Christopher Pincher MP: Exposing the mythical horror stories about shale gas

Christopher Pincher is the Member of Parliament for Tamworth. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Shale gas is back on the agenda in Village Westminster.  An all-party group chaired by my colleague Dan Byles was recently launched to a packed audience.  The Select Committee for Energy & Climate Change has also just published another supportive report (free of carbon targets). DECC has lifted its moratorium on drilling and is launching a new round of licenses.  The Chancellor has promised proposals on community incentives to support exploration. And the leader of rhe Greens, Natalie Bennett, has been inveighing against the horrors of fracking.

Despite the latest positive pressure, that Green attack continues to be significant.  Laying aside for the moment their axiom that “If it don’t blow, we don’t want to know”, consider the cumulative impact their tightly-focussed opposition campaign, allied to lazy journalism, complacent industry PR, sloppy scientific analysis, miniscule geological data and half-hearted political backing, has had on the prospects for shale gas as a significant energy source, job creator and revenue generator for the United Kingdom.

Chris Pincher MP: If we don't get our energy policy right we'll suffer outages of the kind India has suffered

Christopher Pincher is Member of Parliament for Tamworth.  Follow Chris on Twitter.

This week power outages swept across northern India as three grids covering 20 states and 600 million people failed to cope with demand.  Transport and water systems ground to a halt.  Hospitals were plunged in darkness.  Miners were trapped below ground.  India, in a word, endured havoc.  With a flick of a switch everything went off.  The disruption to life, leisure and national output of the world’s second largest nation is massive.  It is a sobering reminder to all in Britain concerned with our strategy to deliver cheap, clean and secure energy of what can go wrong if we fail to get our investment decisions right.

Traversing the tightrope of investment in our energy mix, and the signals made to the industry and its investors, requires careful balance.  For many years the darling of the renewable sector has been on-shore wind; it is a mature, tested product, is developed at scale and has an established supply chain.  In the past it has received clear support from the Treasury which must make difficult choices about the use of tax-payers’ money.  Yet recently a more detailed critique (such as that provided by Dutch physicist Fred Udo) of on-shore wind has raised serious questions about its ability to generate the power we need when we need it, its green credentials and its value to the tax payer and to the consumer.  This closer look has given the Treasury and many in the Department for Energy and Climate Change cause for pause.

Wind, naturally, is unpredictable.  When it fails to blow other generator capacity, largely gas, must step into the gap left by the windmills and dial up to meet demand.  The duplication of capacity is a known downside of wind.  What is less understood is the impact this duplication has on our gas power stations.  Gas fired generators are at their most efficient when they hum along at a constant, high rate of output, like a car on a motorway.  Yet keeping them on standby to dial up then dial down at the caprice of the elements is akin to thraping your engine from a cold start.  It is more inefficient and more wearing as it uses more fuel and reduces significantly the life-span of the gas generator.  The overall impact of wind power in reducing CO2 emissions is much less striking than some would have us believe. 

Christopher Pincher MP: We need an energy bill - and new nuclear power stations - as a matter of urgency

Christopher Pincher is MP for Tamworth.  Follow Chris on Twitter.

Britain faces an energy crisis.  It is not the same as a political or economic crisis.  It does not normally make the front pages (unless you read the FT) or lead on the Six o’clock news.  It may only get a cursory look in on the Today Programme.  Our energy crisis is creeping and insidious.  And that is what makes it so dangerous.

Last week Centrica signalled that it may withdraw from its joint venture to build a new fleet of nuclear power stations.  The week before, RWE and E.ON announced that they are not proceeding with their plans to rebuild the Wylfa station on Anglesey.  With all but one of our nuclear stations due to shut down by 2023, the long term future of the nuclear industry in Britain is now in doubt.

If that is not a wake-up call to government, then set alongside the closure of up to one third of our coal-fired stations by 2015 in order to meet our carbon reduction targets, and the failure of CCS to take off at Longannet, this latest news should set alarm bells ringing in Whitehall.  There is already a growing recognition that on-shore wind does not provide a free passport to clean energy.  Whereas a nuclear power station generates 2 kilowatts per square meter a wind turbine churns out just 0.002 kilowatts per square meter.  Maths says it all.  Wind is unpredictable, unpopular and subsidises foreign producers.  Moreover there is a general acceptance that all other renewable technologies are, at the moment, immature and under-scale.  So unless we want to rely almost exclusively on gas in both the medium and the long term what must the mandarins, and their masters, do next?

