The problem is all the UK companies are just that, companies, not charities. Any oil or gas extracted will simply be sold to the highest bidder and will not bring prices down, or give us energy independence. For that to happen would require a significant change in the law. Such a change would have to force the companies to:
- sell at a price fixed by the UK government
- only sell to the UK market
- only sell a limited about of excess production to the world marketā¦to protect reserves
Clearly thatās not going to happen.
For Nuclear, we would have to have a state run reactor, so we could set the priceā¦considering the 2 current reactors from EDF (85% French owned):
- Sizewell C has not even been government approved yet and wonāt be on stream until 2036 at best, if it runs to schedule. If instead itās another Hinkley point C, expect it in 2050 (as expected government approval is 2024)
- Hinkley Point C was government approved in 2010, but wonāt come on stream until 2026. Unless the issues found in a similar reactor design at Taishan in China, cause it to be delayed.
Being realistic, I suspect Hinkley point C wonāt open in 2026, but probably 2 to 3 years behind schedule. So in the short term 4-7 years, we have nothing in the bagā¦.as we tumble towards the Nivarna that is net-zero, with no plan of how to get there. Pushing for more and more electric cars to go on that already stretched national grid, without even the insistence that cars from this April 2022 have to form a part of national grid storage, or they canāt be sold in the UK. Then at least our windmills and solar might be able to store the excess rather than dump it to ground.
It is reassuring that over the last few decades (where I have been worried about energy security for 10 years), we are run by.

and controlled byā¦
