Nick Holliman

This article overlooks some basic big picture facts - renewable energy is a forever fuel, our transition to it is a great investment. We get forever jobs from it and we also get energy security from it - there is none in fossil fuels - our North Sea will be empty of oil and gas in ten years. We spent tens of billions on the original grid, for fossil fuels - that was vital national infrastructure, as this is. Carbon capture and Hydrogen budgets though - I agree, pull them and reprioritise the money. The ‘wasted wind’ argument is just silly - it’s the glass 97% full argument - or 3% empty in fact. Twisted focus.

Has climate change wrecked humanity's food supply? We're often told we will all starve to death. That global famine is imminent unless we change our lifestyles. That we will pay for our 'Climate Sins' Oh! We're not starving! We have more food than ever before. In total and per person. I don't remember Greta telling us this!

Tim is right, and this is - as ever from Tim - a superbly written article. Climate change is a matter of fact, and the solutions are here. Whether you’re left wing or right wing doesn’t change that. And the solutions are increasingly economically better than the fossil fuel alternatives. Indeed, the capitalist case for action is overwhelmingly compelling. What’s holding us back- or making it expensive- are incumbents and incumbent thinking, now being joined by frankly bizarre ideology. Solar is the cheapest power on the planet. Onshore wind bonkers cheap. It’s undoubtedly the case that EVs are the future. Costs falling (the UK’s cheapest new car is an EV…) Heatpumps are outstanding for most homes. One of my most interesting meetings was with the Net Zero Scrutiny Group discussing how a freer market in electricity could use these technologies to drive down energy costs. Yet we see incumbents lobbying against these - trying to roll back EV targets and claiming we’ll have hydrogen instead of heatpumps. Telling us the solution to fossil fuel crises is more fossil fuels. They resist the changes we need to the market to make renewables slash costs and deny the very evidence in front of their eyes on both climate and technology. Wildfires? “Arson and woke land management” Floods? “Dam removals. Or was it too many dams?” melting glaciers? “Sun spots. Just weather”. Excess O2? “It’s just 0.04% and it’s good for plants” Extreme temperatures? “Just weather” Climate models predicted all of them. A wise person once told me that when people bring a different explanation to every bit of the argument, there’s usually something else. Similarly with solutions. Solar panels? “Plastering the land” and “threatening food security”. Nonsense - they take up 1/3 the land of golf courses and nature loves living under them. Wind farms “kill birds”. Have you seen how many cats kill, buildings, cars? Wind farms are vanishingly low on the list. Or we could do as Tim says. See what’s going on, see the huge opportunity of the solutions and embrace it.

Britain has a highly resilient energy system. It's right that we continue to make sure that always remains the case. It is categorically untrue to claim that blackouts are an "engineering certainty". This is simply sensationalist nonsense.