Image Source: DepositPhotos
 

Is the penny starting to drop in Downing Street? Angela Rayner’s remarks about the possibility of social unrest over the summer suggest the Cabinet now understands all is not well. And she’s right to point out that economic insecurity and de-industrialisation are important contributory factors, alongside more prominent issues such as immigration.

But I am not sure that Labour has even begun to grasp the scale of the problem it faces. Getting the UK back to growth would be hard enough if we had US power prices. At the sky-high levels that have become the norm in the UK, the task looks almost impossible.

Industry is already starting to collapse under this burden. Jobs are being shed across the country. Meanwhile, energy suppliers are predicting that prices will continue to rise into 2026 and, with Ed Miliband signalling that he intends to stuff windfarm operators’ mouths with gold – your gold – in order to drive forward his Net Zero obsession, there is little or no hope of respite after that.

Worse, we may soon face periods with no electricity at all. The grid is being destabilised by all the wind and solar capacity, and much of our grid infrastructure – the fleet of gas-fired power stations that keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing, and the transformers that help get power to where it is needed – has been neglected in favour of spending on Net Zero. It is now hard to see how we will avoid brownouts – electricity rationing in other words – as well as Spanish-style blackouts in a few years’ time.

The situation is dire and getting worse. The only recent good news has been Richard Tice’s letter to windfarm developers, warning them off involvement in the Government’s next subsidy auction. Rumour has it his missive hit its target, and that developers are profoundly worried. If they do stay at home and shun the auction, then it’s a big step towards halting the economic rot.

But the painful reality is that the renewables industry is not nearly worried enough. On its current trajectory, the economy is going to tank. The arrival of the IMF looks now to be only a matter of time. It will be an emergency, and when the storm breaks, the country, and in particular windfarm developers and investors, will be in a completely new political landscape.

For the country, a return to growth will become an existential necessity rather than the vague aspiration it has been under most recent Prime Ministers. At that point, the Government will have to face the two simple facts. Firstly, there will be no growth without cheap electricity. Secondly, there can be no cheap electricity from a grid dominated by wind and solar power. This is a matter of thermodynamics rather than – as politicians and civil servants think – a communications problem. The Westminster Village Idiots are now starting to realise that you can fool the population for some of the time – by lying about the cost of renewables, for example, as ministers and officials have done for 10 years – but not all of the time. As the legendary physicist Richard Feynman noted, ‘for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled’. And nature is currently causing the facts to show up very clearly in your electricity bill, now 50% higher in real terms than it was ten years ago. Ofgem data shows that blame for almost all of the increase can be laid at the feet of Net Zero policies.

Renewables operators, and their investors and lenders, meanwhile, will suddenly find that they have become the bad guys. Across the country, personal finances will have taken a big hit; lives and livelihoods will have been ruined. In those circumstances, the public is likely to take a deeply jaundiced view of the billions handed to wind and solar farms in subsidies each year. To their owners, the monthly payment may therefore soon look less like a financial asset and more like a death warrant.

An unpopular industry, raking in subsidies from hard-pressed consumers at a time when the country desperately needs to get back to growth is not an industry that can survive for long. Wind and solar farms imagine their positions are protected by their contracts with the Government, but they are likely to find themselves corrected. Parliament remains sovereign, and can legislate away any contract it wishes. In a recognised emergency, the courts, and perhaps even the rest of the investment community, are likely to accept the overwhelming public interest. In an emergency, desperate measures become necessary, but they also become possible, and even accepted.

More By This Author:

Drill, Europe, Drill... Or Sink!
What The UK Should (But Will Not) Do To Address The Energy Crisis
Britain Facing A National Security Crisis Over Energy