Christopher Pincher MP: National pay bargaining is a throwback to the collectivist 1970s - and it should go

Christopher Pincher is the Member of Parliament for Tamworth. Follow Christopher on Twitter.

The Blogosphere and Twittersphere are awash with rumour of what is in the budget. T’was ever thus of course. Last year I wrote such an article on “what the Chancellor should do” here on ConHome. Nor is it new for the opponents of potential measures to get their retaliation in well before the Chancellor gets to his feet in the House of Commons.

This year the supporters of national pay bargaining have been active more than most. The PCS union has already taken to cyberspace to condemn suggestions NPB could be abolished. Regional economies will be ruined they cry. There are too many pay deals for it to be feasible they claim. I know because I have been on the receiving end of their tweets.

It is fair rule of thumb that when the unions, and you have to admire them for their speed of action, announce their unswerving antipathy to a deregulatory measure, you know it is the right thing to do. Ending a collectivist pay policy redolent of the 1970s is the right thing to do.

Chris Pincher MP: Wind farms are expensive, unreliable, damage local environments and subsidise foreign industry

Christopher Pincher is MP for Tamworth. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Britain should not build on-shore wind turbines because they are “elegant”. There are no points to be won for that. We should build them only if they are efficient and contribute significantly to our energy needs, our security requirements and our carbon reduction targets.  Unfortunately, on-shore wind is not efficient, it does not offer security of supply and there are better ways to meet our green energy obligations.

Currently on-shore turbine companies enjoy a £400million subsidy soaking up nearly half the total support offered to renewable energy providers.  Photo voltaic, biomass, waste incineration and microgeneration subsidies were cut at the end of last year yet the cash available to on-shore wind reduces only gradually by 10%.  The result is sure to be a continued wind rush to erect 4,500 new turbines, up to 100 metres high, despite their adverse impact on energy bills and on the landscape and the communities that must accommodate them.

Subsidies can be better justified if they help develop and establish British-based technology and knowledge that can be exported to foreign markets for domestic benefit.  However on-shore turbine construction is driven by German, Danish and Norwegian firms cashing in on hundreds of millions in generous incentives British bill payers stump up to them.  Lord Lawson put his finger on it when he said “it is extremely expensive and extremely damaging both for the British economy and for British consumers – to have so many foreign companies creaming off the subsidy.”  The subsidy offered to the marine renewable industry, where Britain has leading edge technology, is much more sensible as it promotes our own industry both at home and abroad.  Tidal current has its draw backs but at least it is predictable.  Trying to predict the wind is like trying to guess the next Grand National winner.  All too often they fall at the first fence.

Christopher Pincher MP: Localising pay bargaining would bring public sector wages in line with the private sector, and economic reality

Christopher Pincher is the Member of Parliament for Tamworth. 

The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement contained important initiatives to wean Britain off the dangerous Brown cocktail of a burgeoning public sector, ballooning deficit financing and an over-reliance of the financial services sector. The drink was laced, some might say purposely spiked, by the Labour government in its final throws, with ingredients like the 50p tax rate to poison the inheritance of the Coalition.

Yet one of the cures prescribed by George Osborne seems to have gone curiously underreported, but its importance to changing the economic culture and balance of Britain cannot be underrated. That is his request that Public Pay Review bodies examine ways in which pay can be made more responsive to local markets and report by July next year.

Though the unions will never admit it, national pay bargaining for the public sector hurts the taxpayer, hurts the private sector, especially small businesses and start-ups and, ultimately, hurts the job-seeker too.  The TUC barons, wedded to monopoly union model theory, stopped Gordon Brown investigating the opportunities of localising pay bargaining in 2003.  Nearly a decade later they must not be allowed to do so again.

Christopher Pincher MP: If we want cheap, clean, and secure energy, we need a new generation of nuclear power stations

Christopher Pincher is the Member of Parliament for Tamworth.

In the not so far-flung future, we face the prospect of a national power shortage. Global competition for fuel is increasing (look at the energy hunger in China alone) whilst at home our dwindling supplies of North Sea oil and gas mean that whereas a decade ago Britain was self sufficient, we now import 25% of our power needs. And the need is growing – pessimists predict we will import a daunting 75% of our energy by the 2020s.

At the same time, existing British power stations are being decommissioned whilst the power cables, pylons, pipes and sub-stations that make up our energy infrastructure are in urgent need of renewal to the tune of £200billion. And to complicate matters further, the source of much of the world’s energy is found under some of the world’s most unstable regions.

This cocktail of increased competition for a finite resource, supplied from insecure states and piped through an ageing infrastructure threatens to leave us with one almighty headache.