By Paul Homewood
This week, there are two articles that tell the truth about Net Zero’s suicide hunt.
It is no coincidence that both are written by top Brexiteers.
This one is by David Frost:
Reset log. A new crisis is coming. We’re all gearing up for an energy crisis this fall, with consumption rising, supplies falling, and chickens going home to crow. But suddenly we have a water crisis first, a tasting version of future problems, just to get us in the right mindset for a tough winter.
Different utilities, different problems, but the same basic elements. We did have a serving of water, through the original faucet bans, with every chance it got worse. The allocation of energy in some form seems pretty solid, and we’d be very lucky if we didn’t experience a real blackout here, or in the rest of Europe, over the next few months.
Why are we in this situation? I used to imagine that one of the benefits of living in an advanced country was that at least the basics worked. In the developing world, you don’t have reliable water or electricity. But in the West, when you turn on the faucet, the water always comes out and the lights stay on without you having to invest in a separate generator.
That is changing. Worse, we’re not trying to solve the problems, but instead telling people to “cut down – you don’t really need all the water (or electricity) anyway”. We are being asked to change our lifestyles to suit the circumstances, not the other way around.
However, mastering our environment to make us richer has been a fundamental Western view for 200 years. If we don’t do that, we won’t be successful for much longer.
Know the water situation first. No one can blame Vladimir Putin for the hose ban. The country is still as wet as it used to be. The Met Office data shows that there has been no significant change in rainfall since 1840 and indeed the past 30 years have been 10% wetter than the previous 30 years.
It is true that now there is more rain in winter than in summer and the south of England is drier. Whether or not this is the result of climate change caused by CO2 emissions, there is nothing we can do for the next few decades. Even the most radical climate policy conceivable in the UK, or even in Europe, is not going to change it quickly.
So obviously we have to adapt. That will come at a cost. But the cost is completely manageable. The planned Anglian Water pipeline to transport water from Lincolnshire to East Anglia, which is limping forward thanks to our appallingly slow planning system, will cost around £500m – a change small for infrastructure projects. (It would buy us a few HS2 miles or about 20 miles of two-way roads.)
But larger scale projects will be needed and without much planning. Meanwhile, it’s been 30 years since we last built a reservoir and only 4% of our water is transferred between water companies.
Another way to adapt is through desalination. After all, we are surrounded by sea water. It is a very good way to avoid further extraction of water from rivers. However, one factory that we have, at Beckton in East London, has not enabled and possibly never. Another proposal, in Hampshire, is getting stuck thanks to green campaigners who worry it’s too energy-consuming and opposition, typically the local Conservative MP.
So instead, we take the easy way – reduce demand. In the short term, that means banning the use of water cannons, shorter showers, etc. In the long term, it is said, consumption per person must be reduced by a third or more.
I don’t agree with that. We have enough water. We need to invest in capturing, storing and moving it where it is needed. That’s what an advanced country does.
We see a “learn to live with it” response in energy policy. Obviously, the short-term shock is heavily influenced by Ukraine War. But long-term policy is not. We chose to invest in forms of energy that were unreliable and simply could not produce what we needed, but at a heavy cost. In fact, the UK’s grid capacity is actually shrinking despite all the new pressures on it.
This circle can only be squared by reducing demand – and as you’d expect, Europe’s final energy consumption has declined for 20 years and UK electricity consumption is at 1970s levels. Some people say these are good things. I say they are symptoms of an advanced society receding in its ambitions.
Meanwhile, in the UK, we’ve decided we don’t need gas storage and we’re moving LNG to the EU because we can’t store it ourselves. As National Grid’s incredible winter plans last week showed, we are now very confident in the Europeans sending power back to us this fall.
But EU members face the same problems as we do – in many cases worse.
We have certainly learned from last year’s EU vaccine export ban, and their attempt to commandeer vaccinations made for the UK, that when the chips stop working everyone the country will bear it. We simply cannot rely on power coming back through the connectors.
Every possibility, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard pointed out, that the people in this country would face a division of power – like the one demanded in parts of Europe – to keep the lights on in Germany. That will be a tough sale. If we are asked by the EU to show such solidarity, one condition is certainly that it ceases to act against us over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
My big worry is that it’s getting easier and easier to tell people to “get used to it”. The Covid lockdowns show that some people – the establishment’s laptop elite, not those who actually work in the workplace – discover that they can live a more restrictive lifestyle. Some found they quite liked it. We have to make sure that our leaders don’t think that can happen again.
The right way forward is not telling people to do less with less. It is becoming a more efficient society again. Build the infrastructure. Invest in nuclear and gas – the only source of electricity that can do the job. Master our environment.
The next Prime Minister can – and I certainly will – bring us back to it.
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