Who gets to choose where your energy comes from? Should it be you, your region, your energy supplier, National Grid, or the government, or even some international agreements?
It’s a pretty emotive subject and it’s at the heart of the energy transition. We can do a lot as individuals, but the real shifts will be done at a large scale and for this we need to decide who is in control.
What are the options?
It’s left to individuals – ie the day to day choices that we make influence markets to provide the services that we want – if we choose to buy green energy then more will be made available. Ok in theory, but unlikely to kick start the energy revolution and triple the amount of green investment we need.
Regions could take the lead – perhaps the Scottish Government, London Authority, Manchester Major, Welsh Assembly etc could be the driving force. There is certainly an argument that the future of energy is a regional issue determined by local geography, the economy, existing infrastructure and more. Linking this to locally elected ministers could also bring people closer to key energy decisions.
National Grid and other national energy players – the likes of Octopus and BP – clearly have a role to play. Unless we solve the macro energy issues then no amount of local tinkering is going to make a difference. The last time a major energy shift was achieved in the 1960s and 70s this was done by central planning in the CEGB – we built the National Grid and many coal fired power stations up the spine of the country.
Surely it is down to Government to take the lead. I’ve lost count of the number of times industry players have cried out for clearer direction from government. They should just work out the plan and then tell everyone what needs to be done. If we aren’t happy about it, then we can switch parties in 4 years’ time. Unfortunately, this is far to short term for the solutions that we need.
But decarbonisation is a global issue, no point in sorting out the UK when China has over a thousand coal fired power stations and a similar number in India? But international agreements are slow, and we’re now on COP 27 – which means we have been talking about this for 27 years.
My view is that we already have a regionally organised energy system for electricity and gas, we just need to put it on steroids. Each region needs a planning authority (think like the Docklands Redevelopment Council), the DNOs and Gas Distributors should work more closely together (especially on home decarbonisation) and we need a market that supports all of this – probably one model for the whole country operated by one provider.
