Tony Lodge: As Australia drops its unpopular carbon tax, how long before Britain’s own carbon price floor is axed?

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies.  He is author of ‘The Atomic Clock – How the Coalition is gambling with Britain’s energy policy’ published by the CPS.

Australia’s re-heated Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, thinks he can win the imminent general election.  His confidence is reflected in an extraordinary decision announced last Sunday to drop his Labor Party’s previously rock-solid support for a fixed Australian carbon tax.  Introduced by his deposed predecessor Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd has studied the polls and realises that this unpopular tax baggage needs to be urgently jettisoned.  Could this be a lesson for Britain’s Conservatives?

If the Rudd government is re-elected to another term, it will pledge to legislate a move from the fixed carbon tax to a market-based emissions trading scheme effective from next July.  The move could see a carbon price of $6-$10 (AUS dollars) a tonne, significantly lower than the unpopular $24 per tonne of carbon Australian emitters and electricity generators currently pay for their carbon emissions under the fixed price legislation.

So where is the lesson for the UK?

Up until April this year, the UK was part of the market based EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and shared the same carbon prices as the rest of the EU. This was launched in 2005 and covers more than 11,000 factories, power stations, and other energy-intensive installations in the EU. These high energy users currently receive a “trading credit” which determines the upper limit of their carbon emissions. If a high energy user’s carbon emissions exceed what is permitted by its credits, it can purchase trading credits from other energy users or countries. On the other hand, if an installation has reduced its carbon emissions, it can sell its remaining credits to other energy users.

From Tony Lodge: Why new rail franchises must not become new railopolies

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and a Committee Member of the Conservative Transport Group.  His pamphlet, Rail's second chance - putting competition back on track is published by the CPS.  A short animation accompanying the pamphlet can be seen above.

The announcement of new rail franchising competitions this week is welcome.  But whilst providing a competitive bid process for the award of new franchises, it will be vitally important that the Government moves to guarantee that these franchises should face more on-rail competition to help keep fares down, boost passenger choice, boost passenger satisfaction and deliver more routes.

Twenty years after the Conservatives privatized the failing British Rail, there is now an opportunity to deliver a falling railway subsidy, cheaper railway fares and better services to more locations. But this will only become a reality if a level of on-rail service competition between franchises and what is known as ‘open access’ is delivered.

A key example is the present East Coast Main Line franchise holder 'East Coast' which competes with ‘open access’ rail companies Grand Central and First Hull Trains to Yorkshire and the North East.  However, there is no open access competition with Virgin which runs the West Coast Main Line franchise. New evidence shows that where on-rail competition exists, fares are lower, there is more revenue, more and happier passengers and higher premiums for the Government.

Tony Lodge: Why the deal to secure new nuclear power must be transparent and viable

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies.  His latest pamphlet, ‘The Atomic Clock – How the Coalition is gambling with Britain’s energy policy’  was was published by the CPS earlier this year.

Conservatives can be proud of the party’s long standing support for nuclear power.  It was the Eden Government, in 1956, that saw the Queen flick a switch - and the first nuclear-generated electricity surged into British homes from the Magnox reactor at Calder Hall (now Sellafield). This was the world’s first large scale nuclear power station. A decade later, several Magnox stations were producing power, but there still had not been enough investment in new electricity generating capacity. In the winter of 1964-65, power outages deprived homes and businesses of electricity.

The Labour Government of 1964 was committed to establishing a new national planning regime to help smooth the construction of new power stations. Sound familiar? New British designed Advanced Gas-Cooled reactors (AGRs) emerged from this process, alongside new coal plants to help appease the still huge mining workforce and its trade union strength. The average length of time to build AGRs was 10 years and it was almost 20 years before their output matched their planned capacity.   But Britain was too proud to accept that the Americans were building the best atomic plants, (Pressurised Water Reactors - PWRs) whilst we weren’t with our faltering AGRs.

Tony Lodge: We rig the market in favour of wind and then want more gas. Our contradictions in energy policy could cost us dear.

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies.  His latest pamphlet, ‘The Atomic Clock – How the Coalition is gambling with Britain’s energy policy’ was published by the CPS earlier this year.

