emerging. I would consider this to be one of the big challenges facing any government that seeks to impose our system.

Agreed.

Q8. Specifically, the Bank of England does not have a good record for controlling inflation. How would they perform better taking on the additional responsibility for adding energy to the monetary equation?

The BoE’s remit is broadly to hold inflation at sub-2%, but it also has vague commitments to macroeconomic stability thrown in there too. Our system is significantly more mechanical: what level of inflation produces a demand forecast that we can provide supply for at a lifetime break-even price in the next five years?

In our system, we’ve effectively removed the rationale for BoE independence: the government manipulating interest rates for short-term electoral and economic boosts that undermine long-term price stability. By contrast, the government has to make sure the demand forecast can be addressed in our regime, or else sterling and bond markets become extremely unfavourable. In practice, I believe this opens the door for a centralised fiscal/monetary/energy planning body to rationalise a lot of governmental economic decision-making.

Looking at our current crop of politicians in government, one can see both the necessity for a system like this and the challenge to get it implemented. This is a key reason why I would like there to be a serious conversation between Reform UK and the SDP on this green paper. We need a pragmatic approach.

Q9. A state-controlled enterprise would be subject to future changes in government policy, whereas this strategy requires a long term multi-decadal commitment and stability. I.e., how do we prevent such a body being mis-directed by a future government more focussed on ideology than economics?

Sadly, this is the core challenge facing bold decisions in democratic governments. I don’t feign an answer at this juncture. But ultimately, we have created a system whose disincentives for energy and fiscal profligacy are so acute that the political capital burned on an ideological crusade would be too acute for most to bear.

I am not sure about this. Watching Ed Miliband on his ideological crusade, I see no sign at all of either himself or his colleagues recognising the ruinous nature of their policies. The problem is that it has been impossible, until quite recently, to have a rational discussion about climate change and Net Zero. It does feel like the Overton window has shifted significantly just looking at Bill Gates’ recent article Bill Gates admits rising CO2 isn’t going to kill us. The recent problems at the BBC may also help to open up the discussion as they have been more guilty than any other media organisation in stifling sceptical views.

Q10. How do we overcome the government’s disastrous track record on major infrastructure projects, such as HS2?

Central Energy’s ability to self-grant planning permission, access to government bonds, and general top-down technocratic mandate (rather than the constellation of competing bodies that we sadly see in modern ’stakeholder’ democracy) is what we believe will allow this to succeed.

There is an absolute requirement to jettison the mountains of regulations surrounding new build of nuclear, fracking and indeed all forms of energy. There will be political opposition to this but as I wrote about previously, it’s vital that we do this in order to get planning and construction to be affordable and deliverable in relatively rapid timescales.

Q11. How do we get people on board that believe that there is a climate emergency?

CO₂ emitted by burning fossil fuels that were hitherto sequestered warms the planet up. This is true. But we’re only at a fraction of the planet’s CO₂ concentrations on a geological scale. This means that the emergency is not existential, but a matter of disruption via sea levels, coastal communities, and biome shifts.

Changes in these variables have been the reality for the entirety of life on Earth. So the question is whether we’re raising the rate of change in these variables to cause unprecedented and irrevocable damage to human communities and flora/fauna. And the answer is ’no’, if we take seriously our role of stewarding the environment.

Life on Earth is on a timer. We’ve less than a billion years without intervention until the main photosynthesis pathways don’t have enough atmospheric carbon to keep going and the biosphere collapses. My main thought is extending this window, rather micro-regulating inter-century CO₂ concentrations - extending the period in which the universe’s only known harbour of life may keep going.

Human stewardship over the Earth is the only way we can achieve this, through the ability to engineer our atmosphere and the lithosphere. But to do this, we need to economically and technologically develop to ensure our continued survival and develop the raw productive capacity to enact such engineering projects. A non-catastrophic increase in atmospheric CO₂levels to ensure humans industrialise, modernise, and assume our role as stewards to ensure our biosphere’s long-term survival? This is a trade-off worth making, in my view.

I freely admit this may not be an accessible doorstep answer, but it’s my sincere one.

I think this is already getting easier. Even though polls show that most people (60%) support the ‘idea’ of Net Zero, very few are prepared to pay the necessary costs. With the likes of Bill Gates downplaying the climate crisis, time will be an important factor for two reasons. As costs reduce, consumers and business will welcome the impact on their budgets.

Secondly, as time goes on and the climate crisis keeps moving off into the distance, people will simply forget that there ever was such a thing. Think acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, the population time-bomb and the 1970s ice age cometh’.

Wrapping up on the Energy Credit System

With my background study and Matthew’s helpful answers I’ll try to summarise the main features of the Energy Credit system as I now understand them:

1. Energy Credit becomes the third lever in managing economic policy alongside existing monetary and fiscal controls. It will require strong coordination between Central Energy, the Bank of England and the Treasury.

2. The pound’s credibility is tied explicitly to the planned provision of energy and relies on maintaining the required investment to meet forecasts of future demand. This linkage will be enforced by the markets, such that the 10p/kWh will be enforced through fluctuations in exchange rates and bond yields.

3. The system is designed to make it extremely painful for governments to neglect the required planning and investment. This gets to the heart of my earlier lack of understanding. The market will only trust the value of the pound if the government is demonstrably building the physical capacity required. However, in order for this to be successful future governments cannot be tied to Net Zero dogma. Step forward Reform UK, ideally in partnership with the SDP.

4. Matthew asks us to think of the Energy Credit system as a “physicalist constraint” on economic decision making which will force the government to track the nation’s productivity and affordability of supply. This probably obviates the need for an Independent Bank of England since the key economic metrics must “represent productive capacity and real value”.

5. If long-term inflation risk predicts that demand will outstrip Central Energy’s future capacity, then interest rates can be increased in a timely manner in order to tighten the economy and so put a break on inflationary growth. Since the inflation adjusted price falls, customers will be sheltered from a key attribute of traditional inflation, i.e. increasingly expensive energy.

6. In an inflationary period, Central Energy can decrease the money supply by encouraging customers to purchase energy up-front, by offering bonus units.

7. Conversely, if the economy enters a deflationary period, then Central Energy can effectively increase the money supply by adding credits to customer accounts to offset the impact of the nominal price feeling more expensive as the real value of money is reduced.

8. Critically, a home-grown energy policy would shelter the UK from global energy price fluctuations and arbitrage. It would therefore act to remove one of the key drivers of inflation and will be a mandatory feature of the new system rather than a ‘nice to have’. Without energy independence the energy credit system would simply not be possible. This would also have the benefit of making our grid more reliable and secure.

I still have a lot more questions, particularly about the balance of benefit from firstly achieving a home-grown energy system compared to the more fundamental change to our economic model. What proportion of the benefits would we get from energy independence alone?

I appreciate that this has been a long read, and if you got this far, you have my sincere thanks. I don’t see a more important goal than to fix our broken energy system.

Introduction

The SDP recently launched a comprehensive green paper on their energy policy called Energy Abundance (11^th Sep 2025):

https://sdp.org.uk/energy-abundance/

This paper was written by Matthew Kirtley with the help of Alastair Mellon, who is the Social Democratic Party’s (SDP) Regeneration spokesperson. Matthew is a Technology Specialist at Performance Communications. He helps companies communicate complex engineering and economic topics to customers, partners, investors, and policymakers via earned and owned media.

I skip-read this paper when it first came out, prompted by Hilary Salt, the deputy leader of the SDP, and a friend from Politics in Pubs. I spotted a lot of interesting things that chimed with my own interests, including a rejection of the so-called climate consensus and a decisive transition away from renewables. However, it wasn’t until I saw a very positive write-up by my friend David O’Toole that I realised it needed more serious attention.

As I began reading the green paper again, I had expectations about the likely strategy that it was going to describe. I knew it has a strong preference for public ownership and control, over the free market approach. However, as I read further, I realised that the authors had gone much further than a simplistic ‘public good vs private bad’ argument. Instead, it turned out to be a comprehensive discussion of a radically different approach to energy supply, albeit leaving me with lots of questions.

Different sections raised concerns, but I find most of these were addressed in subsequent sections. It’s a challenging read overall, but well worth it. I found myself agreeing with most of the ideas presented with the exception of the ‘Energy Credit’ system which underpins the whole strategy. It’s not that I disagree with the vision of Energy Credit as presented, it’s more that as a non-economist, I was left with lots of questions. I am fairly certain I won’t be the only one in this position. It left me feeling a bit like the time I tried to understand Modern Monetary Theory! The Energy Credit system is, however, a tantalising idea and it needs further discussion.

As a Reform UK party member, I don’t see any obvious differences in the proposals for the ways in which energy should be generated in future – particularly the welcome phasing out of renewables. What this paper provides is a radically different framework for how the overall energy system is managed. If we accept that market forces are not working, then there does not need to be any contradiction between the two parties’ policies. Both want cheap, reliable energy to take the pressure off hard-pressed families, to galvanise the economy and to kick-start an industrial and manufacturing renaissance.

