A waste of energy

FOR decades, politicians have spectacularly failed to provide a long- term energy strategy to avoid 1970s-style blackouts.

Unable to grasp the nettle to ensure the country’s lights stay on, successive governments have kicked the can down the road. Unfortunately, this generates only frustration, not heat and light (if it did, we would run a surplus!)

So it is deeply worrying that work on a new £16billion nuclear power station in Wales has been suspended. This not only costs a deprived region 9,000 jobs, it leaves the Government’s energy policy in tatters.

Nuclear reactors generate one-fifth of our electricity. But half of existing plants will be obsolete by 2025. With coal being phased out, no new gas-fired stations under way and fracking unpopular, how on earth will they fill this vast energy shortfall?

Disturbingly, it leaves us dangerously dependent on plants built by China, a totalitarian regime with a long history of industrial spying, or gas from Russia, where thuggish Vladimir Putin could turn off the tap at any moment.

Ministers can’t say they weren’t warned about the looming crisis.

Failure to get a grip risks leaving future generations in the cold and dark.