Throughout the Atlantic, a self-inflicted catastrophe is steadily unfolding. One of many United States’ closest allies, the UK, has surrendered power riches and industrial prowess. [some emphasis, links added]
This decline just isn’t the results of any scarcity of capital, technological capability, or pure assets. As a substitute, it’s the consequence of an ideologically pushed local weather agenda that has elevated “inexperienced” symbolism over engineering actuality.
For years, politicians have overwhelmed their chests concerning the U.Okay.’s “world-leading” renewable capability. They paraded statistics exhibiting wind and photo voltaic producing many of the electrical energy, conveniently ignoring that this solely occurs when the wind blows and the solar shines.
When the “inexperienced” era doesn’t carry out, British taxpayers pay for pure gas-fired energy vegetation to again up idle services and stabilize the grid. Additionally they pay “constraint funds” to change off wind generators when it’s too windy to function them.
That is the good deception of the Levelized Price of Power (LCOE) metric, the inexperienced foyer likes to cite. LCOE excludes the large value of grid balancing, backup era, curtailment funds, transmission growth, and subsidies – all required to prop up the inexperienced sham.
In the true world – the place payments should be paid – the U.Okay. has created for itself a number of the highest electrical energy charges on the planet, as much as 4 instances greater than in the US.
One-third of Scots stay in power poverty. However the true value by no means exhibits up in shiny charts that promote manipulated information representing wind and photo voltaic as low cost.
The value caps of Nice Britain’s Workplace of Gasoline and Electrical energy Markets now dominate family conversations, that are amplified by every winter’s nervousness over way of life selections. Warmth or eat has shifted from a slogan to a lived actuality.
As soon as an influence behind the Industrial Revolution, Britain has shamefully imposed power poverty on its residents. Households ration heat whereas politicians have fun decarbonization targets.
One reader advised the U.Okay.’s Unbiased of heating solely a single room with a wood-burning range mimicking a Nineteenth-century dwelling customary 200 years later. Such is the “Inexperienced Industrial Revolution” promised by know-nothing managers of power coverage.
And for what? In order that the U.Okay. can scale back its negligible contribution to world emissions of innocent carbon dioxide. In the meantime, China and India construct coal vegetation to energy the manufacturing exported to them by those that have frittered away British industrial would possibly.
Producers have little alternative however to depart when a “carbon tax” and heavy-handed regulation on carbon dioxide emissions artificially inflate the price of power. Steelmakers are on their knees, going through power payments which have surged by billions, rendering British metal uncompetitive in opposition to overseas rivals freed from net-zero dogma.
Nowhere is the madness extra seen than within the North Sea.
For many years, offshore oil and pure gasoline have been the crown jewels of the British financial system, offering low cost, dependable power and income to fund public providers.
Trump takes a large swipe on the UK’s Web Zero insurance policies:
“They’re sitting on high of the North Sea, one of many best reserves anyplace on the earth. However they don’t use it…” pic.twitter.com/ARrwby1omf
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) January 21, 2026
At present, this useful resource is being sacrificed on the altar of local weather theology.
The Prime Minister’s punitive windfall taxes and refusal to subject new licenses have successfully killed North Sea power improvement. Buyers have fled. Rigs are decommissioning. 1000’s of expert jobs are evaporating.
Evaluate this to the U.Okay.’s neighbor, Norway, which continues to extract oil and pure gasoline from the ocean and promote to world prospects, together with the U.Okay.
Whereas Britain dismantles its power sovereignty to appease the likes of Extinction Rebel, Norway enriches its residents and funds its sovereign wealth fund.
The distinction is humiliating. The U.Okay. imported over 50% of its pure gasoline provide in 2024 from Norway.
Apologists for this British collapse level to something however the fact. They blame Brexit and the Russia-Ukraine warfare. They blame a “world recession,” pretending that the U.Okay.’s de-industrialization isn’t an outlier.
However the basic cause for the collapse is the “inexperienced” agenda espoused by the political institution for 20 years.
It has been a bipartisan failure. Tories chased the “inexperienced vote” by banning fracking and demonizing diesel. The Labour Occasion doubled down with net-zero mandates that defy the legal guidelines of physics and economics. They constructed a grid fragile to the climate and costly to the consumer.
A campaign to keep away from an imaginary local weather disaster of the long run has created a really actual financial catastrophe within the current.
Learn extra at CO2 Coalition
