In the USA, Donald Trump is leading a pro-fossil fuel, anti-green power push as part of his war on Biden’s climate policies. Offshore wind has been one of his targets. That could put the US behind some other countries, but he seems locked into it- even lashing out against offshore wind projects in the UK.
In the UK itself, the new Reform UK party is similarly inclined. Party leader Nigel Farage has said: ‘We view the net zero targets as being the prime reason for the de-industrialisation of Britain’. It recently said, if elected, it would introduce a windfall tax on renewable energy and announced they were ‘serving notice’ on the industry with a set of policies ‘to undo the effects of net zero’.
Their election manifesto last year pledged to ‘scrap energy levies and net zero to slash energy bills and save each household £500 per year’ and to ‘unlock Britain’s vast oil and gas reserves to beat the cost of living crisis and unleash real economic growth’. Now, with opinion polls suggesting their popularity is growing, they have added more details on what they plan. Speaking in the City of London in February, deputy leader Richard Tice said: ‘We are serving notice on the renewables industry, on the investors, on the operations, and all the advisors and the lawyers, had better take note. We will scrap net stupid zero and we will do whatever it takes to bring the bills down, to bring down the cost of living’.
Specifically, they wanted ‘recover the cost of subsidies from the renewables industry’, which they put around £10bn a year, by introducing a windfall tax on all renewable generated power. In addition, they would introduce a solar farm tax, scrapping the inheritance tax, but charging a ‘special tax upon their death’ on farmers who use land for solar panels. Tice saw this as fair. ‘I have to say to those farmers who want to sell out to the renewable industry for solar farms, you can’t have it both ways, folks. If you sell out to the renewables industry, then you would not benefit from that inheritance tax relief. That’s only fair.’
He also outlined Reforms plans to force the National Grid to put cables underground: ‘We’re just saying do the job properly… if you go the cheap route and put the cables on pylons, we will legislate to force you to take down the pylons and put the cables under the ground. And you will not be allowed to pay any dividends to shareholders, until the cables are put underground.’ Presumably they are just talking about new cables, but even doing that would have vast costs- pushing up power costs dramatically.
Be that as it may, Tice said that ‘net zero is without question the greatest act of self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the people at Westminster’, with Reform’s 2024 Manifesto claiming that ‘our bills have increased dramatically in line with the huge increase in renewables capacity over the last 15 years’. Instead, it said, they wanted ‘cheap, secure energy for Britain’, calling for ‘fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil’ and ‘shale gas licences on test sites for 2 years’, followed by fast-tracked ‘clean nuclear energy with new Small Modular Reactors, built in Britain’. Along with clean synthetic fuel and clean coal mining, but also tidal power!
Reform’s approach may get approval from James Price, a Senior Research Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. He says that ‘Net zero is making Britain colder, poorer and less productive’. He notes that ‘Energy costs are more than a third more expensive in the UK than they are in France, and over 70 per cent more than they are in the United States. This is almost all down to the mad zealotry with which red Ed Miliband, and much of the wider establishment, are prosecuting a war against both hydrocarbons and the laws of thermodynamics’.
Instead he says ‘the government should promote supply side reforms that enable providers to flood the system with cheap, plentiful energy. In the short term, that means fracking here in Britain, and switching North Sea oil and gas back on’. He also says we should be ‘massively promoting next-generation nuclear power,’ as is also backed by the Adam Smith Institute.
And longer term, he says ‘just imagine a world where our creative and scientific efforts were focused on truly futuristic ways to generate energy that don’t rely on the Green Party’s dream of turning off all the lights and huddling in the cold and dark’. Such as? ‘Transparent solar panels that turn windows into sources of energy. Roads that absorb the energy from cars going over them and send it back into the car. Solar satellites that beam energy back onto the earth. Direct air capture to just suck the carbon out of the air’.
So, an eco-modernist wonderland, with some renewables leavening nuclear reliance. We may even get something like this being pushed in Germany, after the success of AfD in the recent election. Some see it as all part of a techno-fascist trend, with nuclear inevitably requiring a ‘techno-scientific-industrial-military elite’ to run and safeguard it, but others say this sort of future is not inevitable. Let’s hope so, with the recent armed drone attack on the containment shell of the Chernobyl reactor reminding us that we may all be very vulnerable to nuclear disasters. Worryingly, with Trump’s funding cuts hollowing out the US science base, there may be fewer people in the US to deal with issues like this- or to find alternative approaches. Perversely, that may even impact on AI. Although not everyone would be too worried if AI development and use was slowed, given some of its alleged down sides, there would still be a vital need for proper industry-independent regulatory attention. Same as in all fields.
As things stand, and looking quite broadly, the global future does not look too good. The benefits that technology might offer are always uncertain, depending heavily on the nature of the society that develops them. With at the moment the political right ascendant in many countries, a green future looks at bit less likely, but despite all of the bluster from the likes of Trump and Farage concerning the horrors and wastes associated with renewable energy, it’s worth noting that the UK net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, expanding by 10% in 2024.
Comments
Post a Comment