Reform should take this paper seriously.

Getting into the detail

Overall Summary

The underlying premise in the paper is that we have an energy crisis that began in the early 1990’s when we replaced a planned state energy system with a free market system. The new system should have led to more competition and lower prices. In the end it led to the neglect and early closure of perfectly working fossil fuel power stations with many years of economic operation ahead of them. From the summary:

Without a planning and coordination authority, there has been no body able to veto a catastrophic experiment that began in the 2000s: the shift en masse to intermittent renewable generation.

The SDP is talking about the demise of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), established in 1957 through the Electricity Act, a nationalised monopoly owning almost all power stations and the high-voltage transitions network. It was self-regulating, so no need for an OFGEM, and parliamentary scrutiny occurred via questions to the Minister and review of annual reports. The CEGB’s income came through selling wholesale electricity to regional Area Boards, a process approved by the Minister of Power. A key aspect of its financial model was that it was operated on a ‘statutory corporation model’, which meant it had to be financially self-sufficient but not to the extent of maximising profits. Instead, surpluses were invested in new plant or to repay debt.

The summary goes on:

To resolve this, we propose an emergency ten-year plan to fix Britain’s generation mix and dismantle the energy rationing system. To do this, we shall create a new vertically integrated state-owned energy monopoly named “Central Energy.”

I like the idea of declaring an emergency as it clears the way for all sorts of remedial action, that otherwise might be blocked by established agreements and contracts. However, run by government, how do we prevent such a body being mis-directed by a future government more focussed on ideology than economics?

The summary outlines a fixed price of 10p for a kWh of electricity based on the introduction of an energy credit system. This is the most challenging proposal in the paper, and the one I am still struggling to fully grasp.

Part 1: Britain’s Energy Crisis

Part 1 of the green paper provides the overall rationale for why we cannot go on as we have been doing. I have written extensively about the direct costs of Net Zero policy as highlighted by Kathryn Porter (in the order of £220bn since 2006) and the OBRs assessment of Net Zero (adding £30bn annually to public spending). However, although it’s intuitively obvious that expensive energy will hit productivity, the SDP’s analysis is the first to highlight the extent of the problem in quantitative terms.

Figures 4 demonstrate the problem in starkly (I have overlain what might have been the projected growth from 2005):

We can see the impact of the new energy policy which has reduced consumption whilst stunting historic growth:

Between 2004 and 2024, rising energy prices have cost Britain an average of £146Bn every year in lost output. Total lost output stands at just over £3,070 billion, or £3 trillion – over a full year of output in 2025, or the equivalent of the full balance of the government debt.

It is no surprise therefore that “this tremendous cost has been felt in every facet of our lives”. There is a lot more detail but it’s hard to argue with the conclusion that our energy policy “has been most ruinous error in British economic history.”

Part 2: The Causes of the Crisis

Part 2 kicks off with an important chart, highlighting the relationship between wealth (measured in GDP per capita) and energy consumption.

There should be no surprises here; richer countries consume more energy and vice versa. Correlation isn’t always causation, but this paper makes a strong case that has been highlighted previously by other commentators, such as David Turver. Therefore, if we make energy more expensive so that we use less, as has been happening, it should come as no surprise that we are get poorer.

The paper goes on to examine the nature of the grid system being an effective monopoly with the danger that this reduces incentives to innovate and be efficient. Secondly, customers are disconnected from generators via suppliers, who thus can profit in the process. Thirdly, power generation requires long term finance, which can be made more affordable by further development and refinement of current power plants.

The paper makes a strong case for long term public finance being cheaper than private debt. However, I wonder about who bears the risk. Private finance costs significantly more on paper. Think Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) to build hospitals under Gordon Brown. But what happens when projects overrun when costs inevitably balloon, as in HS2 and just about all government contracts? We also have far more environmental legislation to fight through, and this will need tackling head-on.

Going into more detail, the paper discusses the break-up of the CEGB under reforms pioneered by Professor Stephen Littlechild of Birmingham University (via the Energy Act of 1989). Littlechild’s key concerns were about efficiency, incentives, monopoly/bureaucracy, and the need to introduce competition and regulatory frameworks in monopolistic utilities. The paper argues:

Littlechild was a sincere believer in the power of the profit motive at discovering efficiencies and cost reductions. In his view, once freed from political control, the energy system would dramatically improve by reducing the amount of capital tied up in underutilised infrastructure. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

The paper cites three reasons for why this new strategy failed:

1. The abandonment of planning

2. A flawed privatisation

3. The rise of renewables

My question at this point is how bad would the situation be now if 1 and 2 had not occurred and we were left simply pondering the impact of renewables? Look at this timeline for the way renewable energy policy has been developed:

• 1988 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) founded

• 1992 - UK signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Earth Summit

• 1990’s - Conservative governments (Major era) adopted an early, non-binding goal to reduce CO₂ emissions to 1990 levels by 2000 — mainly through the “dash for gas” (switching from coal to gas), which reduced emissions incidentally rather than through explicit climate policy.

• 1997 on - Under Tony Blair’s Labour Government, climate change became an explicit policy goal.

• 1998 - The Energy White Paper began linking energy strategy with environmental sustainability.

• 2003 - The Energy White Paper, “Our Energy Future – Creating a Low Carbon Economy,” was a turning point: “We are committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050.” This was the first major UK policy document to make climate change the central driver of energy policy.

• 2005 - The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) began, integrating carbon pricing into UK energy markets.

• 2008 - The Climate Change Act became the world’s first legally binding long-term emissions target (80% cut by 2050, later updated to “net zero” by 2050 in 2019). Established the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to advise on carbon budgets. From this point, all UK energy policy had to align with carbon budgets — i.e., climate change became structural to policy, not optional.

• 2013 - Electricity Market Reform (EMR) explicitly reoriented the energy system to deliver decarbonisation, security, and affordability — the so-called “trilemma”.

• 2019 - Net Zero target (amendment to the Climate Change Act) made climate the overarching goal of energy and industrial policy.

During this time figure 8 demonstrates how total energy supplied and net selling value varied:

This chart shows that energy supply continued to increase up to around 2005 and the average selling value remained flat until just before energy supply peaked. It cannot be coincidental that the imposition of climate goals coincided with, and drove, the dramatic rise in prices from around 2004. I.e. it is possible that Littlechild was correct, but we’ll never know. Who could have foreseen the dramatic impact of over-arching climate policies which would come to dominate energy supply?

The paper clearly illustrates the early demise of conventional thermal plants. I agree that we could and should have kept existing plants going, since the capital cost had already been invested and thermal plants have generally longer lifespans than gas plants. However, due to the pressure of growing climate “awareness” and the related policies, public pressure was galvanised behind the closure of “dirty” fossil fuel power stations. Therefore, I dispute the weighting given to the problems of loss of central planning versus a free-market approach and flawed privatisation, compared to imposition of climate policies.

Moving onto the rise of renewables, the paper points out the glaring contradiction that even as generating capacity has increased from 78GW in 2003 to 106GW in 2023, electricity supplied to customers has declined! How can this be?

The answer is straightforward and is tied to energy quality which is a combination of power density and capacity factor. The former explains how much energy is output per unit area required, and the latter is the percentage of power delivered compared to the nominal power rating of a plant. Figure 13 in the paper shows a comparison between power densities of nuclear, gas and a range of renewable energy sources:

Figure 14 shows a similar comparison for capacity factors:

It should therefore be obvious why we can have more installed capacity than ever, but overall supply/consumption has gone down. And it gets worse! This simple comparison of capacity factors does not consider that, in general, availability of conventional power plants is managed by their operators (apart from breakdowns). However, renewable energy is governed by external factors such as wind speed and amount of daylight. Once these factors are considered, the so called ‘de-rated’ capacity factors are even less favourable for renewables.

When all this is considered, it is clear that:

…the main drivers of energy price growth in recent years have not in fact been wholesale costs. Instead, price growth is mostly due to rising policy costs, network costs, and capacity market mechanisms (wherein generation capacity is held idle for use in supply shortfalls).

The paper elaborates on how we have become a net importer of gas at the same time as carbon pricing has been imposed on gas supply. The latter adds something like 20% onto the wholesale price (I have seen much higher figures reported elsewhere) which is already inflated due to natural supply side shortages as we import more gas. This over reliance on foreign imports clearly exposed us to global price shocks as happened when Russia invaded Ukraine.

The paper also provides an excellent discussion of the problems arising from balancing supply and demand over a 24-hour period, with little to no grid scale storage. One particularly fascinating conclusion is that, according to Tong et al. (2021):

…even if Britain overbuilds three times more de-rated capacity than demand (assuming an optimal split favoured towards offshore wind), and also installs enough energy storage capacity to meet 12 hours of national demand, it will still need to have ready additional non-renewable capacity to meet up to 60% of demand throughout the year.

The sums required to make this work to meet current demand are eye-watering, for example £1,250bn for 2500GWh of energy storage! So, the next time someone says just use more batteries, explain what this will cost. And the paper goes onto explain that this is just the starting point, since storage like any other plant has a finite lifespan.

