Time to Think More Deeply about UK Energy Security
The occurrence of another battle between Russia and Ukraine over gas and the resulting restriction and even cutting off of supplies to some parts of Europe should give us cause for wider concern, even if the dispute, as seems likely, will be resolved in a matter of a week or so.
Britain currently derives only about 2% of its gas supplies from Russia, but as we all know, natural gas supplies from the North Sea are dwindling. Central Asia has gas supplies and pipelines are being built, but not only are we obviously talking about a fossil fuel here, we are also talking about our continuing reliance on energy supplies from other parts of the world, which may not be or remain friendly to us. At least one recent study, by Deloitte, indicates that even the oil industry is realising that things have to change to focus on renewables and it is becoming recognised that energy security is a serious concern.
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There is a great deal at stake here. First, there is obviously the concept of physical energy security. How sensible is it to rely on sources of energy that may run out or come from people who may not like us? This is just one of many many good reasons to look at a dramatic expansion of large-scale renewables – just the kind of infrastructure, along with railways (not roads, not airports) to be focusing on to help us out of recession.
We need to look at other alternatives too, now, because we have left all this so late. We need to see if it really is possible to clean up coal as a fuel. Even though it will cost a great deal to re-create our coal industry, thanks to Thatcher spitefully pouring concrete down the mines to stop the miners becoming a powerful force ever again, we need to consider it. We had 400 years of energy there at last count. And then there’s nuclear.
We are committed now to building more nuclear power stations in the UK – which might be necessary (according to commentators such as Lovelock) given the increasingly gloomy forecasts regarding global warming – but as far as I recall, we do not produce much in the way of nuclear fuel here in the UK either: it again has to come from overseas. That’s poor energy security again.
This is quite apart from the fact that even today’s nuclear power stations, decades more advanced (and hopefully safer) than Calder Hall, are incredibly inefficient: using nuclear energy to heat water to drive turbines to turn generators can hardly give you better than 30% or so efficiency, not unlike any other system that relies on heating water to drive… etc. And there is still waste to consider. What about direct conversion? Whatever happened to MHD (Magneto-HydroDynamics) for example, where you drive a conductive fluid such as a superheated plasma back and forth in a magnetic ring and pull energy direct out of the fluid? The efficiency in prototype Russian plants a generation ago approached 90%.
Then there’s what we might call economic energy security. It’s one thing if there isn’t any oil left or the countries that have it won’t give us any. It’s another if the price goes through the roof – as oil just recently was doing – and we can’t afford it. And then look at another, less-publicised aspect of the current Russia/Ukraine argument. Supplies to parts of Europe have been restricted, so the countries affected have had to buy their gas from elsewhere. Not only does this raise the price: it has resulted in UK gas supply companies, a great many of whom are not in British hands, incidentally, selling our supplies to Europe. This has the result of stopping UK gas, and thus electricity too, prices falling as quickly as they should (there is normally a few months between oil and gas prices moving).
There are some fundamental points here. First, private energy companies by definition are beholden to their shareholders and not their customers. Energy supply is not optional: it’s a necessity. Thus there should not be a situation where energy companies are creaming off profits for their shareholders while we, the consumers, pay higher prices. Second, We need to have political control over our energy supplies. That means, for one thing, that we need to control where our own supplies go: selling our supplies abroad again brings benefits to the companies but keeps our own consumer costs high. Third, do we really want the fate of our energy supplies to be in the hands of overseas interests as a concept?
There is one simple answer to all these issues, and that is to bring the utilities back into public ownership. We had this operating highly successfully for over three decades. One unified electricity company owned by the British people, benefiting from economies of scale and national integration. One gas company, similarly owned, investing in much-needed storage capability and other infrastructure. There were good reasons for nationalisation of utilities and communications companies (from railways to telephones) in 1948 – those reasons are even stronger today. Coupled with properly integrated energy and transport policies (the UK, like many other countries, has never been good at this and needs to learn fast) we can move forward and overcome the immense economic and climate pressures that face us.
Our energy security is at stake, and under public ownership these industries can be run for us, by us, not for profit but for the general good, with significant government investment to help us out of recession. We have done this before and done it successfully. Now, today more than ever, we need to do it again.
Image: Pipeline near Sines, in Portugal, taken by Traroth (Wikimedia Commons)
Read David J.C. Mackay’s “Sustainable Energy Without Hot Air”. Britain, the island, has in its top kilometre a billion tonnes of uranium. Perhaps little of it will ever be extracted, but the energetics are favorable: half a gram of uranium can provide electricity sufficient to pulverize a tonne of hard rock, and much of the Earth’s surface is made of hard rocks that contain more than 2.5 grams. That’s not in Mackay’s book, but the marine uranium extraction experiments are, and they have shown that extraction of country rock will be unnecessary for many decades, at least. No maritime country can be denied uranium.
I must say that I was not formerly aware of the fact that we have such significant resources in this area. Thanks for the additional information.
[...] ought to be in their manifesto, for example, and re-nationalisation of other things too – see previous articles of mine) and perhaps more like Canada’s NDP, there is no doubt that when it comes to the environment, [...]