Trump’s rejection of Net Zero will leave the UK in the dust

Before his election in November, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to re-establish America’s ‘energy dominance’ by expanding oil and gas production. Or, as his campaign slogan had it: ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ His recent pick for energy secretary, Chris Wright, founder and chief executive of fracking giant Liberty Energy, suggests this is a promise Trump is serious about fulfilling.

Wright hopes to take the US into a new era of energy abundance. Like many of Trump’s cabinet picks, Wright has his quirks (he was recently filmed drinking bleach on camera with his employees). But he has repeatedly articulated the importance of cheap and reliable energy to human flourishing and economic growth.

Unfortunately, just as the US could be about to enjoy an energy renaissance, the UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, seems determined to plunge Britain into a new dark age of energy insecurity. Miliband has long prioritised decarbonisation over securing cheap and plentiful energy. As Gordon Brown’s environment secretary, he oversaw the introduction of the Climate Change Act 2008, which made Britain the first country to put climate targets into law – the source of Britain’s energy woes. Now back in government as Keir Starmer’s energy secretary, Miliband plans to go even further, by making the UK’s electricity grid 95 per cent carbon neutral by 2030.

Unlike Miliband, Wright clearly understands the dangers of Net Zero. He rightly argues that clamping down on fossil fuels, and promoting renewables, will make energy ‘more expensive, less reliable and will impoverish people’.

Wright even views Britain as a cautionary tale. In a recent report, he said that Britain has ‘continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry’. This, he noted, has resulted in the ‘once world-leading United Kingdom’ now having ‘a per-capita income lower than even the poorest states in the United States’. He argues the US must reject ‘Net Zero’ and aim for ‘zero energy poverty’ instead.

It isn’t hard to see why Trump would pick Wright for the energy brief. Both men see eye to eye on the need for cheap energy to drive all other economic activity. By the end of Trump’s first term as president, the US had become the world’s leading producer of oil and gas. Indeed, US oil production even continued to soar under Joe Biden’s presidency, reaching record levels this year, despite his green posturing.

The fortunes of the British and American energy sectors have already diverged considerably in recent decades, and this will surely only accelerate over the next four years. Remarkably, in 1999, the US and the UK produced roughly the same amount of oil – roughly six million barrels per day. By August this year, the US averaged a record 13.4million barrels per day (or 13 per cent of global production), while the UK now manages just 1.2million barrels per day, its lowest amount since 1977. Under Miliband’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences, we can expect this meagre number to fall even further.

The consequences of the UK’s subservience to Net Zero have already been severe. Britain may be blessed with an abundance of hydrocarbons in the North Sea and rich reserves of gas beneath our feet, but successive governments have decided to shun these sources in favour of unreliable and intermittent renewables. The result is the UK now has the most expensive energy among advanced economies. According to a recent International Energy Agency report, industrial electricity prices are four times higher in the UK than the US.

Inevitably, the UK’s sky-high energy prices are starting to decimate our industrial base. Just this year, Net Zero policies have led to the closure of Vauxhall’s van factory in Luton and the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales, costing thousands of jobs.

Households are also paying a heavy price for this. Despite Labour’s promise during the General Election to lower energy bills by £300, the energy price cap is now set to rise for the first three months of next year.

There is still time for Britain to change course. There is nothing inevitable about Net Zero, soaring energy prices or deindustrialisation. America’s embrace of energy abundance is about to show the world that decline is an active choice.

Peter McCusker writes on energy and climate. Visit his blog here.