We’ve been too slow to fix this gas crisis
This time last year, Britain was preparing to host the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow. The public were implored to go “one step greener”, by not washing dishes before they were put in the dishwasher. Governments competed to show off their net zero credentials. The meeting itself turned out to be something of a damp squib, with most observers considering its achievements to be minor. But that hasn’t stopped the great caravan of NGOS, activists and green politicians from continuing to perambulate the world, participating in an endless series of summits, events and symposiums that too often create more heat than light.
Now, heat is precisely what swathes of the world are running out of. Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race, is expected to make one of her first acts as prime minister the granting of new licences for North Sea oil and gas, part of a scramble across Europe to secure dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. It would be a sensible move. There is a risk this winter not only that energy bills are unaffordable, but that there is not enough energy full stop.
It may, however, be too late. New production is unlikely to come onstream this year, and it will only be making up for projects that were shut down prematurely. Other countries have been quicker to address deficiencies in their energy strategies, with even Germany making strides towards refilling its gas storage.
Moreover, will the industry even respond to this change in the political climate? Politicians may no longer like to be photographed, smiling, as yet another fossil fuel power station is demolished, but the ideology that helped bring us to this point has not gone away. Net zero is written into law, while banks and other financial institutions face pressure not to invest in new oil and gas projects. Sky-high prices ought to be incentive enough for energy firms to pump billions into fossil fuel extraction. That many may hesitate to do so is almost entirely because it remains official policy for these projects to be shut down forever in a few years’ time.
Saving the planet is a laudable aim, but the costs of doing so have to be set against other priorities – including the basic requirement that the UK has enough heat and light to function. Green activists insist that nothing has changed and that achieving net zero should remain the overriding aim of energy policy. It is an argument that will struggle to survive the winter.