Getting up in the middle of the night to run the washing machine will help. Downsizing to a slightly smaller TV might make a small difference. And of course switching off your mobile for a few hours every day may have to be mandatory, not just to avoid all the craziness on social media, but to keep the grid running.
The National Energy System Operator has this week warned the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband that it will take a “Herculean effort” by the whole country to make sure we can keep the power system running while ending the use of fossil fuels by 2030. But hold on. That is crazy. And if Miliband does mandate power cuts, as looks increasingly likely, it will surely bring down the government – and rightly so.
When the government set the target of making the UK’s electricity grid completely free of fossil fuels by 2030 we were told repeatedly that renewable energy would be cheaper, cleaner, create hundreds of thousands of “well-paid green jobs”, end dependency of foreign powers, and turbo-charge investment and growth. We would set an example to the world on climate change, while getting richer at the same time.
The trouble is, it is not working out quite as planned. According to the slightly sinister sounding Neso, millions of households may have to be persuaded to shift their power consumption to even out the load on the grid. Wind and solar power are so variable, and capacity so limited, that if we all start boiling the kettle at the same time the whole system will crash.
It is not hard to see the slippery slope here. Sure, it may start with “persuading” us to change the way we use power, perhaps with some increasingly deranged TikToks from “Green Ed” himself showing us how to cook dinner in the middle of the night. Soon afterwards, there will be rationing, and after that power cuts, with the grid switched off at regular intervals. Brownouts, as they are known in South Africa, and a few other third world countries, will become a regular feature of our lives.
And yet, that is surely completely unnecessary. It is not as if a functioning 24-7 electrical grid is a new technology. Indeed, the world’s first power station was opened in Holborn, in London, in 1882 by Thomas Edison. We used to lead the world in generating electricity.
Likewise, we don’t have to make ourselves completely dependent on wind and solar. Even leaving aside our abundant resources of shale oil and gas – which both those “far-right ideologues” Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden have supported to the hilt – we could be ripping up the insane planning laws that stop us from building a new generation of nuclear power stations at reasonable cost. The public won’t be fooled. Power rationing, when it comes, will be entirely self-inflicted.
The last government to mandate power cuts was Edward Heath’s Conservative government of the early 1970s. The circumstances, of course, were very different. Heath was battling the mining unions, while Miliband and Starmer will be stopping the power as a deliberate policy choice.
The outcome will be much the same, however. The Heath government quickly fell. In reality, uninterrupted electricity is so fundamental to life that no government that can’t deliver it can expect to stay in office for long. If Labour switch off the power, it will be the end of this government – and rightly so.