Carbon has its place

The renewable energy market looks buoyant. A new report suggests that last year, for the first time, developing countries spent more on new green energy sources than rich countries – despite the fall in fossil fuel prices. China now accounts for over one third of the global investment, while the biggest investors when measured against the size of their GDP are countries such as Mauritania, Honduras, Uruguay and Jamaica. Renewables are increasingly seen not as the preserve of the eco-friendly West but as an energy of choice for the poorer nations, too.

But we should not succumb to utopian thinking. For a start, the green turn is due in large part to government policy: expensive subsidies financed by hard-pressed taxpayers have played a critical role. The expansion of the sector also brings with it new challenges. Angela Merkel has decided to place greater controls on her country’s roll-out of clean energy because Germany’s national grid cannot cope with high levels of intermittent energy. And then there are parts of the energy market that the green suppliers are not yet meeting: transport, heating and cooling.

Here in the UK, a wide mix of providers is still needed. While green sources are financed by subsidies that hit the consumer, successive governments have waged a war on carbon and nuclear that has left the country with a worrying energy gap that could result in rising prices and blackouts. The solution is not to pour money into inefficient wind farms that are themselves a visual blight, but to develop a coherent plan for a competitive market that includes even those things that trouble environmentalists, such as fracking. Britain must not be left in the dark.