High Energy Costs and National Self-Harm

A Chinese vessel carrying 5000 electric cars docked in the Netherlands last week. The cars were subsidised by the Chinese Communist Party and were manufactured using energy priced at about a third of what we pay in Britain.

In Britain, the price of energy has been increased by over-use of intermittent solar and wind, which makes our goods less competitive. Green policies have driven much of our industry abroad, to countries with lower environmental standards than us. British companies have lost out to foreign rival with cheaper inputs, fewer health and safety regs and cheaper energy. This is causing serious economic self-harm.

Pre-Tony Blair, our industrial electricity costs were 9% higher than than the economies making up the International Energy Agency. Now they are 52% higher. Electricity prices are four times what they are in China, three times higher than in America and Canada; and twice as high as in Korea, New Zealand, Finland, France and Sweden.

Net Zero is a mistake. We can invest in new nuclear and our own oil and gas. We need to reduce dependence on foreign fossil fuels for the sake of energy security, and our allegedly 'green' targets are unrealistic and self-destructive. Virtue-signalling is not useful; policy should not run ahead of technology. Nothing should be switched off until its replacement is installed and working as it should.

Until we take action along these lines, economic decline and political instability awaits.



ND/ habitat21

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