By deciding to rig the electricity market against some of the cheapest and most abundant fuels available the Government looks set to deliver the ironic scenario where the most expensive energy sources will become Britain’s de facto choices going forward. In turn this will lead to higher prices for industry and consumers.  Ironically, this policy will also lead to future high carbon ‘lock in’ as Government encourages much more electricity produced from gas (which it will tax heavily from next April) as new atomic plants are delayed and coal is forced out.  How have we got here and why do we have such mixed messages?

The case remains that on comparison the cheapest method to generate abundant electricity is through the steam turbine.  The varying cost of this process depends on the fuel feedstock chosen to heat the water to create the steam to turn the turbine, but the principle remains the same.  Coal, gas, atomic and oil plants all supply electricity through this process.  Readers may be very surprised to learn that even in June 2012 coal was still the fuel of choice for UK electricity generation.  Last winter coal provided over 40% of electricity demand and regularly shouldered over 50%.  The fuel is cheap, abundant, easily stored and UK pits still produce a third of demand at just under 20 million tonnes.

But coal is set to be priced out of the market by the Coalition’s carbon price floor which will start next April and tax C0₂ emissions at £16 per tonne, rising to £30 per tonne by 2020.  Britain’s remaining coal plants will start to close quickly and those which have been recently modernised will have to run at lower loads due to costs.  By rigging the market against coal it is also likely that over 1 billion tonnes of accessible high grade British coal will become stranded as mines close on the back of lack of future market certainty.  Importantly, EU carbon prices remain around just €7 a tonne so the UK is set to become one of the highest carbon taxed states in the world.

Tony Lodge: Labour is now supporting the original Conservative route for HS2 - so why is the Coalition supporting the old (and wrong) Labour route?

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chairman of the Bow Group Transport Committee and a member of the Conservative Transport Group. His pamphlet, The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail (pdf), was published by the Bow Group in January 2010. It supported directly routing HS2 to Heathrow and then following the M40 to Birmingham, following the best practice learnt from the construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now HS1) in the early 1990s.

The ghost of the Whitehall farce is beginning to shroud the policy to build the next stage of the country’s High Speed Rail network.  For those of us who have followed the evolution of different routes, proposed branch lines, spurs and no end of theories on how best to create the best business case, the announcement yesterday by the Shadow Transport Secretary, Maria Eagle was significant.  Her decision to abandon the old Labour HS2 route of avoiding Heathrow and to instead now support a direct link to the airport is both significant and potentially life-saving for the HS2 project.

Ironically, Maria Eagle is now supporting a policy first floated and promoted by the Conservative Party in 2009 and backed by the creator of Britain’s first high speed railway through Kent, between St Pancras and the Channel Tunnel (HS1).

Tony Lodge: How energy storage can save green power

Tony Lodge is Chairman of the Bow Group Energy and Transport Committee and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. His new paper, Rescuing Renewables – How Energy Storage Can Save Green Power (with a foreword by Deputy London Mayor, Kit Malthouse) is published today by the Bow Group.

The most common and advanced forms of renewable energy are characterised by their intermittent nature.  Put simply, the energy harvested from, for example a wind turbine or solar panel, is only available when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.  The much pointed out drawback being power is not always generated when it is most needed.

In the quest to achieve lower carbon energy use, this fundamental characteristic of renewable power should be considered with respect to creating a low carbon future based on our ability to harness, store and use renewable energy at all times. 

Renewable power is the only genuinely green energy form, all other forms either release CO2 to the atmosphere and/or consume fossil fuel reserves. So if we are to maximise an energy system that is built mainly on renewable power present day policies must change quickly. Green electricity is arguably the most sustainable form of energy but it cannot always be matched to demands for heat, power and mobility without energy storage.

Britain’s present one-dimensional renewables policy that emphasises generation come what may needs replacing by a two-dimensional alternative that couples generation with storage.

