Britain’s net zero policy has long been a national self-harm project. It is dressed up as virtue, but functions as a tax on production and on the most fundamental consumer amenities of the modern world – transportation, heating, and food.
Worst of all, the energy poverty our leaders are creating today is preventing Britain from developing a strategic, economic and technological role for the next century.
My latest book, A Greater Britain, is an analysis at the level of grand strategy of what role Britain can play in the harsher, more authoritarian, and more fragmented world that is approaching. Britain has benefited enormously from the post-war economic order it helped build following victory in World War Two.
Now that the old order is falling, Britain will once again need to compete for its place in the new order – by making ourselves integral to the power industries of the future.
Energy is the base input of a modern economy. It determines whether a country can make steel, chemicals, ceramics, glass, fertiliser, and the thousands of intermediate goods that sit beneath defence, health, and infrastructure. It’s also necessary for technological power – AI, cloud infrastructure, and advanced computing research.
The British state has taken a series of decisions that guarantee high energy costs. We have discouraged investment in domestic gas while increasing reliance on imports.
We have allowed ideological hostility to nuclear power to delay projects for decades. We have treated grid capacity as an afterthought, then acted surprised when new connections are blocked, and planning becomes a bottleneck.
The last few governments (though worsening still under Miliband) have layered levies, windfall taxes, and regulatory uncertainty.
A Greater Britain describes this approach as the energy version of trying to lose weight by throwing away your cooker. The country does not consume less energy.
It just pays more for it, and it pays foreign suppliers instead of building resilience at home. Britain has ended up importing vast quantities of gas, much of it from Norway, which, despite its greenwashed reputation, continues to exploit the same North Sea resources Britain has chosen to ban. One reason for this ridiculous state of affairs is that our energy debate is disconnected from grand strategy.
Much like Chagos, energy is treated as an internal moral conversation rather than a source of national power. That is the naïve and decadent thinking of a power committed to decline.
In a world of geopolitical rivalry, energy costs shape the location of industry, the credibility and industrial backing of defence spending, and the freedom of action in foreign policy.
A country that cannot afford to manufacture at scale, cannot build at pace, and cannot control key inputs becomes dependent, and dependence, as Trump continues to prove to Europe, is weakness.
Britain is now dependent on a greenwashing hypocrite that's still drilling. This is self-harm - Azeem Ibrahim | Getty Images
US energy policy has many flaws, but it has one overriding strategic advantage: it treats abundant energy as a pillar of national strength.
Cheap gas and power have supported a manufacturing revival, reshored industrial capacity, and strengthened America’s position. Britain must recognise that the energy transition will fail if it is built on scarcity and punishment.
A transition that makes energy more expensive makes the country poorer, and a poorer country is less able to invest in innovation, security, diplomacy, or anything else.
The new world has no time for insincere ideologues. Contrast our strategic position with that of Greece. Greece has faced famously deep fiscal constraints since 2008 and a serious energy price shock, which have forced it to respect the practical imperatives of energy security and competitiveness. They didn’t have the luxury of greenwashing.
Therefore, Greece has expanded infrastructure, diversified supply, and focused on positioning itself as an indispensable node in regional energy flows. Investment was directed into grid interconnections, LNG terminals, pipeline infrastructure, and electricity transmission that linked Greece to the Balkans, Italy, and Eastern Europe.
Through Cyprus, Greece is developing pipelines that cut out rival Turkey and do not rely on unstable Syria or war-torn Ukraine. Renewables were developed alongside, not instead of, gas and infrastructure resilience, allowing Greece to stabilise supply while lowering emissions incrementally.
Greece, which has only small oil fields of its own, has become a major exporter and a bridge to Europe, so much so that Europe has come to rely on Greece.
Greece now receives billions in investment into the energy corridor it has created. And, by the way, it has cut its CO2 emissions by almost 50 per cent since 2007.
In Britain, however, a policy environment has been built where high-status opinion overwhelms national interest. Environmental ideology has shaped decisions that increase reliance on imports, discourage domestic investment, and delay technologies that could deliver both decarbonisation and national security and influence.
Nuclear is the clearest example. It is one of the few proven routes to reliable low-carbon baseload power, yet it has been treated as politically inconvenient for years. We are throwing away the opportunity to guarantee prosperity into the next century.
Fixing this is a geopolitical necessity. If Britain wants to be taken seriously in a harder international order, it must stop treating energy policy as a domestic virtue contest and compete for our place in the next world order.
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