TRUMP’S new energy chief will lead America into an era of energy dominance - as the UK heads into an era of energy insecurity.
Chris Wright, the founder and chief executive of Denver-based fracking firm Liberty Energy, contends hydrocarbons have boosted human flourishing and taken millions out of poverty.
Once in office he’ll encounter our own Energy Minister Ed Miliband, who studied PPE at Oxford, and has a penchant for bacon sarnies and pasties.
While they’re both playing on the same pitch their ethos and tactics could not be more different - akin to a Pep team taking on Graham Taylor’s Watford - abundance versus scarcity.
In his first stint as Energy and Climate Change Secretary Miliband enacted one of the most-damaging pieces of UK legislation of modern times; the 2008 Climate Change Act.
This made the UK the first country in the world to put climate targets into law with the aim of neutralising greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Technically, and financially, impossible Miliband has bolted out of his Net Zero basecamp with a mandate to reach the electricity sector summit by 2030.
Although his high-speed ascent stumbled instantly, with the 2030 target now downgraded to 95%.
And, despite claiming in the run-up to the election, that his wind and solar projects would reduce household energy bills by £300 a year, the energy price cap has been upped by £140 a year.
As for Wright he identifies Net Zero’s pathologies, saying it will ‘make energy more expensive, less reliable, and impoverish people’, adding ‘there’s no such thing’ as clean or renewable energy.
Record US Production
Around 20 years ago the UK and US produced around the same amount of oil and gas; roughly 5m barrels a day. Our paths have diverged markedly since.
In August this year the US produced a record 13.4m barrels - some 13% of global production - while the UK has fallen to 1.2m and will fall further under Miliband ’s wishful thinking.
This is not good news for the UK as the diverse energy paths pursued by the two nations are starkly highlighted in comparative wealth.
European economies grew by around 20% between 2012 and 2022 compared to around 70% in the US.
The UK’s GDP per capita is now $45,000, whilst Mississippi, the poorest US state, is at $47,000, up from $33,500 a decade ago.
The UK’s self-harming energy policies mean we now have the highest prices in the advanced world, as highlighted in a recent IEA report. (1)
It shows that UK industrial electricity prices are four times higher than the US and domestic prices are almost three times more.
As Wright points out: “The UK…has continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry.
“The once world-leading United Kingdom now has a per capita income lower than even the poorest state in the United States.”
UK Energy Scarcity
These damaging prices are eating away at the UK’s industrial base with growth grinding to a halt at the the energy-intensive industries such as the chemical sector (2).
UK energy use is down 30% since the turn of the century as our high prices deter investment and tether domestic consumption.
High energy prices played a part in the plans to close the Port Talbot steelworks, meaning the UK has now become the first major economy without the capability to make virgin steel.
The surge in UK prices is a function of the state-mandated subsidies for renewables (unreliables) which amounted to over £13bn in 2021, all paid for through our energy bills. (3)
The oil and gas industry has delivered £400bn to the UK Treasury in the last 50 years (4 & 5), While the renewable energy industry received over £60bn of subsidies since 2015.
These renewables are only viable with these guaranteed subsidies. The energy they produce is expensive, and unreliable, despite the misleading claims of the renewable lobbyists.
Any claims that renewable energy is clean is laughable fiction. In order to enact this pernicious 'energy transition’ mining companies will tear a huge, ‘dirty’ hole in the earth to retrieve the rare-earth minerals need for EV car and storage batteries (6).
Zero Energy Poverty
By the end of his first presidency Donald Trump’s America had already become the leading oil and gas producer on the planet.
And, despite rejoining the Paris Agreement, US oil and gas production reached record levels under President Biden.
Biden’s cognitive dissonance saw him release permits for America’s largest oilfield, whilst also enacting a $370bn green energy package with the Net Zero aim of halving carbon emissions by 2030.
There’ll be no such duality under the new Trump regime. His first moves will be to withdraw from the Paris agreement, and then turn on the hydrocarbon taps, as he pursues his goal of US energy dominance and abundance.
The US has over 100 years of remaining oil and gas reserves and Trump will use these to help it steal a lead in the global AI race.
Trump understands the need for cheap energy as the industry provides the juice for all other economic activity.
Re-phrasing the UN’s mandate of ‘Net Zero by 2050’ the US will now aim for ‘Zero Energy Poverty’ by 2050, echo the principle’s outlined in the seminal Alex Epstein book ‘Fossil Future’.
Epstein argues that hydrocarbons have helped - and are essential - to human flourishing. They have been instrumental in supporting the boom in the planet’s population from 2bn to 8bn over the last 200 years.
The UK still has rich reserves of hydrocarbons in the North Sea and decades of shale gas reserves under our feet (7).
Yet, both the Labour Government and the Tories, are wedded to the Net Zero agenda, and, with Miliband at the wheel we’re heading towards a cliff edge at 200 miles-an-hour in a battery-powered Formula-E.
There’s still time to make a U-turn. The US, over the next few years under incoming President Donald Tump will provide the template.
ENDS
1. https://iea.org.uk/were-number-one-in-unaffordable-electricity/#
3. https://davidturver.substack.com/p/exposing-the-hidden-costs-of-renewables
6. https://about.bnef.com/blog/race-to-net-zero-the-pressures-of-the-battery-boom-in-five-charts/
7. https://mamjammedia.blogspot.com/2013/03/uk-shale-gas-200-times-greater-than.html
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