The need for storage
As the penetration of renewables into the grid increases, intermittent wind power will need to be increasingly curtailed to maintain power system stability.  At any one time the grid has a block of base-load power in operation, reducing this to accommodate intermittent power risks destabilising power supply and increasing carbon emissions as fossil fuel plant is ramped up and down.  Alternatively, unpredictable wind energy’s admission to the grid could exceed consumer demand.  This will lead to this green energy being rejected and wasted by the grid.  In May, Scottish Power was paid £13,000 to de-couple turbines whose high input was unbalancing the grid. It should be stored, instead, as a clean fuel.

Tony Lodge: Why Labour’s High Speed Rail route must be shunted sideways

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chairman of the Bow Group Transport Committee and a member of the Conservative Transport Group.  His pamphlet, The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail, was published by the Bow Group in January this year and carried a foreword by Lord Heseltine.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has a problem.  The Whitehall quango set up by the Labour Government to design the next stage of the country’s High Speed Rail network, HS2 Ltd, has delivered him the wrong solution.

Focused exclusively on offering city dwellers a super-fast commute between Birmingham and London, HS2 have squandered over £5 million of taxpayers' money by drawing what is effectively a straight line on a map.  The Bow Group warned of this in The Right Track earlier this year and called on policymakers to learn the lesson from High Speed 1, running between St Pancras and the Channel Tunnel using an unconventional but highly successful new route.

By adopting economic assessment tools that prioritise journey time over cost and environmental considerations, HS2 Ltd have produced a route that would have Brunel spinning in his grave.   Under their proposals, a new High Speed Rail track would cut through the widest sections of the Chilterns' Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), traverse 17km of ‘high risk flood areas’, require the destruction of hundreds of homes, and blight thousands more with noise pollution.

In one of the worst cases of civil service command and control (not seen since the bad old days of British Rail), the railwaymen of HS2 Ltd have developed their route behind closed doors, with no consultation of the general public. Moreover, to satisfy Lord Adonis’ election timetable, they failed to propose to directly connect it to Britain’s existing High Speed Rail infrastructure (HS1) as well as the world’s busiest airport, Heathrow.  Thankfully, some new Conservative members of the Commons Transport Select Committee are now on the case.

Tony Lodge: How developing countries can help themselves and boost UK energy security

Tony Lodge is Chairman of the Bow Group Energy and Transport Committee and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. The Case for Energy Crops – How developing countries can help themselves and boost UK energy security is published today by the Bow Group.

The UK currently has two parallel problems regarding present and future electricity production.  Firstly, up to 40% (32 gigawatts GW) of our generating capacity is due to disappear before 2020 as fourteen of our major nuclear and coal-fired stations will close on EU emissions and safety grounds.  Secondly, we are legally committed to generating 34% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020 (we currently generate just 6%).

This means the UK needs to build new cleaner generating plant that can deliver a considerable 24GW from traditional sources such as clean coal, gas and nuclear, plus an additional 8 GW of renewable electricity in just under ten years.  Coupled with this are strict carbon reduction targets which mean we must reduce our emissions by up to 34% by 2020 on 1990 levels.

The Government is currently suggesting that most new conventional baseload plant will be nuclear and  most new renewable power should come from off-shore wind with some wave and tidal capacity.   It is increasingly obvious and clear to most energy analysts that this expectation and ambition is severely flawed on timetable and in-service dates.  It is most unlikely that there will be any new reactors operating in the UK before 2020, thus exacerbating our slow but increasingly dependence on imported gas to generate electricity.

Today, 90% of proposed and approved power plant construction in the UK is gas-fired (CCGT) plant.  If this trend continues then the UK could be 70% dependent on gas-fired electricity by 2020, with 80% of the gas needed to fuel these plants imported.  Last year the UK’s imports of gas exceeded home production for the first time since 1968 and imports rose by a huge 31%.  Gas use for electricity generation was 18.4% higher than in the first quarter of 2010 as against last year.

If we assume that most of the Government’s target of up to 8GW of renewable capacity is to be wind based, then this would require around 7,500 new giant three MW turbines being constructed.  There will be little wave or tidal power available in the next five years as the sector is still maturing and awaiting a policy lead.  Importantly, wind is an intermittent renewable so requires baseload plant to remain on to shadow its intermittency.  A baseload power plant is one which provides a steady flow of power regardless of total power demand by the grid.

