Global climate change will not be solved by shutting down the North Sea, according to one of Britain’s leading energy economists — who says it’s time for “a big dose of climate realism.”
Sir Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, argues that “global climate change won’t be mitigated by halting licences in the UK’s sector of the North Sea and instead importing oil and gas from elsewhere.”
He adds: “Replacing North Sea gas with American LNG is environmentally much worse than ‘home-grown’ gas. It also just makes the balance of payments worse.”
In a searing critique published in The Times, Helm says that after “29 Cops, lots and lots of subsidies and endless targets,” the planet is still warming — with atmospheric carbon rising from 275 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution to 425ppm today, “and on course for over 500ppm.”
He accuses the UK of leading the world “in how not to do energy and climate policy,” saying its falling emissions are the result of “deindustrialisation, not decarbonisation.”
He said: “Britain is a leader in deindustrialisation in Europe. It has little energy-intensive inward investment and has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world.”
Helm also attacks energy secretary Ed Miliband’s claim that “wind and solar are nine times cheaper than gas,” describing it as “basic arithmetic gone wrong.”
Renewables, he says, “look cheap only if you ignore all the system costs — the batteries, backup gas, and transmission infrastructure — which you and I, and industry, are paying for.”
He dismisses talk of “home-grown energy” as a political illusion.
“The wind and the sun may be British, but the solar panels and turbines certainly aren’t,” he writes. “They depend overwhelmingly on China, which takes ‘home-grown’ seriously. We don’t.”
Instead of a “mad dash” for net zero electricity by 2030 - which he says “wouldn’t make any noticeable difference to climate change” - Helm calls for investment in areas “Britain is best placed to help with,” such as offshore wind, carbon capture and research and development.
He concludes that the Cops “are not working” and urges political leaders to level with the public: “It is time to get serious about what is an environmental tragedy already in the making.
"Honesty about costs, honesty about our carbon footprints and honesty that we are all living beyond our environmental means would do much to head off what will otherwise probably happen.”