When the taps run dry and power goes out, we should remember who is to blame
MILLIONS are living under a hosepipe ban. Gas prices are going through the roof. And we are being threatened with winter blackouts.
It is another week in Britain’s inadequate and crumbling infrastructure.
If things had been handled differently, we could have had more nuclear energy, UK-produced shale gas and reservoirs to keep homes fully supplied during drought.[/caption] The Tory government eventually failed to support the industry properly against environmental protests[/caption]When anyone proposes to do anything about it, like Liz Truss’s promise to build more power stations or get Britain’s fracking industry producing gas at last, they are cut down with: “That will take years.”
It is true, of course, that you can’t build a dam or nuclear power station overnight.
But we wouldn’t be in the position we are now if successive governments hadn’t made such bad decisions in the past.
We could have had more nuclear energy, UK-produced shale gas and reservoirs to keep homes fully supplied during drought.
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But too many of those in power prevaricated and failed to sanction the construction of the infrastructure we so desperately need now.
Nuclear kicked into touch
The roots of the current crisis go back a long way. You can’t fault Tony Blair for realising that if we were going to close coal-fired power stations to reduce carbon emissions, we were going to need new nuclear power stations.
In May 2006 he said it would be a “dereliction of duty” for him not to sanction more nuclear capacity.
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister the following year he, too, said he was in favour of nuclear power.
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But then what? Labour was in power for another four years, much of it with Ed Miliband as energy secretary — yes, he who is now bleating about the energy prices.
But nothing happened. The whole nuclear programme was kicked into touch by holding endless policy reviews but not actually building anything.
Yet if New Labour had started building the nuclear stations it promised, they would be open by now, providing safe and reliable power for our homes.
Then came the 2010 General Election and we ended up with a coalition government and Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne as energy secretary — who told us that “nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology”.
When he went off to serve Her Majesty in another capacity — tending the garden at HMP Leyhill after being convicted of perverting the course of justice over a speeding offence — he was replaced by the now Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey.
Davey did at least approve the construction of Hinkley C, the nuclear station being built by EDF in Somerset.
But as a former opponent of nuclear power, his heart wasn’t really in it.
That is where the great nuclear revival ended — until the current Government gave the approval to Sizewell C last month.
Meanwhile, in the 16 years since Blair’s speech, seven of the 12 nuclear stations which were operational then have been retired.
Even Hinkley C won’t replace the energy they were generating.
Hard though it might be to believe now, until 2003 Britain was a net exporter of energy. You can’t blame Blair or his successors for the decline of oil and gas fields in the North Sea, as they began to be worked out.
But you can blame them for failing to support exploration for new fields and for being slow to grant exploration licences.
The potential for exploiting Britain’s shale gas reserves through fracking has been known about since 2007, but nothing was done until the Conservatives were elected in 2010.
For a while, the new government was enthusiastic about fracking. In 2012 the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering produced a report saying fracking could be carried out safely in Britain, and in 2013 the British Geological Survey concluded that enough shale gas could be recovered to provide Britain with 47 years’ worth of current supply.
But the Government eventually failed to support the industry properly against environmental protests.
Every government since Blair’s was too happy to allow fossil fuel production to decline as renewables took over.
But we have never overcome the problem of what to do when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We are still heavily reliant on gas to fill the gaps.
The trouble is that not only have we allowed our own gas industry to decline, we have failed to build the storage facilities which would have provided some protection against volatile global markets.
Worse, in 2017, Centrica — which reported profits of £1.3billion for the first half of 2022 thanks to soaring gas prices — actually closed the Rough storage facility beneath the southern North Sea which at least allowed Britain to store nine days’ worth of supply.
Neither the then business secretary Greg Clark, nor the energy minister Claire Perry, did anything to stop the company.
Selling off reservoirs
As for energy, so for water. No major new reservoir has been built in Britain since Kielder Water in Northumberland in 1981.
Worse, water companies have been allowed to close and sell off reservoirs for development.
Thames Water even set up a subsidiary, St James’ Homes, to exploit sites in London — formerly part of the water infrastructure — putting up hundreds of flats in order to satisfy John Prescott’s target for building new homes on brownfield land.
Thames Water did at least propose a new reservoir at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, which could have alleviated some of this year’s shortages.
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But in 2007 the Environment Agency claimed there was no need for it. In 2011, Conservative environment secretary Caroline Spelman scotched the plans altogether.
And so another piece of infrastructure, which could have helped us through the drought, bit the dust. When the taps run dry and the power goes out, we should remember who is to blame.
No major new reservoir has been built in Britain since Kielder Water in Northumberland in 1981[/caption] During the coalition government, energy secretary Ed Davey did at least approve the construction of Hinkley C, the nuclear station being built by EDF in Somerset, but his heart wasn’t really in it[/caption]