What is going to be the most meaningful shift in geopolitics for Britain for the next 20 years?
Will it be the result of a trade war between America and China? The choice between charting an independent post-Brexit path or closer relations with an-ever centralising Europe? Increasing flows of migration from the global south northwards? The re-emergence of economic nationalism? AI?
Only a fool would try and predict exactly. But an underreported trend, bubbling under the surface, means Britons are going to have to comprehend a whole new kind of geopolitics; energy politics.
Energy politics is, of course, not new at all. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, it has been a key driver of world politics. But for a long time, secured by quirks of geography and history with a rich endowment of the material needs to supply our own energy needs, we in Britain have been able to forget about it.
The demand for coal was one of the drivers of the industrial revolution, and Britain’s rich reserves of coal helped drive it. The huge natural reserves and accompanying embedded infrastructure gave Britain a stable energy source it could rely on; at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all of Britain’s electricity was produced by coal-fired power plants.
But as coal was replaced by oil, strategic questions about shortages began to worry policymakers – particularly after the Suez Crisis. The year after, in 1957, the government produced a white paper, ‘Capital investment in the coal, gas and electricity industries’, which proposed increasing nuclear generation to between 5000 and 6000 MWe – up to four times as much as had been proposed in a different white paper just two years before. The Magnox reactors, which were rolled out to meet this demand, eventually produced 4200 MWe.
Thanks to oil and gas production in the North Sea, the UK started exporting more energy than it imported again in 1981. North Sea production hit its highest point in 1999, but by 2004, the UK became an energy importer again.
In local planning meetings on solar farms (which are, thanks to the National Planning Policy Framework, regularly proposed on farmland), I am often reminded about the need for food security. But Britain has been a net importer of food since the Industrial Revolution; the rise of Britain (and the living standards of her citizens) has been based on ensuring high domestic energy production, and opening up our food supply lines to the entire world. It’s served us well; food imports and energy exports won us two world wars and one world cup.
But tradition is nothing but the tyranny of the dead over the living. This playbook – having worked for hundreds of years to guarantee growing living standards and geopolitical independence – is apparently no longer fit for purpose, and so is being consigned to history. And with it will go those guarantees of raising living standards and geopolitical independence.
To meet Net Zero goals – at first mere international agreements, now a legally defined and enforced doctrine – Britain has dynamited its ageing fleet of coal fired power stations. As has previously been discussed, this was a policy decision that banked on large increases in nuclear power generation; but these have, inevitably, stalled. Likewise, a hostile policy environment has seen North Sea energy production decimated, while there remains no cost-effective way of providing energy storage for intermittent renewables.
Labour’s plan to ‘Make Britain a clean energy superpower’ largely rests on the idea of achieving a carbon-free grid by 2030, achieved by quadrupling offshore wind farms, doubling the number on land and tripling the production of solar power.
However, as these are intermittent renewables, Labour will also need to invest heavily in energy storage, which they make a nod to in their manifesto by promising to ‘ensure we have the long-term energy storage our country needs’.
But the deftness with which this problem is laid aside betrays a problem. The Government has set a target of 30 GW of energy storage capacity by 2030, which includes batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro and liquid air energy storage; but Ed Miliband’s plan requires a far more dramatic 119,850% increase in storage. As James McSweeney notes in a detailed breakdown of Miliband’s plan: ‘It is impossible to overstate the extent to which this plan is not going to happen.’
Today, the UK imports more energy than it produces across all major fuel types. In 2023, 40.8% of the energy used in the UK came from imports, up 3.8% from 2022. We are set to import a record amount of energy in 2024, more than 50% above the previous record and equivalent to over 10 million homes. The UK’s reliance on the global gas market means that citizens are over-exposed to inflation when events – such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – push up prices. Miliband’s commitment to producing energy that cannot be stored will only increase reliance on – and exposure to – these markets.
When energy prices play such an important role in the living standards of citizens and the security of the nation, the reality of importing huge amounts of energy from abroad acts as a constraint on foreign policy. If Britain is to become increasingly reliant on imported energy, it must become used to this energy realpolitik.
For some places, this is more normal. You cannot understand the foreign policy of central and Eastern Europe, for instance, without understanding energy politics. After Russia invaded Ukraine, countries in central and eastern Europe who were dependent on Russian gas – Germany and Hungary, for instance – were more doveish on Ukraine. Nations that were less reliant – France and America, for instance – were most hawkish.
Germany is in a similar situation to Britain, having dynamited its’ domestic baseline energy production capacity to meet green goals, enabled by being the largest importer of Russian Gas in Europe, mostly via the Nord Stream pipeline. Those worried about the economic impact of a Russia energy embargo went so far as to predict a 6-12% decline in GDP, but before Germany had acted to cut supplies Russia began reducing the flow of gas to the country, ultimately stopping it altogether. It is now suspected that 4-6% of Germany’s gas supply still originates in Russia, and those supply cuts are causing long-term damage to the German economy. Opinion in Germany continues to be far more far more split on Ukraine than in, say, the UK, with leading politicians and intellectuals calling for a recognition of Russian territorial gains in return for peace.
But even those on a different path must still face up to energy realpolitik; Hungary has sought to increase domestic energy production by extending the life of its single operating power plant by 20 years, and has recently signed a deal to build a two new reactors, increasing nuclear power generation by over 100%. Hungary is undoubtedly the most doveish of any EU country on Ukraine. It has refused to send lethal aid to its neighbour Ukraine or even allow lethal aid across the border and has sought to block packages of aid to Ukraine in the EU. You cannot understand this position without understanding the nation’s continued reliance on Russian energy imports; 75% of natural gas, 60-80% of oil and 100% of nuclear fuel imports are from Russia.
We face a complex ‘trilemma’ of balancing the competing demands of tackling climate change, ensuring national security, and managing energy costs. Indeed, Miliband has even acknowledged this, arguing that he is pursuing energy independence through renewables. But Miliband’s plan, thanks to a wilful ignorance of the unwelcome intrusions of reality, will disregard the latter two priorities to a level that will soon mean energy insecurity becomes a clear and present danger; it should be remembered that in recent years, blackouts have only been prevented by re-fired Belgian coal-fired power stations and American liquid natural gas imports. What a lever for an incoming Donald Trump to hover his hand over, faced with Starmer’s desultory ‘retaliatory’ tariffs on Levis and Jack Daniels!
For too long, ensuring national security and managing energy costs have languished in Britian’s energy trilemma, with our politicians prioritising ‘climate leadership’ that is entirely idealistic and ineffectual. This must change. Without enough energy, we will be at the whim of whoever can keep the lights on.
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