Tony Lodge: Why we risk getting High Speed Rail so wrong

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and chairman of the Bow Group's Transport Committee. The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail, by Tony Lodge and with a foreword by Lord Heseltine, is published today by the Bow Group.

Britain risks getting the next stage of high speed rail (HSR) badly wrong.  A number of proposals to link London with the rest of the country, known as ‘High Speed 2’, have been submitted to Ministers but Bow Group research shows that many fall well short of what is needed to make high speed rail travel a success.

The new Bow Group pamphlet, The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail, has analysed each of the proposals and highlighted major weaknesses in some of the routes, one of which could still be chosen before the next general election.

A popular exhibit in the National Railway Museum is the Japanese Bullet Train.  A design icon, it transformed how the world thought about and experienced rail travel.  However, the Bullet Train is in a museum for a good reason.  To the Japanese, high speed rail is old news as the first bullet train sped between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964. Tragically, for the nation which invented rail, it would be a further 42 years before Britain could boast of its own high speed railway. 

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now rebranded High Speed 1 (HS1), is Britain’s first, and only, high speed railway line, and it is the creation of not one, but two Conservative Governments.  Having successfully secured Britain’s budget rebate in 1984, and eager to promote free-trade within the EEC, Margaret Thatcher signed the Channel Tunnel Treaty with President Mitterrand in 1986. However, the important decision of how to link the entrance to the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone to a Central London station was left to the Major Government, and in particular, to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, who has assisted the Bow Group with this research.

In 1991, the Conservative Government vetoed a route proposed by the monopoly-giant British Rail that followed existing mainline rail corridors into central London.  They chose instead to maximise the opportunity presented to them by using the new high-speed railway line as a catalyst for regeneration. By carefully selecting an alignment which entered central London from the East, rather than from the South as British Rail had proposed, the Government set in place the foundations for the radical regeneration of Ebbsfleet, Stratford and Kings Cross.  Today’s Thames Gateway is the spectacular result.

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and chairman of the Bow Group's Transport Committee. The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail, by Tony Lodge and with a foreword by Lord Heseltine, is published today by the Bow Group.

Britain risks getting the next stage of high speed rail (HSR) badly wrong.  A number of proposals to link London with the rest of the country, known as ‘High Speed 2’, have been submitted to Ministers but Bow Group research shows that many fall well short of what is needed to make high speed rail travel a success.

The new Bow Group pamphlet, The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail, has analysed each of the proposals and highlighted major weaknesses in some of the routes, one of which could still be chosen before the next general election.

A popular exhibit in the National Railway Museum is the Japanese Bullet Train.  A design icon, it transformed how the world thought about and experienced rail travel.  However, the Bullet Train is in a museum for a good reason.  To the Japanese, high speed rail is old news as the first bullet train sped between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964. Tragically, for the nation which invented rail, it would be a further 42 years before Britain could boast of its own high speed railway. 

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), now rebranded High Speed 1 (HS1), is Britain’s first, and only, high speed railway line, and it is the creation of not one, but two Conservative Governments.  Having successfully secured Britain’s budget rebate in 1984, and eager to promote free-trade within the EEC, Margaret Thatcher signed the Channel Tunnel Treaty with President Mitterrand in 1986. However, the important decision of how to link the entrance to the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone to a Central London station was left to the Major Government, and in particular, to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, who has assisted the Bow Group with this research.

In 1991, the Conservative Government vetoed a route proposed by the monopoly-giant British Rail that followed existing mainline rail corridors into central London.  They chose instead to maximise the opportunity presented to them by using the new high-speed railway line as a catalyst for regeneration. By carefully selecting an alignment which entered central London from the East, rather than from the South as British Rail had proposed, the Government set in place the foundations for the radical regeneration of Ebbsfleet, Stratford and Kings Cross.  Today’s Thames Gateway is the spectacular result.

Tony Lodge: As Britain freezes, Labour's failure to pursue a balanced energy policy is more exposed than ever

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and was author of Step off the Gas: Why over-dependence on gas is bad for the UK, which was published by the CPS last year.