At this point the paper acknowledges the role of NESO as a planner, but rather than simply to increase supply and balance against demand, its role is to reduce demand:

The scale of this new planner’s ambition is truly monumental. NESO aims for a 54% reduction in peak demand by 2050 through a system of real-time “smart” tariffs.

I had never really appreciated that this was a central goal, and like the paper, conclude that what we are looking at is not ‘demand management’ but ‘rationing’. If I am late to this realisation as someone with an intense interest in energy policy, what are the chances that most people have no idea that this is going on?

Part 2 concludes with an excellent discussion on the spuriousness of many claims around climate, and concludes:

1. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations do not pose a risk to the biosphere itself even over an extended period of time

2. Sea level rises and extreme weather events cannot be expected to rise in an abrupt, linear manner

3. Humans have significant ability to offset and control the global climate system in response to greenhouse gas emissions

4. Britain’s own contributions to global emissions are causally insignificant

The full discussion is well worth reading and represents a welcome change from the SDP’s currently published official energy policy position which is:

We accept the broad scientific consensus that fossil fuels are contributing to climate change and that we need to reduce our aggregate usage of them

The paper goes onto to propose a variety of approaches to transition away from our current insane energy policy, most of which would be very difficult to square with their current position. This policy change is however consistent with Bill Gate’s recent announcement that rising carbon dioxide isn’t go to kill us. We could well be coming to the end of Climate Groupthink.

Part 3: A Ten-Year Plan

The paper then goes into detail about how we can fix the current system. The solution suggested is well-thought out, and leaves no stone unturned for generating baseload power, including fracking and even coal, though nuclear power will play a major role long term.

I found very little not to like here apart from a potential lack of recognition of the challenge to drastically reduce environmental legislation, particularly with respect to the construction of new nuclear. As I have written about previously, over regulation in this sector dramatically increase costs and construction times.

Part 4: The Energy Credit

I am not an economist, so I found this last section challenging. I suspect this means that in terms of communication – this will be the hardest part of the policy to get across to the general public by some margin. That said, this is what I came up with.

The energy credit is defined by a simple, unchangeable equation:

10 pence (p) will always entitle a bearer to 1 kWh of grid electricity.

The paper calls this a permanent nominal price fix.

For the average consumer:

1. This means that £1 will reliably buy you 10 kWh of electricity from the grid. On a day-to-day basis, customers will continue to have accounts and pay bills, but the pricing mechanism will be straightforward and guaranteed.

2. For the wider economy: The system is called the “energy credit” because it ties the inherent value of the British pound sterling directly to the provision of energy (and managed with the help of the Bank of England and the Treasury).

This fixed price is intended to reshape economic life, forcing the country to measure wealth and money in terms of its ability to enable productive work. I like the sound of that but the detail of how it would work in practice eludes me.

I asked AI for an analogy, and it came up with this:

The shift from the current market system to the Energy Credit system would be like moving from paying for water from a well (where the price fluctuates wildly based on rainfall and scarcity) to paying a fixed price for water piped directly to your house.

The state (Central Energy) guarantees that fixed price, but to honour that promise, it must ensure it continuously invests massive amounts of capital to build reservoirs, boreholes, and treatment plants (the new nuclear, gas, and coal capacity) so that the pipe never runs dry, regardless of the weather.

I can see that this makes sense, but it provides no guidance on how this integrates into monetary policy. And this is not just in terms of how the mechanism would work in the hands of the Bank of England. It is just as much about how this change in policy would be seen by the markets, with the potential turmoil that could occur. Managing this sort of transition will make Littlechild’s earlier reforms look like child’s play.

Closing Remarks and Questions

I welcome this green paper, which is a serious attempt to categorise the problem (a necessary pre-requisite to fixing it) and for proposing a detailed solution.

I don’t necessarily agree that it was the Littlechild reforms that set us off on our current path. Instead, I place far more weight on the impact of the switch to renewable energy. To be clear, the paper may be correct, I just don’t see the clear evidence in the data presented.

However, I do welcome the SDP coming to Reform’s view on not only the impact of Net Zero policy but also the use of flawed climate assumptions that underpin it.

I have lots of question, which I list here in no particular order:

1. Why 10p per kWh specifically?

2. How can the state guarantee this price forever, especially if global fuel prices or inflation rises.

3. If the price of energy is fixed, it will effectively become cheaper over time due to inflation, and presumably at some point it would be effectively free?

4. A related question, won’t this encourage more waste over time?

5. Alternatively, will this encourage more technology investment since the cost-of-capital reduces because energy is always a significant factor?

6. Why wouldn’t the price be impacted by major system failures, such as a nuclear power plant going off-line, or several if a major flaw was discovered in a specific reactor type?

7. If Central Energy is a monopoly, how can it guarantee a high-quality, efficient service? This is not something public bodies are well-known for.

8. Specifically, the Bank of England does not have a good record for controlling inflation. How would they perform better taking on the additional responsibility for adding energy to the monetary equation?

9. A state-controlled enterprise would be subject to future changes in government policy, whereas this strategy requires a long term multi-decadal commitment and stability. I.e., how do we prevent such a body being mis-directed by a future government more focussed on ideology than economics?

10. How do we overcome the government’s disastrous track record on major infrastructure projects, such as HS2.

11. How do we get people on board that believe that there is a climate emergency?

I hope this will be useful for anyone else getting to grips with Energy Abundance.

The SDP and Reform should have a meaningful conversation about this paper, because it provides the most serious analysis of the challenge to date. I am not sure whether it is practical to deliver, but there are so many good ideas here that it should not be ignored.

And why shouldn’t parties collaborate to fix a system that threatens to rear apart our country, as I recently asked Graham Stringer at a Battle of Ideas event?

We know the challenge will be immense. As two-party politics breaks down there is emerging a different politics with smaller parties at last gaining a significant voice. Amongst these is the Green party, who along with the Liberal Democrats, would fight these proposals just because they don’t fit in with their quasi-religiousbelief in a climate emergency.

We must be prepared, and to that end forging pragmatic alliances is key.

In another break from critiquing Net Zero policy, I want to give my thoughts on the first Manchester Battle of Ideas satellite event, held at the Ape and Apple pub on Tuesday 4^th Nov 2025. It was titled ‘Flags, Boats and Votes - Are patriotism and the nation state back?’. I went with my wife and we were joined by many familiar faces from Politics in Pubs, Cancelling Cancel Culture and the Women’s Rights Network, amongst others.

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The venue was almost sold out for a very reasonable £5 a ticket, particularly given the quality of the speakers on the panel. There were many new faces, and some people had travelled a long way to be there. Overall, the event was a great addition to the Manchester debating scene, and with a further full-day event planned for next year, free speech has had another boost. The Ape and Apple proved to be a great venue, and I even discovered a Joseph Holt’s beer that I actually liked, called Chorlton Pale Ale. Years of moaning about this chain’s beers are over – some friends will be delighted by that.

Several challenges were posed for the event, including this one:

Does nationalism still retain its worrying, discredited associations with everything from racism to warmongering to football hooliganism? Or is nationalism a return to our democratic roots, a force capable of forging national solidarity that can overcome the divisive fragmentation of demographic, cultural, ethnic, identitarian and political changes that have left citizens feeling like strangers in their own land? Can political elites learn to love their country again, and allow national interest to guide policies in the best interest of their nation state?

I won’t go into the details of the individual responses, but all contributions were filmed and will be available on-line. Overall, it was a fascinating event and there was a wide-ranging discussion with nothing off-limits. My final impression was that most people in the room had no issue with the rise of nationalism (if it doesn’t spill over into civil unrest) and the increasing importance of the nation state. Many seemed to agree that this is a natural consequence after years of ordinary people being ignored by a disconnected elite. That said I felt somewhat frustrated by the end as I’ll discuss shortly.

First up was Peter Ramsay, who is Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of The Insecurity State and co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit. He was a founder of The Full Brexit network and is co-chair of LSE’s Academic Freedom staff network.

The second speaker, Graham Stringer, is the Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South. Graham is a well-known and respected maverick who continually surprises me that he hasn’t had the whip withdrawn yet. Graham is an excellent speaker, who doesn’t appear to use notes, an ability he shares with Nigel Farage – though he won’t appreciate the comparison.

The last speaker, Tallulah Sutton, is a Sociology and Politics researcher at the University of Cambridge. Both Peter and Graham have spoken at Politics in Pubs, but this was the first time I had heard Tallulah speak. She is a “local lass” from Salford who has excelled academically. She maintains strong connections with the city.

I managed to get a question in by the end of the evening – which I put to Graham Stringer. I was prompted by the consensus on the panel concerning Reform being likely to fail if they win the next election. As a Reform member, this obviously caught my attention and made me appreciate the left-wing bias of the panel – something the organisers may want to consider for future events.

