Lord Mandelson was quoted recently wondering why our new Labour ministers couldn’t be more like Ed Miliband in getting on with the job of governing. It is a fair point: Miliband has been a very busy bee indeed since he turned up in his old department 14 years after he left it.
From launching GB Energy to issuing policy papers and from approving solar plants to nationalising parts of British infrastructure, Miliband has been on a tear since he arrived in office. And who can blame him? Having been a very unsuccessful Leader of the Opposition from 2010-15, this is a redemption story that anyone can enjoy even if you might not enjoy what he’s doing with this second crack of the whip. The man is on a mission as he seeks, in his words, to “build a new era of greater energy independence on the foundation of clean energy” and “move Britain off expensive, insecure fossil fuel markets, and onto clean, cheap homegrown power that we control”.
These are fine aspirations indeed and aspirations that this column won’t quibble with. But this is just the start. As we hoped, the Civil Service – which actually runs the system – have got it into Miliband’s skull that he must prioritise the national grid. You can build all the solar parks and wind farms you like but if you don’t have transmission then power will go nowhere.
As a result, it’s incredibly encouraging to see Miliband instructing his new National Energy System Operator to create a centralised Strategic Network Plan which “will provide a network blueprint for the country, mapping the demand and optimal locations for offshore and onshore transmission infrastructure to support a decarbonised energy grid”. The state has always been heavily involved in both the provision and transmission of power in countries all over the world and, despite various privatisations, the UK is no exception. Accordingly, this sort of strategic planning is exactly what Miliband should be doing. It’s helpful too for the sector that he has the energy and focus of a zealot – he really wants to deliver and, from what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t bet against him.
But there’s a but. Of course, there’s a but. Miliband’s zealotry cuts both ways. He has it in for oil and gas in a way that’s spectacularly unhelpful. By increasing taxes and removing allowances in the North Sea, we are going to see a strategic resource wither on the vine. The oil and gas companies are not bluffing when they say they won’t invest following the changes proposed by Labour.
So we have a power system that when dunkelflaute hits these islands – and it will on many occasions – will have to ramp up our creaking gas-fired power stations (why would you invest in gas-fired power stations under this government?) to provide as much as 45 GigaWatts of power and it will be expensive gas too. The further away it is, the more it costs no matter what price you’ve bought the actual gas for.
Miliband’s loathing of oil and gas and the Labour government’s view that we can, in its words, leapfrog over hydrocarbons and head straight to renewables also suggests that ideology has got in the way of technical reality. Everyone knows that renewable power is intermittent – the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow – but what is often not recognised is that intermittent or unreliable power causes issues for the grid itself. Our own national grid was not designed to integrate intermittent power and the system fluctuations that this causes. This is why you must have what’s called baseload power, usually from gas, coal or nuclear, to provide grid stability.
That’s not to say that renewables will never provide baseload: in years to come and as storage technology improves, there’s every possibility that the grid will be powered by renewables by day which will charge batteries at the same time. The problem is that battery technology is nowhere near this point at the moment. For all his zealotry, Miliband is a clever man – he must know all this, right? But then, that’s the point of being a zealot, isn’t it? You can have all the brains in the world but belief in a higher power will always trump the facts on the ground.
And it’s not only here that we see this ideologically-led duality at play: a government that is targeting wealth-creation but is going to penalise the wealth-creators, that wants Ukraine to win against Russia but is stalling on providing the weapons, that wants Israel to defeat Hamas and Hezbollah but has restricted arms exports, that wants caution in public-spending but has agreed to almost every trade union demand unconditionally, that wants to improve standards in public life but has taken freebies at every turn. It is not easy being in government but it’s time for Labour to realise that good intentions only get you so far. Reality, as much in energy policy as anywhere else, is going to bite.
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