Criticising Britain’s woeful lack of gas storage is important and right but there remains a deep underlying problem which increasingly represents the ‘elephant in room’ of this long overdue debate on the country’s growing gas dependency.

As Britain shivers in what is looking like the most prolonged freeze for thirty years, the fault lines are starting to appear in a policy area which has been neglected for far too long by both politicians and policymakers alike.

Three worrying developments have occurred in the last two weeks which should concern all of those who are concerned about energy prices and our ability to maintain secure supplies and keep prices low - thus avoiding more fuel poverty amongst the elderly and the most vulnerable.  Fuel poverty occurs when more than 10% of household income is spent on energy bills.  It has already nearly trebled since 2004.

Firstly, Britain imported more gas than it produced for the first time ever in November 2009, with imports increasingly set to dominate supply as our own output declines.  Britain was a net exporter of gas until 2004, but a steady decline in output from the North Sea in recent years has made us more reliant on external suppliers for fuel to heat two thirds of British homes.  Imports met 50.8% of total gas demand in Britain in the two months before Christmas 2009.

Tony Lodge: Telecare can help save our health and social care system

Tony Lodge is a Council Member of the Bow Group, which is today publishing Telecare – A Crucial Opportunity to help save our health and social care system, an independent analysis written by Professor Sue Yeandle of the University of Leeds. Here he summarises the pamphlet's findings.

It is time to face some urgent truths on the NHS and the way we fund and care for our expanding elderly population. There is a growing cross-party consensus that spending on the NHS and social care, which has more than doubled in the past thirteen years, must become better focused and more controlled as we face a growing older population.

By 2025 the number of people aged 85 or older in England is set to increase by 70%, to nearly two million. By 2020 there will be 50% more people over 65 and 54% more people with dementia than there are now.  Already in the 85+ group, more than a third of men and more than half of women live alone - and most have a limiting long-term illness. 

On 14 July 2009, the Government went some way to acknowledging the force of these demographic pressures, with the publication of its long-delayed social care Green Paper - but many argue the Government still refrains from taking a clear policy lead.

New independent analysis by the University of Leeds, published by the Bow Group, shows that without urgent action to harness the potential of technology, Britain’s ageing population will place huge, increasing - but in many cases unnecessary - demands on our health and social care system, at the same time as the relative size of the working age population is shrinking. 

Tony Lodge: It's time to step off the gas

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and is author of Step off the Gas: Why over-dependence on gas is bad for the UK, which is published today by the CPS and is available to download here.

Russia’s disruption of gas supplies to Europe risks becoming a fixture of the festive season. The Christmas spat with Ukraine, through which 80% of Russian gas exports to the EU flows, highlights the stark precariousness of over-relying on one type of imported energy, particularly gas. Britain gets 16% of its gas indirectly from Russia.

These disputes are a timely warning shot across the bows of energy planners and politicians who have, for more than a decade, allowed us to become over-dependent on gas for the generation of our electricity. I first warned about this on ConservativeHome in 2007. Further detailed research has allowed me to lay bare the precariousness of this issue.

Through error and complacency those responsible for Britain’s energy policy have allowed our country to drift into a dangerous over-dependence, with the certain prospect of dependency increasing much further in the near future.  Twenty five years ago around 1% of our electricity involved the burning of gas. Now the figure is 43%. This is set to grow substantially as older coal and nuclear stations are retired and as replacements, such as the new clean coal plant at Kingsnorth, are repeatedly delayed. Gas looks set to generate 70% of our electricity by 2020 and 80% to 90% of this gas will need to be imported.

Tony Lodge: Why the Conservatives should back Kingsnorth and new cleaner coal power stations

Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and a Council Member of the Bow Group.  He is author of Clean Coal, published by the CPS.

Russia is no longer a military superpower, but its vast natural resources mean it is becoming an energy superpower.  Russia’s state energy giant, Gazprom, produces 85% of the country’s natural gas and controls over 17% of the world’s reserves.  The EU gets 25% of its gas from Russia and this is set to rise.  Russia has a very clear strategy which is there for all to see in Georgia.  It would prefer Europe’s gas to go via Russia and not via independent neighbouring states.