Peter Ramsay was the first to bring up Reform, claiming that if they win the next election, they will probably fail in government because the civil service will undermine their efforts. The other panellists agreed. Graham Stringer was particularly scathing, pointing to Reform’s lack of experience and expertise. I found this fascinating. If Reform are seen as disruptors but still cannot get to grips with the civil service, then who could? Certainly not Labour, nor the Conservatives. We have all the evidence we need on that score.

My question to Graham went something along the lines of:

“You think Reform will fail because they won’t have the expertise to manage the Civil Service. However, this is a problem that Reform are well aware of and have spoken about extensively. One of their solutions will be to bring experts into the cabinet from outside the parliament, who have specific skills and experience. There should be many experienced parliamentarians, “elderly stateman”, around who could lend a hand in the national interest. I wonder whether we might find one of those around here?”

This got a wry grin from Graham and a few laughs from the audience but the panel’s responses, particularly Graham’s felt somewhat dismissive. The panellists were unanimously against the idea of bringing in experts, something they felt would be anti-democratic.

I previously asked Graham a related question at an earlier Politics in Pubs event he spoke at. I had challenged him on why he was still in the Labour Party given he is at odds with the Labour party line on almost every policy area and appears to support most Reform policies. At the time, he talked about being too old to change – which I had felt was a sad but honest answer. This time he made a football team analogy, likening my question to asking him whether he should switch from supporting Manchester United to City.

This was disappointing and I challenged him later at the bar. To his credit he readily admitted that it might not have been the best analogy. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance to discuss further but I left feeling unsatisfied and somewhat frustrated by the discussion. I’ll explain why.

As a country we face what many feel is an existential crisis. The economy is falling off a cliff, not least driven by a deranged Net Zero energy policy and stubbornly high inflation. Uncontrolled mass immigration is another major drag on the economy, and worse, could lead to civil disorder. Public sector jobs have ballooned, national debt is out of control and UK productivity is a sick joke. I could go on.

Since Brexit, the country has become divided to the point where family members can’t speak to each other simply because they have different views. I just don’t want to live in a Faulty Towers’ society where I have to tell my wife “I slipped up and mentioned rape gangs to the kids, but I think I got away with it”.

Given this is where we have ended up, one of the panel asked how can we overcome this divide in society? I don’t remember any solid answers being offered. However, if a Labour maverick like Graham Stringer can’t look beyond party loyalty, then what chance is there that an answer will emerge?

I have come across this attitude before as I wrote about here, from a local Conservative councillor friend. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. If you have committed your working life to one party, it must be hard to imagine changing. But what is the alternative?

Neither Graham Stringer nor my friend are ready to face the reality of what is likely to happen to their parties at the next election. The electorate is not going to reward their blind faith and loyalty. Reform may not have all the answers, but I don’t see a better alternative and things are getting desperate. If you like, think of Reform as the ‘Hail Mary’ option.

As a sidenote, we have many friends in the SDP who are offering some well thought out and detailed policies. However, they have no chance of electoral success in 2029, even though the rise of Reform is opening up the political space for smaller parties. Unfortunately, only the Greens and Liberal Democrats seem to be capitalising on this at the moment. Next time round, who knows?

And why should a cabinet with half being appointed as experts from outside the House of Commons be seen as anti-democratic? So many decisions are already taken by unaccountable QUANGOs and supra-national bodies such as the EU, ECHR and the WEF. Cabinet positions are filled with a never-ending stream of temporary Secretaries of State with no accountability and no experience or real grasp of their portfolios. Reform is already highlighting its likely approach in speeches and papers – giving the electorate a clear picture of what is coming. I suspect the electorate will not just welcome a new approach – they will demand it.

You may disagree, which is fine. However, if you cannot see yourself voting for Reform or at least working with them in the national interest, then you have to come up with your own credible plan. If that plan depends on somehow transforming the old parties, full of careerists and increasingly sectarian politics, then I could not take you seriously.

Thanks to all involved

These events are not easy to put on and I must acknowledge the fantastic work done by Hilary Salt, Sebastian ‘Token Man’ Moore, Jude McGill and Jaydee. Also, thanks to the panellists who gave up their time and travelled from far afield to help push forward the debate on the rising tide of patriotism. And finally, many thanks to the brilliant staff at the Ape and Apple. It can be very difficult to find venues to host free speech events. Hopefully this won’t be the last here.

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Date for your diary

This excellent event will be followed up by a full-day event on Saturday 7^th March 2026.

Professor Sir Dieter Helm has just published his latest thoughts on the UK’s Net Zero energy policy. His critical assessment of the direction of the UK’s energy strategy British energy policy – not cheap, not home-grown and not secure makes sober reading.

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He introduces his article with this statement:

Some people – and some politicians – seem to believe that if you keep repeating claims eventually they will be believed, even as the evidence unfolds that they are obviously just not true. Any countervailing evidence is merely to be reinterpreted as if it is consistent with the claims, however great the contortions of the truth may need to be.

He goes on to say:

This helps to explain the lines that DESNZ keeps trotting out about renewables being much cheaper, that they are more secure because they are home-grown, and that bills will be coming down. In the hands of politicians, this translates into claims like “renewables are nine times cheaper”, £300 will be coming off your bills, and anything to the contrary is “climate vandalism”. All of these claims have been made by the current Secretary of State.

Helm is clear that claims by government bodies about renewables being cheap, home-grown, and increasing security are false, presenting evidence that the UK has some of the highest industrial electricity prices globally. The only ways to read this are as follows:

1. The government does not understand the energy system it is responsible for, or

2. The government is actively lying to us

Take your pick, though neither is forgivable given what is at stake. I guess it could be a combination of both!

He goes on to explain that that current policy decisions are “baking in” very high energy costs until at least 2040 through long-term contracts for intermittent sources like wind and solar, which require costly grid expansion and back-up gas power.

Furthermore, Helm asserts that dependency on foreign imports for technology, manufacturing, and finance means the energy system is far from “home-grown” and that closing down North Sea gas production makes the nation more vulnerable to supply interruptions, contradicting official security assurances.

He concludes by proposing radical policy changes to mitigate the long-term economic damage caused by the current trajectory. These policy changes would not favour renewables, and hence will be ignored by the present government - at least for the next four years, should it last that long.

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About Dieter Helm

Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford. From 2012 to 2020, he was Independent Chair of the Natural Capital Committee, providing advice to the government on the sustainable use of natural capital.

He provides extensive expert advice to UK and European governments, regulators and companies across three key areas: Energy & Climate; Regulation, Utilities & Infrastructure; and Natural Capital & the Environment.

https://dieterhelm.co.uk/

It has come as a shock to the alarmist community and the renewable energy sector that Bill Gates has just announced that Climate Change is not an existential crisis in his article Three tough truths about climate change. Apparently, richer nations can invest in adaptation, but the poorest ones may suffer if they cannot raise their economic prospects. Who knew?

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Well, the answer is many of us knew and have been saying this for years. The surest way to tackle the impact of a changing climate is to invest in a range of resilience measures, and that takes money. Well-off countries will be able to do this for a fraction of the cost of trying to lower CO₂ emissions. Poorer countries will struggle unless they can move themselves up the prosperity ladder.

The question is how they are going to achieve this if global organisations like the World Bank insist that they follow a Net Zero path to prosperity, an approach that we know is destined to fail. Rich countries in the west only achieved their prosperity through a long-term investment in progress through abundant and cheap energy. To think that progress can be achieved without this is fantasy economics.

Why can we be so certain? Well - just look at what is happening in the west now. Our industrial base is on its knees with steel, aluminium, chemicals and ceramics being wiped out. Automobile production is also suffering with the enforced switch to EVs that ordinary people are doing their best not to comply with. Even the once might German auto makers are now struggling. In the UK growth has been anaemic/non-existent for years. Wages in real terms have been falling for years. If you disagree with my take, feel free to argue in the comments below.

And what has this cost? Estimates vary widely but a quick study of the main data sources, such as the International Energy Agency and the IPCC suggests that the likely “investment” in preventing climate change is in the region of $14T between 1980 and 2023! That’s right - $14,000,000,000,000.

And the result? Beyond the obvious economic devastation, CO₂ has continued to rise inexorably, as this graph from the Global Monitoring Laboratory shows:

Surely then, even if you are convinced the world is going to end, we cannot carry on doing the same thing as it clearly isn’t working. What could $14T have achieved if it had been invested wisely over the same timescale? If you mind doesn’t boggle at the possibilities, then I just don’t understand how you look at the world.

I am convinced more than ever that the climate consensus is falling apart, as I wrote in my articles Is this the end of climate groupthink? and Is the UK’s Net Zero Drive ‘Economic Suicide’? If one of the richest men on the planet has seen the light, it can’t be long before everyone else of influence comes round to his view. There is only so much denial of basic economics and physics that can be swallowed. As a result of more and more people objecting to ever rising energy prices, driven predominantly by Net Zero policy costs, the political landscape is shifting dramatically.

