Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
Amid all the “chaos” being put into “Chagos”, unanswered questions over the Alli pally and the creeping realisation that a Labour Opposition’s “fully funded and fully costed” economic blueprint is a Labour Government’s recipe for capital flight, one minister has been focused on the day job.
Step forward Ed Miliband.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been busy. Solar farms, tick; wind farms (onshore), tick; Great British Energy, tick. Grangemouth, closing; Port Talbot steel works, closing; Britain’s remaining coal-fired power station, closed. Licences for new North Sea oil and gas fields; banned.
Such is Ed’s output of energy, he really should be connected to the national grid. He would contribute more than solar, which the other morning produced 8 per cent of Britain’s power, compared to 15 per cent coming from Europe via interconnectors.
As he promises to remove fossil fuels from energy production by 2030, Miliband is also overseeing the overhaul of Britain’s energy delivery. On Sunday it was reported that this resident of one of north London’s better postcodes would be “happy” to live next to a pylon – as if there were any possibility of one being installed on Hampstead Heath.
Despite PM Starmer’s Conference speech tribute to the Lake District, the British countryside is not Labour politicians’ natural habitat. It explains why they all appear intensely relaxed about it being destroyed forever.
In acts of heartbreaking vandalism, Shakespeare’s “other Eden”, Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill and Burns’ Highlands are set to be sacrificed, despoiled huge pylons, giant wind turbines and all the other intrusive infrastructure that goes with decarbonising the grid.
Last week the Government’s crack team – PM, Chancellor and Miliband – headed to Merseyside to launch a £22 billion Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) initiative. Developed by the previous Conservative government, this is indeed recycling in action. Among the benefits, Sir Keir promised the creation of “good, secure, well-paid jobs” “50,000 jobs” and “an opportunity to get ahead of the game”. Also invoked were the country’s “climate obligations”.
Do any of us want lectures about climate obligations from someone who copped off from the COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year, to take a private jet with three staffers to nearby Qatar, for a parley with the Emir, at a fully declared and within-the-rules cost of £25,508.83?
What is CCS, apart from unproven technology?
For those without advanced chemical engineering, old-school heavy industries like cement-making and gas-fired power stations produce emissions, including carbon dioxide. Somehow, this is captured, then buried, usually in undersea voids such as depleted oil and gas fields, in a process that seems fracking-adjacent. For further enlightenment, please consult Haber-Bosch Miliband.
The global record on CCS is patchy.
Paradoxically, it is most successful when undertaken by oil and gas giants. Investigative newshounds DeSmog suggest that lobbying by the fossil fuel industry in connection with CCS in the UK has surged since 2020. In an analysis of 12 projects around the world, it found missed targets, cost overruns and “billions of dollars of costs to taxpayers in the form of subsidies.” For some, CCS is little more than greenwashing.
Branding it “a bonanza for oil companies”, environmentalist George Monbiot tweeted CCS has failed time and time again. “Labour has slashed reliable green programmes to pour vast sums of our money into a complete crock.”
In 2009, the Economist featured how the skies would be scrubbed of carbon by “air capture” machines, which resembled giant spatulas. Even the reporter conceded it seemed madness. At the time, Miliband was Energy Secretary in Gordon Brown’s government. The so-called Iron Chancellor had encouraged the switch from petrol to lower-carbon-emitting diesel cars by cutting fuel duty.
The Dash for Diesel, which worsened particulate pollution, summarises the chronic incoherence over energy policy.
More recycling is apparent with the Energy Secretary boasting about Britain becoming a “clean energy superpower”, an echo of Boris Johnson’s grandiose claims for home-grown greenery. The pair clearly believe that this country will be the Net Zero Pied Piper, followed by a grateful world. France, meanwhile, has cracked on with nuclear and continues to export energy to us.
This country’s energy is some of the most expensive on the planet, reflecting abject policy failure by successive governments for decades.
CCS looks like another expensive green folly. Like electric vehicles, would it be able to survive without massive taxpayer subsidy and/or levies on our energy bills? Over the past week, nature lovers have suggested there is already a green technology that does an excellent job of capturing carbon: trees. Last year the SNP conceded almost 16 million trees on public land in Scotland have been axed to make way for wind farms.
Having had a meltdown over an alleged £22 billion black hole, it seems bizarre that Chancellor Reeves prefers splashing out on £22 billion on CCS rather than, say, retaining pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance. Still, to govern is to choose – and the government seems to have chosen Big Oil and Big Finance over little old people. It looks less like carbon is being captured than gullible ministers.
The Conservative Opposition can start by bringing some market rigour to the green agenda. Its priority should be policies that encourage low energy bills and high security of energy supply.
All the infrastructure for renewables should be British-made, even if British steel must be ruled out. There is little point in escaping the clutches of, for example, Putin’s Russia only to be dependent on Xi’s China for the country’s energy needs. Great British Energy might be an attempt to oversee this, but it looks another green quango, only with an £8.4 billion blank cheque.
Conservatives should rediscover their green credentials, realise there is more to environmental protection than Net Zero and protect the glorious British countryside.
The CCS £22 billion is better spent putting transmission cables for a decarbonised grid underground than it disappearing into a green hole.