Recent television pictures have shown terrified Georgians fleeing the fighting but far less prominent were the carefully targeted missile strikes near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, one of several important pipelines that bring gas to the West.  This pipeline is 30% owned by BP.  It is, importantly, one of the few pipelines from the Caspian region not to cross Russian soil

Against this high game of international geopolitics is the precarious British position on energy policy.  We are becoming overdependent on gas, which will increasingly be imported, for the generation of our electricity.  Any potential interruption in supply, which affects the price, rightly sends shivers downs the back of politicians and energy planners.  Gas supplies around the world come from a variety of sources but the really big deposits are to be found in Russia, Libya, Iran, Algeria, and Qatar.  Britain’s gas import dependency will necessitate both pipelined supplies and LNG supplies from these states and others for the long term.

The Georgia crisis is an important lesson for Britain and her energy choices and it is not too late to sit up and act.  Energy diversity and a need to limit or even reduce our use of gas for electricity must be seriously examined as an option.  This, I believe, is one of the reasons why the proposed new 1.6 Gigawatt (GW) cleaner coal power station proposed by E.ON at Kingsnorth should be approved by the Government, but perhaps more importantly, supported by the Conservative Party.  If the polls are accurate it will be David Cameron who will have responsibility for energy from 2010 and face the unpredictable results of 12 years of Labour inaction in this vital area. Conservatives are in a strong position to attack Labour’s risible record on energy policy. 

Tony Lodge: Why wind energy will not fill the UK's energy gap

Tony Lodge publishes a report today for the Centre for Policy Studies exposing how the Government’s announcement tomorrow on renewables will be hugely overdependent on thousands of more unreliable, intrusive and expensive wind turbines when the UK should be looking to support more reliable forms of energy such as tidal, nuclear and clean coal.

Wind energy promises a clean and free source of electricity.  We are told it will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and will reduce the output of greenhouse gases and other pollution.  But does wind power live up to the claims made by its advocates?  How benign is its impact on the environment?  Will it really be able to deliver the promise of clean, cheap and reliable electricity?  Or would the money spent on it be more effectively directed towards supporting new technologies which will allow us to develop more reliable and cheaper forms of baseload energy in a cleaner way.

Tomorrow the Government will announce plans to give the green light for up to 10,000 new wind turbines to be erected across Britain.  There are fewer than 2,000 turbines in Britain today so the increase is unparalleled.  Britain has been given binding EU targets to generate 15% of all energy from renewable sources by 2020; this will mean that nearly 40% of all electricity will have to come from renewables.

Tony Lodge: The "Dash for Gas" hasn't worked

Tony Lodge, a Research Fellow with the Centre for Policy Studies and a Council Member of The Bow Group who has written widely on energy related issues, worries about our dependence on gas.

Hindsight and foresight are two concepts which will affect Governments of all colours on energy policy.  If a Government has the foresight to pursue a programme of successful policies it should enjoy favourable historical reviews but when the hindsight concept is adopted it is usually a reflection that a policy has failed (often years after it was adopted) and new policies are urgently needed to correct the mistakes.

This is the position now facing Britain’s shambolic so-called energy policy.  On 19th October 1992 then President of the Board of Trade, Michael Heseltine, told the Commons that a new wave of gas-fired power stations would be built which would generate cheaper electricity than the then coal and nuclear stations and that British gas reserves would cater for these new stations for another fifty years.  At the time Lord Heseltine was attempting considerable foresight and was inevitably excited by the information he had to give the House. Cheap electricity from our own indigenous gas fields for a generation; bravo! Sadly, for all of us, he was wrong.

Britain is now perilously over-dependent on gas-fired power stations for the generation of nearly 40% of our electricity.  As indigenous North Sea reserves run down, 80% of the gas needed for these power stations could be imported by 2020 raising huge implications for price and security of supply, which in my opinion are effectively the same thing.  A huge problem for Britain is that some of the gas we need is already going to countries that are prepared to pay more.  Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), recently hailed as an answer to Britain’s energy problems, have fallen by 60% so far this year as more and more LNG goes to energy hungry China and India where it fetches a higher price.  Our sources for gas imports will include Russia, Algeria and Qatar.