Looking Beyond Net Zero: Reply to Neil Lock

Mr Lock has written a thoughtful reply to my original article, and I am grateful for it. Much discussion of energy policy now consists either of reciting climate catechisms or of muttering vaguely about “innovation” while hoping someone else builds the infrastructure. His comment engages with engineering and economics. We agree on much. Where we disagree, I suspect the disagreement is more about sequence and emphasis than destination.

I will begin where I agree with him entirely: the demonisation of carbon dioxide has become one of the great frauds of modern politics. I say fraud not because carbon dioxide does nothing, or because climate never changes, but because the political and economic uses made of climate alarmism bear only a limited relationship to scientific caution. A movement that began with uncertain claims about long-term climatic trends somehow ended with carbon trading, mandatory heat pumps, restrictions on domestic transport, and a gigantic expansion of bureaucratic and financial power. There is a pattern here.

The ruling class likes the present settlement because it serves two purposes simultaneously. First, it allows immense financial enrichment. Carbon markets, renewable obligations, subsidy structures, emissions permits, ESG finance, and the rest have created entire new industries of middlemen and speculators. Great fortunes are now accumulated by people who produce nothing tangible. They move numbers around spreadsheets and call it planetary salvation.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, expensive energy creates political dependency. Rich populations with abundant energy become difficult to manage. They buy houses, acquire savings, start businesses, raise families, and develop expectations of independence. Poor populations are easier to discipline. They can be frightened or regulated into compliance. If every rise in living standards depends on state subsidies and approved technologies, government acquires leverage over daily life that previous rulers could only dream of.

In this sense, the climate panic increasingly resembles less a scientific movement than a managerial project. It is no coincidence that almost every proposed solution strengthens institutions already attached to the ruling class.

Having said this, Mr Lock is right that I neglected domestic hydrocarbons. There are indeed two elephants wandering about the room, and I omitted both.

Britain possesses significant gas reserves. Fracking should never have become controversial. The objections were always comic. We were told that extracting domestic gas was environmentally intolerable while importing gas from abroad by tanker apparently involved no environmental cost at all. This always resembled a sort of ritual purification exercise rather than rational planning. If gas is needed, and if it plainly is needed during any medium-term transition, obtaining it domestically is preferable to dependency on unstable foreign suppliers.

The same applies to enhanced extraction from partially depleted North Sea fields. Technology advances. Fields previously considered exhausted sometimes become economically recoverable through improved extraction techniques. If hydrocarbons remain useful, and they do, there is no obvious reason to leave domestic resources untouched while importing substitutes.

I omitted these not because I oppose them, but because my article was intended primarily as a long-term discussion of non-hydrocarbon energy systems. I perhaps should have made this clearer. Mr Lock’s Phase I and Phase II structure strikes me as sensible. Domestic gas may indeed provide breathing space while nuclear capability expands.

Where I hesitate slightly is over duration. Temporary arrangements have a habit in Britain of becoming permanent arrangements. We have become experts in transitional states that continue for generations. A government announcing a twenty-year reliance on gas might wake one morning in 2050 and discover that it had somehow forgotten to build anything else.

My concern remains that hydrocarbons, even domestically sourced hydrocarbons, are chemical fuels. Their energy density is excellent. Their transport characteristics are convenient. But they remain finite and tied to extraction systems whose costs generally rise over time. Nuclear fuel cycles look fundamentally different.

On hydrogen, Mr Lock and I may disagree less than first appears. I am sceptical too about much present hydrogen enthusiasm. Some discussions sound almost theological. Mention hydrogen today and you encounter the same glazed expressions once attached to “the internet economy” or “smart cities.” Hydrogen is not magic. It is not an energy source. It is an energy carrier. Producing it requires large energy inputs.

Moreover, hydrogen creates engineering difficulties. Storage is awkward because hydrogen molecules are small and prone to leakage. Metals become brittle under prolonged exposure. Volumetric energy density remains poor compared with conventional fuels. Safety considerations are not imaginary. At present, many hydrogen schemes resemble attempts to force an answer before identifying a question.

Even so, I would hesitate to dismiss hydrogen entirely. If Britain ever achieved truly abundant nuclear electricity, some uses might become attractive despite conversion losses. Shipping, industrial chemistry, and specialised transport applications may benefit. The issue is not hydrogen itself but scale and context.

The same applies to synthetic fuels, where I think Mr Lock raises an important point.

One of the weaknesses of current electrification discussions is that they assume batteries are a universal solution. They are not. Battery-powered cars may eventually prove acceptable for large parts of personal transport. But batteries become much less attractive for heavy freight, shipping, aviation, and other applications requiring high energy density.

The chemistry is difficult to escape. Hydrocarbon fuels remain compact stores of energy. Jet fuel contains around forty-three megajoules per kilogram. Even excellent modern batteries remain far below this. Weight matters in aviation.

The possibility of synthesising liquid fuels from abundant electricity therefore deserves serious attention. Nuclear power might eventually become so abundant that converting surplus electricity into synthetic hydrocarbons becomes economically plausible. In that case you could retain much existing transport infrastructure while reducing strategic dependency.

That seems a more serious long-term possibility than many discussions of universal electrification acknowledge.

On tidal power, I accept some of Mr Lock’s caution. I do not think tidal generation should become Britain’s sole or even primary energy source. If my article implied otherwise, I overstated the matter. Nuclear remains the obvious backbone. My argument instead was that Britain possesses very favourable tidal geography and ought to exploit comparative advantages where they exist. A system combining nuclear baseload with supplementary tidal generation seems to me more resilient than a system attempting to derive most power from intermittent wind.

As for environmental effects, Mr Lock is also right. Large-scale tidal systems remain insufficiently studied. Barrages alter sediment movement and marine ecosystems. Any serious programme requires extensive research and careful engineering. Unlike many green enthusiasts, I do not think environmental consequences vanish simply because a technology receives official approval. The environmental movement often displays a curious selectivity. Wind turbines killing birds are acceptable. Rare-earth extraction is ignored. Solar-panel disposal scarcely receives discussion. The approved technology always receives moral exemption.

On solar power itself, I broadly agree with Mr Lock again. I see solar as useful but geographically constrained. Britain is not southern Spain. During winter, which is when electricity demand rises, British solar output becomes unimpressive. Off-grid applications and local generation may prove useful. National salvation is unlikely to arrive through photovoltaic panels scattered across cloudy fields in Kent.

Mr Lock’s mention of orbital solar systems belongs, I think, in the category of ideas that sound faintly absurd right until the moment civilisation becomes rich enough to attempt them. The history of technology contains many examples of this. I confess to reservations. Space infrastructure remains fantastically expensive. Transmitting energy safely at scale presents formidable difficulties. You can easily imagine entire ministries devoted to discussing orbital solar architecture while no one notices the lights going out at home. Even so, low-probability and high-payoff ideas deserve attention. Civilisations become stagnant partly because they stop entertaining grand possibilities.

I will end where I began. Mr Lock and I agree on the essential point. Britain cannot continue under the present arrangement. We cannot permanently impoverish ourselves through policies designed around managed scarcity and moral panic. We cannot run an industrial civilisation through subsidy structures and ideological enthusiasm.

Where we differ concerns the route out. He wishes to place greater emphasis on domestic hydrocarbons during transition. I think he is right that I underweighted them. I continue to place greater emphasis on long-term nuclear expansion and on building an energy architecture capable not merely of maintaining present conditions but of enabling abundance.

Energy policy should not concern itself just with keeping the lights on. It should concern itself with creating a society rich enough and technologically ambitious enough that ordinary people stop thinking about energy altogether.