Let me be clear from the start – I do not believe the scientific evidence pointing to climate change and rising global temperatures can at all be denied and I do not countenance those who choose this path.
Nor do I think this is an either/or situation: I still believe a transition to clean energy is the right direction of travel and I am proud that, while only 6.5% of electricity came from renewables in 2010, the proportion was over 50% when the Conservatives left office in 2024.
However, I do strongly believe we’ve now got the balance wrong. This Labour Government is rushing headlong to meet its, frankly unattainable, self-imposed target of clean power by 2030 through making our energy system over reliant on renewables such as wind and solar which do not, and cannot, produce constant, reliable electricity while imposing huge costs on businesses and households via subsidies and levies, and continuing their policy of ending North Sea oil and gas production prematurely.
Industrial Solar and Wind Farms April 26
A heavily renewable energy system ties the UK to the price of gas because we need a dispatchable back-up for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. In the UK, that back-up is provided by gas which we can control. If we did not have reliable gas power plants, we would have black outs. It is also worth noting that gas does not ‘set the price’ of electricity bills, it only sets the wholesale price portion of the bill – about 25% of the average electricity bill once you discount the government-imposed Carbon Tax.
Britain is, worryingly, becoming increasingly reliant on foreign energy imports, especially when our unreliable solar and wind outputs drop. However, Ed Miliband is choosing not to count these overseas energy supplies in his UK ‘carbon accounting’. Thus, electricity generated from coal and gas fired power stations (approx. 12%) and from Drax, powered by wood chips imported from North American forests (approx. 4-5%) is called ‘zero -carbon’.
I completely agree with my colleague, the Rt Hon Claire Coutinho MP, Shadow Energy Secretary, when she said in the Telegraph on the 30th of March this year,
“This is the problem with our carbon accounting, it counts carbon emissions for things we make in the UK but not for foreign imports. That means we offshore our emissions alongside jobs, tax revenue and our energy security. It’s bonkers”
Even our renewables energy strategy is heavily reliant on foreign imports as another of my colleagues Sir Alec Shelbrooke MP pointed out,
‘We are increasingly dependent on China because of decisions taken by this Government. The pursuit of renewables-based future energy infrastructure is increasingly dependent on countries that are adversarial to us and pose a risk to our long-term energy security’
Not only is this approach unreal and unsustainable, but it is proving actively detrimental to our homegrown jobs, our tax revenues, our balance of payments (debt) as we continue to import more than we produce, our energy security and, ultimately, to our country.
Up until this point, we have, to our credit, been attempting to undertake one of the most rapid energy transitions ever undertaken by an advanced economy. However, we are now seeing and feeling the consequences of this political choice and we do need to think again, hard, about what our priorities and aims are.
For starters, it is increasingly clear that our energy system is not functioning – not for households, not for businesses, not for our industries. Our energy costs are now among the highest in the world because of a complex arrangement of subsidies, green levies and ‘progressive’ billing added to bills for the Net Zero agenda – all of which are increasingly decoupling the actual cost of energy from what we are being asked to pay for it. As with the cost of petrol or diesel at the pump, it is the government’s share of the bill (fuel duty and VAT) that hikes up the price for consumers.
Mims Davies MP Statement on Fuel Duty | Mims Davies
By all projections, in 2050 this country will still be dependent on oil and gas in all scenarios. Even the Climate Change Commission says we will need oil and gas for decades to come. We must stop this narrative that we are our reducing demand for oil and gas by shutting down domestic production. We aren’t. We are simply choosing to import it instead. As my colleague Gregory Stafford MP stated,
‘In 2024 alone, we imported more than $11 billion-worth of crude from Norway. At the same time, liquefied natural gas shipped from abroad can carry up to four times the emissions of gas produced here at home. This is not environmental leadership, but carbon outsourcing with a higher bill attached—a bill that is being paid by British businesses and families, who are facing some of the highest energy costs in Europe’
Constituents may also have seen the news that Norway is cutting the amount of gas it pumps to the UK by up to 1/3 this summer due to infrastructure maintenance at a time we are already experiencing significant global shortfalls due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We are in the middle of a supply crisis and our energy resilience is being further undermined by the Labour Government deliberately reducing our North Sea output. And here is the fundamental point, as Gregory Stafford MP explained,
‘electricity accounts for only around a fifth of our total energy use. The rest still comes from oil and gas for heating, transport and industry. We are not about to replace that overnight; nor are there credible plans to do so from this Government. The choice is not between oil and gas or renewables. We need both. The real choice is whether we produce that energy here under our own environmental standards, supporting British jobs and British revenues, or whether we import it from abroad at a higher cost and with higher carbon.’
So, 70% of the UK’s energy, not electricity, comes from oil and gas. Many of our foundational industries rely on the former and are fundamentally unable to transition. We need oil and gas in our energy mix and I know the Labour Government acknowledges this fact. However, another colleague, Bradley Thomas MP said,
‘The reality is that choices made by this Government continue to hollow out our industrial base, not because we lack skill or ambition but because energy, which is the lifeblood of industry, has become prohibitively costly.’
My Party and I believe securing a cheap, abundant supply of energy should now be the top priority of the UK's energy policy. As the world grows more dangerous, we absolutely need to prioritise our energy and industrial resilience. The oil and gas industry is a vital asset and I believe we must do all we can to maximise our economic recovery from our own resources. As the Shadow Energy Secretary pointed out in the Opposition Day Energy debate on the 24th of March,
‘At the moment, we are taxing companies at a marginal rate of 100%, we are banning new licences—the only country in the world to do so—and we are making ourselves more reliant on dirtier gas from abroad, when we could be using our own resources and taking in £25 billion of tax receipts.’
The Conservative Party, under Kemi Badenoch, are clear that ending Labour’s ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea will provide billions in tax revenue, save hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs and actually be better for the environment than continuing the dodgy accounting trick whereby importing dirty foreign energy is called zero carbon.
Our Cheap Power Plan will reduce bills by £200 for everyone and stop hard working people being taxed to fund lower bills for benefit recipients, taxed to provide subsidies and taxed for green levies. Please do click on this link if you would like to read more about the Conservative Cheap Power Plan:
The Conservative Cheap Power Plan and Energy Resilience Strategy April 26
It is worth repeating that I do not believe it is not a question of either/or, renewables or gas & oil but a question of balance. To lower our reliance on oil and gas whilst creating economic growth and better living standards, we must make electricity cheap, prioritise our domestic energy and industrial resilience, balancing growth, development and transition.
Labour has got it wrong. I believe our plan is the right one for Britain.
If you would like to read a more detailed statement on the oil and gas debate which I have referenced in this piece, please click on this link:
