Should the government prioritize energy security over the energy transition?
Oliver Riches
The Ukraine war has had a major role in causing the highest inflation in the UK for 30 years, at 10% in May 2023, and has put more emphasis than ever on the importance of energy security. Of course, with key dates such as net-zero by 2050 and all electricity from low-carbon sources by 2035, the energy transition is a major priority for the government, as part of their commitments to help reduce climate change. However, the Conservative government has an impossible challenge ahead of them, namely, getting re-elected in 2024. With the Conservatives needing support from working class voters to win the next election, particularly those that they ‘borrowed’ from the Red Wall in the last election, they must recognize that getting inflation under control and therefore reducing the cost of living is a more crucial priority for their re-election than saving the planet. So, should the government look to secure our energy sources with new oil and gas fields, or focus on shifting the UK’s energy to green sources? The cost of living crisis is the problem which the government most urgently needs to tackle. High inflation caused by a huge increase in the cost of energy, sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, peaked at 11.1% in October of the same year. It is the key priority for the government to bring this number back down, as the rising cost of living is crippling UK households. Measures like raising interest rates would work if the inflation was caused on the demand side, but this is not working quickly enough due to the inflation being supply- sided. The key is to change the UK’s energy dependence. At the moment, the UK relies heavily on Qatar, the USA, and until recently, Russia, for imports of oil and natural gas. The government must take our energy production into its own hands if the UK is to be a sustainable and secure economy moving forwards. Over the past fifty years, we have seen how powerful energy is as a geopolitical weapon, and to let other countries hold that power over us, to have that amount of control of the UK economy, cannot continue, as its effects over the last two years have been devastating. The government has recently announced a hundred new oil exploration permits in the North Sea. This is the right move to secure the UK’s energy sources. But if the energy transition can achieve the same effects as gaining energy security, and in a clean, sustainable way, then why should the government focus on gaining energy security through any other means? The energy transition is going to take decades. One of the negative products of a democracy, such as the UK, is that governments have to seek re-election every 5 years, and are therefore very short- sighted, and instead of setting up the country in the long-term, short-term results are sought, because their number one priority, is to be re-elected. It is often thought that governments can think more long- term than corporations, who just try to make profits for the next quarterly review; however, the opposite is true. If a company doesn’t make profit for a few quarters, it can still be sustainable over a long period, but if a government does not return prosperity by focusing on the long-term, compromising the present, they will not be voted back in. This means that the government, from their perspective, to stand any chance of re-election in 2024, should focus on getting inflation down and reducing the cost of living, even if that means allowing more production of fossil fuels in the UK. As the EU diversifies its oil and gas production to Algeria and Mozambique, the UK has no choice but to follow
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