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Writer's pictureBen Philips

The energy answer is not blowin' in the wind - by Dominic Lawson for The Sunday Times

Updated: Jan 13, 2021

"You think the government’s policies over Covid-19 have been confused and contradictory? Compared with those it is pursuing in the field of energy and industry, they have been a model of good sense and intellectual rigour. But while shortcomings in the former are revealed within weeks, in mortality figures, flaws in energy policy take years to emerge — by which time the politicians responsible have comfortably retired from the scene."


As temperatures plunge and wind speeds drop, the government's commitment to wind energy looks more preposterous by the day, according to Dominic Lawson. Boris Johnson's boast that " we would become the “Saudi Arabia of wind” ignored the obvious fact that the "Saudis were able to export their oil globally and at vast profit margins."


The effect of increasing our dependency on indigenous wind will only add to the likelihood of the sort of market panic we witnessed last week — and of blackouts, according to chief scientific adviser Professor David McKay. Not only do the logistics simply not add up - neither do the economics: the cost of getting to net-zero could amount to £160bn a year over the next thirty years. Any new 'green jobs' are therefore likely to be some of the most highly subsidised on earth.

And finally there are the politics to consider, with the Tories' newly enfranchised Red Wall likely to suffer the most as the cost of reducing CO2 emissions hits the manufacturing sector hardest of all. "Not so much “levelling up” but pushing back down and then stamping on its neck."


Here is the article in full in pdf and a link to the original at the end:






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