Britain's ill wind
The Labour Party's flagship policy agenda seems eerily familiar.
For much of the last few years, Britain has had no opposition. The Labour Party’s only noticeable criticism of the Conservative government has been to claim that lockdowns should have been earlier, deeper, wider and longer. Meanwhile, throughout the pandemic, the Tories have been imploding, and have now reached a critical mass that threatens to explode in a spectacular political supernova. Polls and analyses suggest that Labour may well win an unprecedented number of seats at the next election. But for what? Sensing that they have had no clear platform, Labour have seized on the current cost of living crisis to begin trying to identify their policy agenda for the next election, which will occur at some point before January 2025.
And here it is:
Some nation is going to lead the world in offshore wind. Why not this one?
Some nation will win the race for electric vehicles. Why not us?
Some nation will be the first to harness new hydrogen power. Why not Britain?
That’s what our green prosperity plan is all about.
It’s action on the cost-of-living crisis now, tomorrow and the day after.
And it starts by backing working people on rising energy prices.
The why not… is straightforward enough to anyone with a brain. So we will start there.
Simply, there are no upsides to ‘leading the world’ in offshore wind, ‘winning the race’ for electric vehicles, or ‘being the first’ to harness new hydrogen power. Such victories may appeal to the vanity of political hacks with globalist aspirations. But even on their own terms, these putative victories create no benefits. It makes no obvious difference to us whether Britain is the first, second, third or …Nth to achieve them.
And how? The only possibility of Britain ‘leading the world’, ‘winning the race’, and ‘being the first’ exists through policies that mandate wind power, electric vehicles and hydrogen production.
Such a policy agenda could give us the most wind turbines per capita. But the greatest part of the components and materials won't be produced here.
And a policy could make it so that we have the most electric cars. But they won't be made here, either. We produce no lithium, no copper, no cobalt, and so on.
The Times reports today that,
BMW is to axe all UK production of the award-winning electric Mini and switch it to China, dealing a major blow to hopes that Britain could be a global hub for zero-emission vehicle manufacture.
And UKTN reported recently that,
Britishvolt is delaying production at its electric car battery plant in Northumberland by six months until 2025.
Production of battery cells at the Northumberland ‘gigaplant’ had been due to start by the end of 2023 before being pushed back to the end of 2024.
And these operations should be though much more of assembly lines than manufacturing as such.
This is a point that was made acutely by David Rose last year:
Yet none of Seagreen’s steel jackets are being made there. Instead, most are being manufactured by the Fluor Heavy Industries Corporation in Zhuhai, in southern China.
Another Chinese company, Jutal Offshore Oil, is making the foundations for the turbines. When they are ready, everything will be transported by gigantic, diesel-burning barges halfway across the world to the Fife coast.
Put simply, Green Britain is made in China.
Some of us have been arguing this for a long time. The UK has prioritised ‘cutting carbon’ at the expense of its domestic energy and industrial sectors, creating a huge market for manufacturers in the east, with whom British industries (and European and American, for that matter) cannot compete. The following charts are what counts as ‘winning’ on the green wonk’s perspective:
Most of UK emissions have been reduced by decreasing consumption. That’s all well and good if your only metric of ‘success’ is emissions. But green energy pushes prices up and production overseas.
So, YAY!!!, our coal consumption is practically eliminated. But so is our steel production. And we still use steel. And we still use minerals and other resources, which we do not produce, and which if we did produce or refine, it would send armies of greens and nimbies out onto the streets with pitchforks, if not into art galleries with cans of tomato soup.
Perhaps the point is more easily understood by examining the promise of hydrogen.
A policy could make it so that the UK produces and uses the most hydrogen in the whole world. But how could it make hydrogen cheaper than gas?
Why is natural gas cheap and why did it become expensive?
Natural gas was cheap because it is extremely abundant. It became expensive (as I have argued elsewhere on these pages) because policy prohibited exploration and extraction throughout Europe (including the UK) and because various actors used financial markets to prevent investment in hydrocarbon energy. Then, production was ramped down during the lockdowns, and so when demand began to recover, capital was not available to ramp production up again. Policy created scarcity.
Very much discussion about policy simply does not understand energy demand. Here, for example, is Labour’s failed leader and next Climate Minister, Ed Miliband.
Miliband says that we should be building solar farms instead of fracking. (We’re still talking about hydrogen, but his confusion is important to highlight here.)
Some 95% of UK households have central heating systems, 86% of which are gas-fired. Consequently, heating is by far the greater energy demand than electricity. UK natural gas consumption is 790 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2021, whereas electricity consumption was 334 TWh, 308.7 TWh of which was produced domestically, the remainder imported. 122.2 TWh was produced by “renewables”, including burning trees — a reduction of 9.3% on the previous year because there was less wind. Remember that last point.
The following chart show’s Ed Miliband’s major malfunction…
A whopping 253.8 TWh of UK electricity came from natural gas in 2021.
Wind, wave and solar provided just 70.9 TWh — 3.6 times as much came from gas.
To meet the UK’s gas demand of 790 TWh (for heat and electricity) with hydrogen produced by wind and solar requires at least a 1,114% increase in the UK’s fleet of wind and solar farms. But it’s worse than that, because the process of producing hydrogen using electricity — electrolysis — is just 80% efficient. So we’d need a 1,393% increase — 14 times the capacity that currently exists.
And that’s before we consider the costs of upgrading the gas supply network.
