Energy and the Question of Ownership

In just one day - the most right wing US administration in living memory calls on Congress for billions of dollars to bail out the US financial system, the Portuguese launch the world’s first wave power plant and British Energy becomes French.

So we no longer have any ownership of our energy infrastructure. There are a lot of clichés we hear everyday from politicians these days. Three of my favourites are, “we will learn the lessons”, “the family have been informed” and “ownership does not matter”.

The last one we is a catchphrase of Business Secretary John Hutton. We never heard it when they were talking about housing of course. Forcing people to buy houses they could not afford is the main source of the current mess.

Mind it’s not a phrase you hear from people who actually own things like Warren Buffet or Lakshi Mittel or from the French for that matter. They will now have a constant stream of profits from their UK energy business. Every time we turn on the lights cash will stream across the channel.

The business secretary says this is good for Britain. I suppose from where we are it is. He has persuaded a foreign firm with some intellectual property to take over and run yet another dead British industry. So now we will get four new French nuclear power stations.

Today the UK economy is a bit like Wimbledon. We never win, but we put on a good show. All the prize money goes overseas but if we are lucky we get to stand on the hill watching it go on the big screen.

In this Alice in Wonderland world we are the winners. The stupid French have cheaper energy than us because they foolishly failed to embrace the market and invested in their energy industry for the long term. Now they have a product they can export across the world and reap the reward. Just how silly is that!

Meanwhile the global energy giants we have put our faith in are refusing to invest in UK renewables because as private firms they see more lucrative investments in existing energy sources elsewhere. To most observers the UK is facing a looming energy gap. But because of our obsession with not bucking the market we stand a good chance of being bucked by it.

Portugal has no indigenous carbon energy sources and yet has managed to obtain over half its energy from renewables. Locked into free-market dogma progress in the UK has been pitiful. We can begin to turn this around in October when the Energy Bill comes back to the commons. MP’s can give renewables the support they need with some preferential feed in tariffs to give them the certainty they need to invest.

But we need to go much further. The current global crisis in the banking sector shows the limits of regulation. When oil was discovered in the North Sea, we soon realised that it was going to be a long term and risky business bringing it to shore, we established a public sector business to undertake this challenge -The British National Oil Corporation. If we are to take on the challenge of developing a serious renewables industry particularly in the capital intensive wave and tide power arena we will need a similar public sector champion.

We need a British National Renewables Corporation.

Unlike the wind you can set your watch by the tides around Britain’s coast and if the Portuguese can harness wave power so can we. With a global shortage of credit we cannot wait for the private sector to come to the rescue.

The banks are being saved by ‘nationalisation’ in the USA and now our nuclear industry is being ‘nationalised’ by the French. If we want a significant renewables sector its early stage of development will require a large scale public sector solution believe me it will be a better long term investment than Northern Rock.

And this time we will have to do it ourselves.