How long can the Labour government ignore this shift? It seems from Ed Miliband’s latest wheeze, to impose another £100 tax on gas boilers, that he isn’t ready yet to give into reality. I find this staggering, almost beyond comprehension. As someone who was once genuinely scared about the impact of man-made climate change, I found it easy to adjust my views once I had done my own basic research, starting twenty-five years ago. Finding out the world is not doomed is incredibly good news. So why don’t more people want to at least reassess their own worries? Surely, even the vaguest possibility is worth a little consideration?

It may be apocryphal but John Maynard Keynes is thought to have said:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Over to you Ed…

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Introduction

This weekend a few friends and I attended the Battle of Ideas Festival in London. It took place in Church House in Whitehall and was organised by the Academy of Ideas. If you haven’t attended yet, I can’t recommend it enough. We had a table-top stand, promoting our free speech group Politics in Pubs. It was a hectic two days, not least because of the size of the event and the number of sessions to participate in.

The format for each session was the one we use at Politics in Pubs - a panel of speakers gave their thoughts on the topic for a session and the chair then took questions from the audience. The panel responded to these, with usually a second and sometimes a third round of questions. Hence, the audience was really involved and this helped to shape the discussion.

The main focus of the festival was looking at the major political, economic, educational and cultural issues facing Britain today. However, there were also comedy sessions, such as GB News Free Speech Nation (hosted by Josh Howie), and the Thought Police (hosted by Mike Graham and Kevin O’Sullivan). Therefore, it wasn’t all doom and gloom!

With 5 sets of sessions running each day with 12 options in each session, choosing which sessions to attend was no easy matter. Of course, with my interest in climate change and NetZero I was drawn to sessions on this topic.

One session was called “Why is my energy bill so high?” Kathryn Porter, one of the panellists and a renowned energy consultant, explained how marginal pricing is used world-wide to determine the price of energy. During the discussion I was not sure whether this was well understood, so here is a brief guide, made so simple that even Ed Miliband could understand.

The Marginal Pricing System

Electricity is bought through something called the Balancing Market Mechanism which is the system that the electricity grid system operators use to ensure that supply equals demand at all times. This is required because there is very little storage capacity in the grid. This was a relatively simple system when it was easy to forecast demand and supply. However, as renewables further penetrated the grid, we now have much more uncertainty in forecasting the supply side.

This is made more difficult because across Europe, electricity grids are being pushed closer to their limits as spare fossil fuel generation capacity has been de-commissioned. As a result, the UK often has to depend on “the kindness of strangers” by importing electricity from overseas and relying on stand-by power mainly from gas-fired power plants. Neither of these sources come cheap, which prices moving from around £60/MWh to over £2,000/MWh!

The balancing mechanism involves electricity generators bidding an amount of power (in MW) they can supply at a desired price (in £/MWh). Bids are ranked from cheapest to most expensive. This is normally in the order of wind, solar and then nuclear and finally gas. Bids are accepted in this order with the highest priced plant accepted being the marginal plant. Its offer becomes the market clearing price and all generators are paid this amount. The argument in favour of marginal pricing is that it encourages efficiency, provides incentives for investment and reflects the true costs of meeting extra demand.

The interesting thing about this, which Net Zero advocates miss, is that renewable energy companies are rewarded because a) their energy source is free and b) they do not have to pay any system costs to cover the problems introduced by their intermittency. The extra costs include constraint payments for when there is over supply, capacity payments for when there is under supply and grid reinforcement costs to bring renewable energy from remote locations, such as wind farms offshore and in the north of Scotland.

Net Zero advocates also forget that the gas price is high because of the carbon taxes. These are imposed by government and therefore artificially inflate the price – to the point where a third of the wholesale cost is carbon tax. Therefore, if you want to make energy cheaper, rather than decouple electricity from this marginal pricing system, remove the carbon taxes on fossil fuels and make renewables pay for their fair share of system costs. This would of course have the consequence of making renewables uncompetitive.

Some alternatives

Zonal Pricing

Some, like Octopus Energy, have advocated for a system of zonal or locational pricing. This would make energy prices lower in regions with their own generation. For renewables, this would favour Scotland and the north of England, whilst penalising consumers in southern England. In effect, consumers would be charged an increased priced proportional to the length of wire connecting them the nearest generator. Given the huge costs of connecting Scotland to the rest of the UK this could have a dramatic impact on electricity costs in the south of England. I am far from convinced that this would be a popular move.

Pay-as-bid

An alternative to marginal pricing is pay-as-bid, where generators receive the price they bid. This sounds attractive to consumers but then renewables could lose their competitive advantage of zero fuel costs and zero systems costs. They would be forced to bid higher, often in an attempt to game the system, offering a price they expect to be close to the marginal price. This would negate the whole point of this system.

Cost-Plus

Another alternative would be average-cost or cost-plus pricing, whereby generators are paid for their costs of production plus an agreed margin. This could be an interesting model for a grid based on reliable baseload power generation. However, as more renewables enter the grid a serious evaluation is required of what is the true cost of producing renewable energy. I have written previously about Why the Renewables Industry Loves LCOE. The Levelised Cost of Energy takes no account of system costs, such as requiring a significant amount of readily available backup for renewables. As discussed earlier, if these costs are factored in then renewable costs would suddenly become prohibitively expensive.

Split-Markets

Another approach might be to use split-markets where generators are paid for capacity (the ability to supply reliable baseload power) and separately for energy supplied, that being lower than current margin prices. In effect this would reward high quality forms of energy and penalise intermittent renewable energy suppliers.

Final thoughts

If you forget about saving the planet for a moment, it’s difficult to see how renewable energy can survive. At some point the government is going to have to accept that we have run out of sticking plaster. One thing ought to be clear though. Even if we accept that the price of electricity is set roughly by the wholesale price of gas, the additional system costs and carbon taxes levied on fossil fuel, mean that we are a million miles away from having a level playing field.

A final point. It’s one thing to debate the merits of different pricing systems, but in a rigged market heavily favouring renewables, the other conversation we need to have is around security of supply. Renewables not only cost more (once all system costs and carbon taxes are factored in) but also make the grid more unstable. As Kathryn Porter explained, we are rapidly running out of time to switch tracks back to more reliable baseload power using gas and nuclear. It’s not hyperbole to imagine regular energy rationing and blackouts within the next couple of years.

We all know that groupthink is a bad thing. It discourages or punishes questioning voices and prevents decision makers from considering alternative options. Such alternatives could end up being cheaper, more effective and faster to implement.

Without critical challenge, risks and unintended consequences are not fully understood, such that projects are delivered late, have huge cost overruns and can even make the problem being addressed worse. Think diesel gate.

The problem is that once any group starts moving in one direction, silence is read as agreement, creating a false impression of consensus. Group membership can provide a psychological feeling of well-being – who doesn’t like being in a like-minded group? However, cohesive groups tend to be over-confident in their views which helps to explain why projects can get out of hand without anyone in the group realising.

Many practical approaches have been developed to tackle groupthink, but they tend to slow delivery and increase upfront costs. In my own industry of IT, most large projects have both a range of user representatives on the team as well as a separate, completely independent software testing team. This approach can deliver a better system and by adopting a right first-time approach, the overall cost should be lower.

However, it’s very rare to see such active approaches built into, say, government policy development. Politicians come into power with a manifesto to deliver, though this may be a naïve viewpoint! Therefore, they are not naturally inclined to bring on board advisors who disagree with them. Politicians prefer to present a united front, with dissent seen as a weakness.

Often, there is time pressure on making policy decisions. Groupthink, though increasing risk, seems more efficient. In public life and in board rooms, loyalty and solidarity are highly prized. For something like Net Zero, there’s also international signalling. Governments want to be seen as “leading,” which reinforces conformity across countries.

Since Brexit, groupthink has become embedded in all aspects of society. Unfortunately, I see this all the time. Friends and relatives with different political views either shake their heads at my dubious thinking or get emotional and even angry when I try to suggest there are different ways to look at issues.

These days there is no meaningful debate across the floor of the House of Commons. There is much less meeting of minds and only increasing levels of antagonism between the different parties. Demonstrating my own groupthink, I am bound to say that the left generally seems more intolerant. I have never thought of myself as someone on the right – more a classical liberal. However, it does seem that, when I wasn’t looking, the country slid quietly to the left, leaving me and many others stranded. What’s going on now seems to be a long overdue and inevitable correction.

Groupthink has been understood for many years and there are studies of classic examples, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Challenger disaster and 9/11. However, I believe that Net Zero will one day be viewed as the single most significant example of groupthink ever, on a scale approached only by what happened during the response to the COVID pandemic. It’s hard to deny that we are still feeling the economic shock of lockdown policies but Net Zero is much more pernicious and long lasting.

It ought to be a truism that without cheap reliable energy, a society cannot prosper. Yet Net Zero persists as a policy to address climate change without any consideration of the alternatives or the deep societal costs it inflicts. Why is this?

Groupthink and the Climate Consensus

Net Zero is a policy response to a so called Climate Emergency, first called Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). I first became aware that CAGW was an issue as a doctoral graduate student around 1987. It has gestated and evolved since then, to become a quasi-religious belief system.

