11:20am Tuesday 9th February 2010
ONE day the lights will go out, but before they do we shall all have to face steeply rising fuel bills. This is because both Conservative and Labour governments of these past 20 years have warned of the coming crisis in energy supply and yet have done precisely nothing to forestall it.
As long ago as the Eighties it was well known that our nuclear power stations needed to be replaced. Both political parties were afraid to grab the issue by the scruff of the neck with the result that only now, and very belatedly, the authorities are planning new nuclear facilities – and, it goes without saying, asking the French to build them for us.
As the world presses more vigorously for industrialisation, there is going to be a global shortage of energy. There have already been ugly and violent incidents involving Russia and its neighbours over gas supplies.
There is every likelihood in the near future that countries such as Russia, with massive gas reserves, will blackmail customers over supply and price. In fact, Russia could, if it wanted to, cut off Western Europe’s gas supplies within two hours. It is not hopeless pessimism to foresee that squabbles over energy resources might be the cause of wars.
To be fair, our governments haven’t been entirely neglectful. They have been avid for many a crackpot scheme, none of which will provide significant amounts of vital energy.
They have defiled our landscape with wind turbines. Quite how people claiming to care about the environment can agree to this vandalism is beyond me. These turbines are an eyesore, they create noise pollution and, according to many medical experts, can damage our health. More importantly, they are not a significant provider of energy.
Our coldest weather comes when there are anti-cyclonic conditions: in other words, when there are clear, frosty skies and no wind. Thus, at the very moment when there is the greatest demand for power, the wind turbines remain unproductively stationary.
Then there is the great solar panels scam.
The Government wants each household to invest £12,500 in solar panels while admitting these will – at current market rates – generate only £130 worth of electricity per year.
The actual energy derived from a solar panel will not exceed that used to make the panel in the first place, deliver it, fix it in place and maintain it.
Put another way, a 2.5 kilowatt solar system costs about £15,000 and should produce about 2,200 kilowatt hours. At market rate, this works out at about £210 per year. So the system only pays for itself after 70 years.
A large-scale investment in nuclear power would provide for all our energy needs for the foreseeable future. But for those who have qualms about atomic power stations, there are other more conventional and utterly reliable sources of energy in Britain.
The country is built on huge coal deposits.
And it is not a question of returning to a century- old dirty, dangerous and inefficient technology to extract it. There are new mining methodologies which are safer, cleaner and infinitely more efficient than the old pits.
Practical measures are required now. It is dispiriting to see fanciful schemes and useless gestures in place of an energy policy.
Jonathan Swift satirised a method for extracting moonbeams out of cucumbers.
That’s about the level of practical wisdom being shown by the Government.
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