Gwyn Jones Farm Diary: Energy is going to be expensive in the future

Cambridge University Press have just published Professor Sir Dieter Helm’s latest book Climate Realism – facing the facts about energy. I have a copy, and it is good to see some climate realism as he puts it and the push for more time to reach net zero targets. Our only leadership on climate change in this country is in the sheer cost of our energy, and Professor Helm states that no amount of government tinkering with bills can change that, and there are better options to help curb climate change than wind and solar alone, which cannot power the future.

Ed Milliband’s zest for net zero and his urgent and reckless push for renewables, with his promise of cheaper bills, home grown energy security and global leadership has been a disaster for our economy, and now that he is out of the way, no doubt piling up air miles as Foreign Secretary, there is a chance to re-set. As Professor Helm says, our energy is not cheap, it’s not home grown and it’s not secure. Miliband’s legacy as Energy Secretary is likely to be a reference to King Canute!

No world leader is looking at our country when it comes to energy leadership, businesses are not looking to locate or invest here if they need power due to the cost, and no business can rely on renewables for constant supply. Professor Helm also comments that whilst gas is blamed for the high cost of electricity here, gas prices have gone up around the world, but no one else has these eye watering costs. Gas prices might well go down in the future, but we will not benefit from those decreases in the way other countries will as our costs are now baked in until the end of the 2030’s.

Andy Burnham has sensibly backed away from the 2030 net zero commitment, pushing it back to 2050, hoping to get back near the average European price (also high but not as high as ours) by 2036. The industry casualties of our ridiculous approach to energy and the subsequent high prices are many. The deindustrialisation of our country as we see steel production, oil refineries, agriculture fertilizer plant, farming itself, pottery, fibreglass in decline or gone, not to mention the effect on the service sector.

The new opportunity of energy hungry AI will be largely missed if things do not change. This UK net zero wrecking ball is having no effect whatsoever on the climate, as the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere continues to increase. Professor Helm tells us that more coal, oil and gas are being burnt each year, as the growing global economy relies on fossil fuel for around 85% of its energy; a world economy which is almost three times bigger than it was in 1990.

Our economy is twice what it was in 1990 and much of our own coal these days has been replaced by imported coal from China and other countries, often far dirtier than British coal used to be. We pretend that we are cleaner by citing territorial carbon emissions, conveniently not adding imports to the calculation. Global emissions are set to get worse as the energy hungry new tech industries will no doubt grow, data centres being one part of world energy demand which is set to double by 2050.

This is a huge challenge for all and decarbonising the global economy, the one we live in now and the new one yet to arrive, is a big challenge and will not be met by some utopian delusion of renewables providing the answer. It is of course likely that renewables will play an important part, but other sources of reliable power will be needed to provide the bulk of demand, such as nuclear. What is needed according to Professor Helm is climate realism, not hope or ideology.

The nonsense that renewables are clean energy whilst nickel mines in Indonesia on cleared rainforest, cobalt mines in the Congo, copper mines in Chile and Mongolia tell us that this is dirty business he commented. Whilst we play around in agriculture with the totally natural process of cows grazing and ruminating on farms in this country, with methane reducing boluses, children and dreadful conditions in these mines provide the raw materials for our utopian nonsense.

Lithium extraction is energy and carbon intensive; mineral refining and solar panel and battery production (mainly in China) are coal intensive. There is now a new age of global mining taking place, and any distinction between clean and dirty energy is naïve. Professor Helm states that it is all but inevitable that global warming will exceed 2C of preindustrial level, and currently we are heading for worse than that. Whilst the new global order as fast-growing developing countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria will join China and the USA, it is overwhelmingly a coal base economy globally.

China burns more than half the world’s coal, has no oil or gas, but it has a great deal of renewables. However, with more than 30% of the world’s carbon emissions, even if its emissions peak, continuing at the present level would be a disaster as it is equal to both the USA and Europe combined at present. The USA has oil, gas nuclear and renewables and is a global energy superpower and has the means to extract its own minerals too. Europe’s decline hardly registers, and the UK does not count at all. To spell that out clearly, if we close down the whole country and cease to exist, it would make no difference.

Climate change is not the end of the world according to Professor Helm, climate realism and adaptation are necessary but there are answers, most of which many people won’t like. Fantasies will not get us out of this mess, it is going to be expensive, and I was pleased to see his comment on personal carbon footprints attached to flying. I often rage at the pressure on agriculture to clean up its act during very difficult times and lack of interest in British food production, whilst planes heading for Gatwick fly over our farm, day and night.

Ed Milliband’s reckless policies have one truth to them, and that is that energy is going to be expensive in the future, not because of the appalling example in the UK, but because globally, we need to pay for our own pollution if there is to be an answer to this. The response to the Iran war and the higher energy costs, is that 90 countries are subsidising that cost in one way or another.

Professor Helm cites that affordability trumps climate change, and as long as that continues to happen emissions will continue to rise. We resist obvious solutions to climate change, and we therefore get more climate change. Carbon border tax should be paid, he states, and all the big global emitters need to join in and do the same; that is the tricky bit. A common carbon tax paid by all simultaneously, should be at the heart of all and every trade negotiation.

Our potential saviour as a country in all this according to Professor Helm, is that we have great science, great engineering and it is a great place to try out new technologies. We can contribute and help reduce emissions where it will most count, he says. So far, Britain’s main contribution has been to demonstrate to the world how not to do it.