The consensus around climate change and Net Zero has a different quality, and more nuance, than the media would have you think. I don’t believe that there is a conspiracy on either side of the argument. There are no single movements pushing in either direction, either for or against the consensus and the policy that arises.

Rather, there are many different groups supporting the existence of a climate emergency. This ranges from people who are genuinely worried about a warming planet to those who don’t believe (or even care) if it is warming – but they can see obvious ways to exploit the concerns of those who do. Renewable energy companies are obvious examples, but there are many others, such as the large banks that make carbon trading possible and profit handsomely from the activity.

However, there are many people in the middle ground. Determining Net Zero policy from partially understood science, involves huge unknowns. This is why latching onto a single narrative (“this is the path”) reduces anxiety and gives a sense of direction for most people. The policy direction has largely been accepted as settled doctrine across mainstream parties, business lobbies, NGOs and most of the mainstream media.

Practically, dissenting voices are often framed as denialist or obstructive, which suppresses genuine debate about costs, trade-offs, or alternative strategies. This can mean risks, such as higher energy bills, industry offshoring and grid instability, don’t get fully stress-tested until they materialise in practice.

The good news is that we are at last seeing a push back. The Reform UK party is completely committed to rolling back Net Zero policy. Even the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch, have announced that they would repeal the Climate Change Act of 2008 – first introduced by Ed Miliband.

The question is what is driving this change in stance on Net Zero?

Unsurprisingly, the answer is “money”!

In their recent report Britons’ attitudes to high energy bills: the permacrisis that keeps burning, the polling company More In Common found that:

• Three quarters of Britons are concerned about their energy bills this winter and 60 per cent don’t think energy bills will ever become more affordable.

• Concern over winter energy bills extends far beyond those traditionally seen as vulnerable and only drops among those on a household income over £100,000. For all other income bands at least two-thirds of Britons are concerned.

• Britons have little confidence in the government to reduce bills - 43 per cent either believe the government has no plan or one which is making things actively worse.

• Financial worries and concerns about energy bills are driving Labour’s poll woes - among those concerned about the size of their winter bills Labour is retaining just 57 per cent of its 2024 voters.

And this from an organisation that says about its Net Zero policy:

The climate crisis is the most urgent threat for society today. As an organisation we take this threat extremely seriously and want to ensure that More in Common plays its part in reducing its impact on the environment.

The report also highlights the most significant impact being on mental health:

Tellingly, many focus group participants said that:

…fuel poverty isn’t something they had experienced before and so to now be unable to heat their homes has made them feel they are going in backwards in life, not progressing.

You can see this reflected in More in Common’s Climate and Energy at the 2024 General Election and beyond report in conjunction with E3G. Concern about climate change displays decreasing relevance as people find it difficult to heat their homes (see chart below). The key lesson to learn from charts like this is that although most people are concerned about climate change, more practical considerations dominate.

In their July 2025 report Shattered Britain, More in Common found that climate policies meet almost universal disapproval:

Climate science reappraised

Alongside these changes in public perception, the change of administration in the US has led to a complete re-examination of climate science and the development of climate policy. This has been driven by the recent report A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (CWG). The authors are 5 distinguished PhD climate scientists: John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer.

Some of the key findings include:

1. Elevated carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increasing agricultural productivity

2. CO₂ acts as a greenhouse gas but the research literature shows evidence that emissions scenarios overstate the likely future emissions trends.

3. There are several dozen climate models which show a large range of sensitivities. Global climate models generally run hot leading to exaggerated projections of future warming.

4. Most extreme weather events in the US do not show adverse long-term trends and tide gauge measurements show no acceleration in sea level rise beyond historical average rates.

5. Natural sources of climate change have been underplayed in attribution studies.

6. Significantly, it is likely that the economic damage from climate change is likely to be far lower than forecast previously.

7. Overall, any changes in US policy actions are expected to have unmeasurable impacts on global climate.

The report hasn’t gone without criticism but as far as I can tell much of the criticism is aimed at discrediting the scientists involved and spurious arguments about cherry picking data. Having followed all the authors since I first took an interest in this subject, I have always found them to be knowledgeable, sincere and professional.

Conclusion

Groupthink is a well-known behaviour that leads to poor decision making, increased costs, delayed implementations and unexpected consequences. Despite this it is widespread in public policy making and boardrooms. Worse, it is deeply ingrained in how social attitudes are formed and maintained.

Of all the major examples of groupthink that I have come across, the climate consensus is the longest running and the most pernicious in its detrimental impact on society.

The good news is that the consensus on climate change is breaking down, and it is only a matter of time before policy makers have to admit that they were wrong in pushing Net Zero at any cost.

The bad news is that there is still time for our Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, to sanction even more unaffordable spending commitments which will be very difficult to unwind by future governments. Time is already running out for when the “about turn” needs to happen if we are to avoid wide-spread blackouts.

It looks like the Reform UK Party will be in power after the next election, but the Conservative and Labour parties will have left them with not only the biggest ever economic black hole, but also the most insecure power system in modern times. Lead times for reliable gas fired power stations are typically 6-8 years whilst in Norway political concerns about high energy costs there mean they may soon not be a source of backup energy.

Therefore, we have to be realistic about how long it will take any future government to unwind years of disastrous energy policy. The sooner the next election comes the better.

My wife and I had booked tickets for a Comedy Unleashed event in central Manchester that evening. Our first thought was that we couldn’t go. We debated both sides of the argument. Would respecting the murdered victims and their families be best served by staying home? Or would this be giving into terrorism, exactly the sort of response that terrorists are trying to instil?

In the end we decided that we would go to the event. The fact that Comedy Unleashed support free speech and provide a rare outlet for comedians cancelled by left-wing venues weighed heavily on us. It might have feltbetter if this had been a more serious event, such as one of our monthly Politics in Pubs meetings, but this was the choice on the day.

Before the event we met up in a pub with friends. One of them decided he couldn’t enjoy the comedy that night. He explained it was no reflection on the rest of us, but he just didn’t think it was the right thing to do. We completely understood his reasons and, thankfully, he also understood why we decided to attend. It’s a mark of a solid friendship group when these sorts of fundamental disagreements can be aired without rancour. If only wider society could interact this way.

The comedy night itself was very good, though it transpired that many people had been put off by the incident. I wondered whether we would hold a minute’s silence before we started but this was not to be. To be clear, I had no idea whether this would have been appropriate, and in the end the show took its normal course. There were no references to the atrocity, though one or two jokes did hit a nerve.

Our experience is just one example of the conflict between collective mourning and respect for the victims versus resistance to terrorism and the assertion of normalcy. There have unfortunately been many similar events, but this is the first time we had to make a real choice. Was it the right one? I am not sure.

What you would have done? Please do comment, particularly if you think we made the wrong decision.

We’ll be joining the Manchester Stands with Israel Rally this Sunday. We hope to see you there.

In a major change from my usual articles I am writing today from the Reform UK conference in Birmingham. I have just attended the talk by Tamar Eshet, the cousin of Evyatar David. We began the session with a screening of the Hamas propaganda video of Evyatar describing his situation, emaciated and starving. He explained how is gradually being starved to death whilst being forced to dig his own grave. I am not embarrassed to say that I cried.

The fact that Hamas can get away with propaganda echoing the Nazi concentration camps is perhaps the most shocking thing I have witnessed in my life.

Following the video Richard Tice gave a brief but heartfelt speech condemning the actions of western governments supporting Hamas. And of course he singled out our own PM Kier Starmer. I cannot put into words just how much I despise our PM.

To finish we were joined by Tamar who gave an impassioned and deeply moving plea for western governments to understand the humanitarian crisis for the hostages and reject the barbarity of Hamas.

I am under no illusions that this brief writeup deserves a Pulitzer Prize. However, as one audience member asked “what can we do?”

Well I am only one insignificant voice but I stand with Israel.

#iStandWithIsrael

Regular readers know that I have no desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Alongside oxygen, it is one of the two most important gasses on the planet. We need oxygen to breathe and plants need carbon dioxide to support photosynthesis. Humans and animals, eat the plants and breathe out carbon dioxide. A virtuous circle.

However, there are those who do think there is too much carbon dioxide. This is not surprising, when climate alarmists supported by the main stream media tell us we are all going to die in the next 10 years. If you are not a fan of carbon dioxide you might be interested in my article on the history of the climate change movement.

Moving on to today’s topic, I have been a proponent of nuclear power since studying physics at university. In my early career I worked on a project with BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited - now Sellafield Ltd). My wife is a chemical engineer and has extensive experience in the nuclear sector. So I came to realise quite early on that many of the claims for the dangers of nuclear power were exaggerated.

What I hadn’t appreciated was just how those early safety concerns had grown, leading to excessive regulation. As a result, both the cost and construction times have ballooned. The most recent example in the UK is Sizewell C in Suffolk. The estimated cost is £38 billion - nearly double the initial estimate of £20 billion. Many believe that it could more than double again by the time it is commissioned.

