Tim D;229850 wrote: The fundamental problem - until recently - has been the complete lack of any real UK industrial strategy or (closely related) UK energy strategy. Cameron&Osborne's China infatuation was ultimately hugely damaging to the nuclear programme and lots of other "self-sufficient UK" agendas... a lost decade.
Even now, it's not clear whether what we have is more than just populist sound bites and "first order thinking" (ie not thinking through the implications of policies fully). e.g if I dig around
https://www.gov.uk/gover...uks-industrial-strategy I can't easily find any comments about where the UK is supposed to get it's steel supply from.
(See also
https://www.gov.uk/gover...nergy-security-strategy for energy. Main omission IMHO is tidal lagoons/barrages; shoulda built some while borrowing was dirt cheap... too late now.).
But we are where we are now. And from where we are now with renewables cheaper than fossil fuels it makes more sense to press ahead with those - see e.g
https://www.irena.org/ne...est-Fossil-Fuel-on-Cost
https://www.irena.org/ne...llow-To-Power-Past-Coal
and heaps of info at
https://www.irena.org/costs
than go back to old polluting fossil tech. Certainly the transition could have been (and could still be) better managed though.
I'd broadly agree with those observations.
I like wind and solar in principle, but they can't provide what is needed without storage and that is neither quick nor cheap to implement. So fossil and nuclear must stay in the mix for the next few decades.
But oil is needed for transport since EV's simply cannot provide for large scale goods transport (Electric lorries are just a non-starter and Hydrogen is laughable).
Plus the crucial fact that making EV's relies totally on supplies of rare earth metals that come from places like China, so a big risk of simply replacing "energy dependence" with "rare earth dependence". Not good.
I don't see the Ukraine situation going away any time soon, so Europe is faced with the
urgent need to resolve the energy shortfall
before this coming Winter, only a few months away. That means firing up the UK mothballed coal stations and extending the life of some nuclear stations. There is no other viable choice.
And medium term we must get rid of the obstacles to green energy in the UK, so remove the "ban" on on-shore wind and remove the 25 year "temporary planning permission" that discourages investment in wind and solar.
We also need to do fracking if we are to return to self sufficiency in gas. Because much of industry and millions of homes need gas.
Maybe a new PM will have these things on their agenda...?