And it gets worse, because Labour’s flagship policy also wants Britain to ‘win the race’ to electric vehicles. This implies at least another 100 TWh of demand, which gives us a 1,569% increase. And this does not count the cost of upgrading the entire grid to carry all the power to heat homes and recharge EVs.
And remember the point that in 2021 saw 9.3% less production from renewables because of unfavourable weather? Well, it is Labour’s claim that green energy will save us from the whims of foreign energy dictators and energy markets. But a ~10% variability of availability is catastrophic in these terms. And that says nothing about variability at smaller scales of days or weeks without sufficient wind or sunlight. The price would skyrocket as speculators and industries compete to secure future supply — just as we have seen this year.
On any sensible measure, this project of Labour’s will cost £trillions. Yet it will produce no net benefit. I don’t get better electrons coming out of the sockets on my wall if they are pumped around Britain’s wires by the wind. I don’t get a better heat if the gas burned in my boiler comes from wind-powered electrolysis. And I certainly don’t get to a better destination if my car is battery-powered. The greater probability is that Labour’s policy will leave me with no power and no heat in my flat, and with no transport.
The price of energy could be reduced by emphasising domestic energy production. Gas is expensive because its production has been prohibited, as I pointed out in the previous post here. And then, when we have brought the cost of energy down, we can begin to think about reindustrialising the UK.
There is simply no way that the extraordinary costs of making the UK the ‘world leader’ in offshore wind, and the ‘first’ to hydrogen power, can simultaneously allow the industrial strength to produce the hardware. We can only be the biggest buyer of wind turbines and EVs, and we will buy them at ever increasing prices, using an ever devaluing currency, from the world leader in burning coal.
Labour’s arithmetic has been destroyed by green ideology.
On traditional Labour terms, take note, those £trillions would be far better spent on public services, whether we agree with such spending or not.
All of which should remind us of the absolute disaster that is the next opposition, currently claiming to be the government.
Kier Starmer’s promises are the same as Boris Johnson’s promises to “build back better” just two years ago. Johnson’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution promised:
Advancing Offshore Wind
Driving the Growth of Low Carbon Hydrogen
Delivering New and Advanced Nuclear Power
Accelerating the Shift to Zero Emission Vehicles
Green Public Transport, Cycling and Walking
Jet Zero and Green Ships
Greener Buildings
Investing in Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage
Protecting Our Natural Environment
Green Finance and Innovation
In 2022, Kier Starmer and Ed Miliband are simply recycling the 2020 Conservatives policy agenda. And this is their big offering, their Grand Projet.
The only claim that remains is that somehow, Labour is more competent to deliver on precisely the things that the Conservative government failed to deliver — that £trillions will be spent with a more sincere conviction, and with more love and care.
But such concepts are not amenable to the basic arithmetic that shows that it is not possible to address the cost-of-living crisis by making energy less reliable, less affordable and less abundant than it would be made by burning coal, oil and gas.
Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is the geopolitical context.
When Ed Miliband was a minister with the Energy and Climate brief, the world was a very different place. China was a recent newcomer to the WTO, and Moscow was more amenable to the notion of the global order. The EU faced no real obstacle. Obama was in the Whitehouse. Climate was at the top of the political agenda.
But now a multipolarity is emerging, with emergent BRICS countries set to bring the global political centre of gravity east and southwards. Western leaders have about as much chance of aligning Beijing and Moscow to the west’s favoured ideological agenda items as I have of winning the next Olympic Triathlon. India, Turkey, and OPEC+ all in the last weeks have made clear that the global agenda is not Washington’s, London’s or Brussels’ to set. And meanwhile, relationships between the western alliance look increasingly strained and rancorous as the fallout from the west’s sanctions “against” Russia pitch populations against their governments and governments against governments.
There is thus no indication that the rest of the world would be impressed by the next government’s victories, leadership or other firsts. Indians will shrug, and carry on admiring their new coal plants. The Chinese will thank us for our custom, and use the cash to buy more gas from Siberia. The rest of the Anglosphere will ask us why we’re still banging on about climate. Ed Miliband’s increasing crazy face will appear in BBC news articles on the climate missionary’s zeal as he tours the world, but his attempts to bring other countries back into the climate agenda will make him look increasingly like the irritating drunk person trying to get everyone to dance at some rubbish pub. Global Britain will be a laughing stock — has-been warmongers and green zealots, convinced of their significance to the world, but ever more remote even from their own population.
The opposition that wasn’t an opposition is set to be the next government. Its reproduction of the last government’s failed policy agenda makes no attempt to explain why those policies failed, and how such proven policy failures can be made to succeed. This is of course, because there is practically no point to the UK’s political parties: they are merely slightly different offices of the political establishment, that can offer the public no differences of ideology or policy. Politics, in any colour, as long as it’s green. We might just as well be Chinese. We are, after all, a one-party state, albeit one that differs from China by its overt hostility to industry and to making its population better-off.
"The why not… is straightforward enough to anyone with a brain".
Indeed. It is incredible that the entire incumbent political class is so brainless on energy engineering.
My head hurts reading this. We seemingly have the option of the 'Conservatives not conservatives' in total disarray, rallying against the faintest hint of anything remotely resembling conservative policy coming from within their own party, anything which offers the faint hope of putting Britain back on the road to prosperity and sanity, or we have the prospect of Keith's Labour-lite eco-fascist Green loonies running the country into the ground. Can we presume that this is the one task they will perform competently? Meanwhile we have a disparate array of tiny opposition parties who refuse to unite under one banner to form a genuine and credible opposition to the LibLabConGreens. Depressing is not the word.