Why is this happening?

Well, look no further than this excellent video by Phil Andrews:

As he explains in the description:

In 1969, the U.S. was flipping the switch on three new nuclear reactors a year—fast, efficient, and powering millions of homes. Then, almost overnight, the industry collapsed, not because of accidents like Three Mile Island, but because of a single rule that changed everything. This video uncovers the little-known story of how fear, regulation, and economics killed America’s nuclear momentum. And why small modular reactors might finally bring it back.

Andrews explains that many people are sceptical about nuclear power. There is a pervasive fear surrounding it that often overshadows the compelling evidence of its safety. It is crucial to re-evaluate common misconceptions, especially when considering its potential as a reliable and clean energy source.

One major concern is radiation. However, radiation is an inescapable part of our daily lives, hitting us constantly from above and below. Our bodies have, in fact, evolved ways to live with it because it's impossible to avoid.

For example, if you were to climb Mount Everest, you would be exposed to three years' worth of normal sea-level radiation. However, mountaineers and Sherpas do not show a higher risk of cancer or shorter lifespans.

Similarly, people living in Denver, a mile above sea level, experience double the radiation exposure but have some of the lowest cancer rates in the US. Many now question the linear no threshold model, which suggests any amount of radiation, no matter how small, increases cancer risk. Even the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted in 2021 that they are "not sure" it makes sense.

When examining historical nuclear accidents, the actual impact on human health is far less severe than commonly portrayed:

• Three Mile Island (1979). This incident resulted in exactly zero fatalities and no health impact at all. It was, in fact, benign.

• Chernobyl (1986). Still today, only 54 deaths have been recorded from Chernobyl, with two-thirds of those being firefighters or operators directly exposed near the reactor core. While there was a significant increase in thyroid cancer, it is an easily treatable cancer that usually carries no symptoms and has not led to a significant loss of life years.

• Fukushima (2011). Despite the meltdown, there has been no widely reported rise in cancer, death, or sickness from the radiation leak. Study after study has shown no adverse health effects.

Andrews present data on deaths from energy sources between 1969 and 2000. As the chart below shows, coal, oil, hydro dams, and natural gas have led to significant fatalities, but nuclear power has accounted for a remarkably low number of deaths.

Advocates for renewables will be cheered to see wind and solar at the bottom of the league. However, if we were to normalise these figures with respect to “unit hours produced” (e.g. deaths per TWh), a different ordering would emerge with a smaller range of values.

The primary driver behind the halt in nuclear plant construction in the US was not the actual disasters, but rather a pervasive "messaging of fear" that took root. This dramatically increased build times and costs by tenfold between 1973 and 1978, even before Three Mile Island.

New rules and standards, often based on the extreme As Low A Reasonably Achievable (ALARP) principle. This is a risk management concept used primarily in health, safety, and environmental contexts to minimize risks to an acceptable level. It originates from UK health and safety legislation, particularly the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and is widely applied in industries like engineering, nuclear, oil and gas, and healthcare. Applying ALARP over cautiously, made construction of new nuclear projects financially unviable.

The benefits of nuclear power

Nuclear power offers significant benefits:

• Low Land Footprint. A single nuclear site with four reactors can power entire major cities like Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. To generate the same amount of electricity, solar would require at least 25 times and wind 300 times the land area.

• Clean Emissions. Nuclear power is as clean as solar and wind, with only water vapour released from the stacks.

• Reliability. Unlike intermittent solar and wind, nuclear provides consistent, stable electricity, independent of weather conditions.

• Waste Management. Spent nuclear fuel is now stored in heavy concrete blocks, which are difficult to steal and would require complex, high-level processing to become potent, a feat even Iran's military has struggled with for decades.

• Larger EROEI. In practical terms, Energy Return on Energy Invested indicates how energy-efficient each technology is at producing usable energy compared to the energy it consumes. Nuclear has a system level EROEI of up to 75:1, compared to wind of up to 10:1 and solar PV of up to 7:1 (see my article Does the Iron Law of Energy” mean that we are doomed?) One way to think about this is that we have to utilise 7.5 times more energy on wind to produce an equivalent amount of energy as nuclear. To paraphrase a famous saying - there is no such thing as free energy.

The Rise of Small Modular Reactors

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are gaining more and more attention as a promising advancement in nuclear technology. SMRs are essentially a miniaturised version of the nuclear reactors already proven in naval applications, such as those powering nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.

Unlike bespoke, on-site constructions, SMRs are designed to be manufactured in a factory, with all components built as modules and then shipped to the installation site. This approach aims to standardise production, thereby keeping costs down and improving predictability.

One of the key advantages of SMRs is their significantly smaller physical footprint, being about 5% the size of a normal nuclear plant. This compact design is less visually imposing, potentially helping to overcome the ominous perception of traditional plants. It also offers an inherent safety benefit. Nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers have operated for over 70 years, travelling millions of miles globally, without a single problem or meltdown.

This established safety record in a challenging, dynamic environment suggests that adapting this technology for land-based use could offer a highly reliable and safe power source. Furthermore, the standardised design means that if an issue arises in one SMR, engineers would know exactly where to look in all others, simplifying maintenance and troubleshooting.

The rising popularity of SMRs is also being driven by a growing demand for power from energy-intensive sectors. Notably, “power hungry data centres, feeding AI” are "clamoring" for SMRs and would prefer to have their own dedicated units. This indicates a recognition of SMRs' potential to provide consistent, reliable, and clean electricity to meet the escalating energy needs of emerging technologies.

Andrews is mainly talking about nuclear in the US. After many years of procrastination the Labour government finally announced funding for SMRs (earmarking over £2.5 billion in funding) with Rolls Royce selected as the preferred bidder. In total therefore, new nuclear capacity looks like this (in 2025 prices):

• Hickley Point C, 3.2GW, cost £45 billion, coming online around 2030

• Sizewell C, 3.2 GW, cost £38 billion, coming online around 2036)

• SMRs, guestimate 3.2GW, costing a minimum of £20bn by 2035

For context, in Britain's Looming Fiscal Storm I quoted the OBR’s average cost of the UK renewables programme to be £30 billion per annum. Therefore, over the 25 year period considered this would amount to £750,000 billion. By comparison, nuclear programmes are currently attracting less than £100 billion.

The problem is this will probably be too little and too late. The speed of rollout of these projects is unlikely to provide enough capacity to guarantee replacing the lost capacity of those nuclear plants which have already ceased production or are coming to end of life:

• Already lost: Hinckley Point B, Hunterston B and Dungeness B - about 3GW

• Expected losses from Heysham 1 & 2, Hartlepool and Torness - about 4.7 GW

Therefore, we can see an uncertain gain of 10GW (assuming the SMR programme hits the ground running) with an almost certain loss of 7.7GW.

Conclusion

Nuclear power has been neglected for many years by successive governments, driven by excessive costs and legislation driven by exaggerated safety fears. The evidence suggests that nuclear power's perceived dangers are largely a product of fear and misinformation, rather than actual risk.

When factoring in decades of radiation data, low land requirements, and reliable electricity generation, it becomes challenging to find compelling reasons to choose alternatives, such as renewables, over nuclear.

The UK government has only recently restarted a nuclear programme with a possible new capacity of 10GW. In the same period we will lose a total of 7.7GW of existing nuclear.

The question is, have we left it too late to embark on a sensible path to maintain energy security? I strongly suspect that things are going to get very tight over the next 5 to 10 years. It may already be too late to act in time.

A short post to look at this report from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero which helpfully explains the real costs of renewables. From the introduction to the report:

Electricity generation costs are a fundamental part of energy market analysis, and a good understanding of these costs is important when analysing and designing policy to make progress towards net zero.

Yes indeed - it’s just a shame that Ed Miliband doesn’t live by this advice when he states that electricity costs are fixed to wholesale gas prices. This is simply not true. There have been times when they have been more influential, principally during the early party of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, wholesale prices have fallen back since then. We still have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world and the fourth highest domestic prices.

I recommend reading the whole report, but it’s instructive to look at just one of the charts. Figure 2 presents the relative costs of gas power (CCGT) compared to offshore wind, onshore wind and large-scale solar for projects commissioning in 2025 (in 2021 prices):

Table 10 of the report provides a detailed breakdown of the figures, but several things stand out:

• For gas (CCGT H Class), the government imposed carbon tax is over half of the total cost and 140% of the fuel cost! This carbon tax is set to rise significantly as other charts in the report show.

• Fuel cost is the only category where renewables are cheaper, where most other costs are significantly lower for gas.

So how do we read this? Certainly renewable fuel is cheaper but on every other metric apart from carbon tax, the costs are greater. Granted, even if we were to remove ALL the carbon tax, renewables would still be cheaper.

However, we also know from the introduction to the report that:

Levelised costs provide a straightforward way of consistently comparing the costs of different generating technologies with different characteristics, focusing on the costs incurred by the generator over the lifetime of the plant. However, the simplicity of the measure means that there are factors which are not considered, including a technology’s impact on the wider system given the timing, location, and other characteristics of its generation.

