It is a pretty fair bet that if you are reading this in Britain, you have gas central heating. Unless you are a rich Eco-Warrior with an expensive inefficient, ineffective heat pump that the government thinks everyone will have by 2050.
At the moment over 40 per cent of our power is generated using gas. We in Britain could switch off our Russian gas supply as it only accounts for 3 per cent of our usage; however, we still get much of our supply as Liquified Natural Gas from Qatar or by pipeline from Norway. We could get much more secure supplies from the North Sea by stopping the current policy of running down our own reserves. Only brain dead tree huggers like George Monbiot think that we can do away with fossil fuels in less than ten years time.
In Lincolnshire, residents near to Gainsborough are objecting to a massive solar farm being built. Their objection could be NIMBYism but the reality is that we do not have enough sunlight to make solar effective and when the wind does not blow, wind farms are unreliable. Both of those forms of renewable have been massively subsidised via your energy bills. My own energy supplier used 49.6 per cent gas and zero nuclear. Our lack of investment in nuclear will come back to bite us. The reality is that only 4 per cent of our energy needs come from renewable.
In 2019, Theresa May committed us to zero emissions by 2050 by changing the 2008 Climate Change Act (enacted by Labour) that had targeted an 80 per cent reduction. When Boris took over, his Woke green fiancée Carrie persuaded him to stick to the target that Parliament had taken just 90 minutes to agree. Boris continued to virtue signal at COP26 in Glasgow. In the political rush to be ‘first’ to Net Zero, reality has gone out the window.
With Europe dependent on Russia for almost a third of their gas, it seems unlikely that Germany will switch off Nord Stream. Of course Mr Putin could switch it off but the EU currently pays over $100m a day compared to Britain’s £6m.
What is happening here is that Vladimir Putin is demonstrating the total futility of Net Zero. If somebody is going to assassinate Vlad then they really should arrange an eco-friendly ticket to Moscow for Saint Greta. She can bump him off on the grounds that it would be good for the planet: a massive part of Russia’s economy is dependent upon fossils fuels. If Russia stops getting paid for oil and gas then wheat becomes its biggest export – and that is something that Ukraine is big at too.
