The government’s energy security strategy, published yesterday, failed to provide a sensible, long-term response to our energy crisis.
In a moment of novel clarity, Boris Johnson spoke of how energy policy had too long been ridden by short-termism and that there was a need for much more long-term thinking. It is hard to disagree with the prime minister there. But what we got in the energy security strategy belies that ambition and instead delivers a one-dimensional solution to a complex problem.
The myopic focus on new sources of energy supply is the strategy’s central weakness. Of course we need all the low-carbon energy we can get to displace fossil fuels, and that means scaling up wind, solar and nuclear. The government has set some fairly ambitious targets for new energy generation from these technologies. Some of these, I might argue, are unrealistic, as is the case with nuclear power. Nevertheless, the strategy correctly identifies clean energy as the main way to address the energy crisis while keeping bills low.