I previously discussed this issue in my article Why the Renewables Industry Loves LCOE. The chart above takes no account of the facts that renewable energy is intermittent and requires reliable backup. This backup is typically in the form of gas fired power and foreign inter-connector supplies. Given that such power has to be bid for in a highly complex market, it is not surprising that costs per MWh can rise dramatically. This can sometimes go up to several thousands per MWh. Compare this to the wholesale cost of gas from the chart above, which is £43/MWh.

So what else doesn’t this chart show? For a start it takes no account of quality of energy supplied. There are a number of ways to measure this including availability (and ability to despatch when required), efficiency and more technical issues such as supporting better grid stability through a property called inertia. Inertia relates to the presence of large rotating masses which are vital to keep the grid operating at a stable frequency.

There are also social issues such as number and quality of long term jobs created. Having studied company reports from wind farm operators it’s clear that they provide little in the way of high quality or local permanent employment. In the case of Scout Moor I, a local wind farm, there were zero permanent employees in the last two sets of accounts. Presumably all maintenance is carried out by specialist contractors.

We also need to consider the impact on the environment. This includes the amount of land required, the impact on peat and wild life, and ease of decommissioning. On all these counts, gas is significantly better and in most cases, orders of magnitude better.

The final factor to consider is something called Energy Return on Energy Invested or EROEI. I wrote about this in Does “The Iron Law of Energy” mean that we are doomed? EROEI is the ratio of energy output to the energy input required to produce it. The lower the value then the less practical or economic is a power source. Unsurprisingly, renewable energy has much lower EROEI values than fossil fuel or nuclear.

Summary

If we remove the carbon tax, the relative levelised costs are similar, with gas being only slightly more expensive. However, to understand the full picture we need to acknowledge that fossil fuels:

1. Require significantly less backup

2. Provide inherently better quality energy

3. Are much less damaging to the environment

4. Require much less land per MWh produced

5. Provide more and better quality jobs, including locally

6. Generate significantly more energy that is required to produce it

Paradoxically, we have a Net Zero policy with the goal to dramatically increase renewable energy supply whilst taxing to death the fossil fuel power sources that make renewable energy a possibility in the first place!

At some point, which must be approaching rapidly, the pressure on fossil fuel prices, particularly growing carbon taxes, must lead to energy so expensive that it will be impossible for society to function. This is not hyperbole. It’s just the logical conclusion of an insane and out of control energy policy.

And remember, this analysis is based on official government data, not a partisan fossil fuel report. I am more than happy to be corrected in the comments, but I can’t see any justification for Net Zero policy. We know for example, that since our emissions are so low, it could never reduce global temperatures. And as I wrote about in UK Climate Leadership: Are We Leading Everyone Off a Cliff?, and should be obvious from the above, being a climate leader is a futile. It’s just virtue signalling.

And it would not matter if we tried to do it slower. The fundamentals of physics, engineering and economics are not going to change. In some respects the sooner we hit the buffers, the sooner the penny will drop and we can start thinking about how we are going to get back to sanity. It will be a major challenge.

GBNews recently discussed a shift in the US's climate policy, where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may reverse its stance on fossil fuel emissions being a primary driver of climate change and a threat to health.

In this video, physicist and former US government adviser, Professor Steve Koonin provides a damning critique of the UK’s Net Zero strategy and urges policymakers to rethink their approach. Koonin was the science chief for President Obama. He argues that:

• Existing climate models are unreliable and overstate the impact of human activity.

• There is no imminent climate catastrophe.

• The economic and health impacts of warming are minimal, and that cold-related deaths significantly outweigh heat-related deaths globally.

• Adaptation and research and development in new energy technologies should be preferred, instead of costly "Net Zero" policies like those in the UK.

• Net Zero will lead to "economic suicide" with little climate benefit.

The US Context: A Potential Climate Policy Reversal

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering declaring that fossil fuel emissions are no longer seen as the primary driver of climate change or a threat to human health.

This could be a dramatic reversal of 16 years of policy that identified greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide as an urgent danger. The report A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate was co-authored by five highly respected scientists: Steve Koonin, John Christy, Judith Curry, Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer. It aims to provide a more accurate and nuanced scientific picture, relying on official data, peer-reviewed literature, and UN/US government assessment reports.

Key Scientific Insights Challenging the Catastrophic Narrative

Professor Koonin highlights several findings from his report and broader climate science that challenge the prevailing narrative of an existential climate crisis:

• Minimal Economic Impact: Official US government reports from the Biden administration itself indicate that the economic impact of warming on the US will be minimal. Projections suggest that over the next 70 years, a few degrees of warming would only decrease economic growth (e.g., from 400% to 380% growth), a difference considered "in the noise" by physicists and not an "existential catastrophic crisis". Similar trends are seen globally, though poorer countries might be more impacted. [This is why I have argued consistently that the best way to protect poorer countries is to help them to become richer.]

• Net Decrease in Temperature-Related Deaths: While heat-related deaths are a concern, Professor Koonin points out that far fewer people are dying from extreme cold globally – about nine times fewer than from extreme heat. As average temperatures warm, cold temperatures are warming more rapidly, leading to a net decrease in deaths from extreme temperatures. But this begs the question - why isn’t this simple fact better understood?

• Unreliable Climate Models: Koonin states that climate models are "pretty awful" and provide only a "hazy picture." They disagree significantly on sensitivity to carbon dioxide (by a factor of three) and often fail to accurately reproduce observed temperature rises, especially at regional levels. He notes that professionals themselves acknowledge these models are "not at all fit for purpose at the regional level". [I wrote about this topic in my article Hot climate models and unrealistic assumptions are undermining public trust in climate action.]

• Lack of Observable Trends for Many Climate Impact Drivers: A table in the most recent UN climate science report (IPCC Working Group One, Chapter 12) shows that for about 30 different climate impact drivers (e.g., high/low temperatures, storms, floods, droughts, sea level rise), no observable trend has been seen in the last century. This lack of evidence for a "broken climate" contradicts common warnings.

• Forecasts Based on Implausible Scenarios: Many catastrophic forecasts are based on models acknowledged to be unreliable and on "extreme scenarios for what future emissions will be that the IPCC itself declares as implausible".

• The "99% Consensus" Nuance: Koonin clarifies that while there's broad agreement that the climate is changing, greenhouse gases are increasing due to fossil fuels, and they exert a warming influence, the consensus breaks down when discussing how significantly the climate will respond and whether impacts will be catastrophic. He advocates for an honest public discussion of the science.

Implications for the UK: Economic Suicide?

The UK is legally bound to achieve Net Zero by 2050, involving costly measures like banning petrol cars and promoting heat pump schemes, alongside rising "green taxes". Professor Koonin argues that the UK's approach is already causing significant economic damage:

• Minimal Direct Climate Benefit: The UK's contribution to global CO2 emissions is less than 1%, meaning anything it does to reduce emissions will have a "minimal direct effect on the climate".

• Economic Damage Already Underway: He believes the UK is already damaging its economy, citing an increasingly expensive and unstable electricity grid due to the push for wind and solar, manufacturing shutdowns, and rising costs for households. From his perspective, it looks like "economic suicide" for very little, if any, benefit. [Even the Office for Budget Responsibility is sounding alarm as I discussed in my article Britain's Looming Fiscal Storm.]

• Unrealistic Expectations for Renewable Costs: The idea that wind and solar systems will be cheaper than traditional gas or coal systems is a "fantasy." Building a reliable electrical system on intermittent wind and solar requires enormous costs for backup systems (nuclear, gas turbines, large batteries), leading to prices "two or three times what you thought you were going to pay". [I wrote a short article on this issue called Innovative fuel development heralds new era in transport. Superficially it looks like an argument against EVs, but it really isn’t. Rather it’s a metaphor for the realities of trying to run our grid on renewable energy.]

A Call for Adaptation and Rethink

Instead of focusing solely on emissions reduction, Professor Koonin suggests a two-fold sensible strategy:

1. Adaptation: Investing in adaptation measures like seawalls and air conditioning. Adaptation is proportional, local, visible, and currently more economical. [I wrote about this in my article Adapting to climate change won't cost the earth.]

2. Research & Development (R&D): Developing new, cost-effective emissions-reducing technologies that are no more expensive than existing alternatives. He notes that China's president has stated they won't change their electricity system until a workable alternative exists, a contrast to the West's "rushed headlong" approach.

Koonin hopes the potential US policy shift marks an "emperor's new clothes moment" for Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada, prompting a more realistic examination of climate science and policy. He observes that some regions are already quietly rethinking their strategies, such as the EU embracing nuclear power and the UK relaxing its internal combustion engine ban.

Ultimately, Professor Koonin believes policymakers and the public should be "enraged" that they haven't been told important nuances about climate science. He calls for harder questions to be asked of "consensus scientists" to ensure a more complete and nuanced picture informs policy decisions.