Liz Truss’s net zero adviser has risked a clash with Liz Truss after he warned fracking will be a “non-starter”.
Conservative MP Chris Skidmore said he thought the practice was “not an opportunity for Britain” compared to emerging renewable technologies.
We actually do have a method of working these things out. Maybe something will work technically, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will produce an economic return, perhaps it will just piss the money away. So, obviously, we need a system that allows us to work out which things fall on which sides of which fences.
Fortunately, we have one. It’s called the capitalist free market. The free part is that there’s entry into the market. People get to try whatever comes into their pretty little heads. The capitalist part is that some part of other peoples’ savings are mobilised – on an entirely voluntary basis – to fund this. And the really cool part of the system is not that the experiments take place, but that the failures get closed down real pronto.
Which means we have the system to apply to fracking. Both Cuadrilla and Ineos are chomping at the bit to be allowed to spend the money they’ve raised on testing the idea of fracking in the UK. So, a free market and capitalist system leaves them to get on with it and then we all find out. Actually find out, rather than depend upon the political opinion of a modern historian – you know, someone who knows nothing at all about either technology or the economics of energy markets?
It’s a very cool system – why not use it?
Let’s see how much Skidmore believes in this message. I propose that if we don’t frack and still have power cuts and high costs we get to hang him.
If he’s right and fracking fails and the companies abandon their endeavours after 6 months he gets to say I told you so
Of course Skidmore would complain.
His Guaranteed Meal Ticket/Neverending Trough is at risk of becoming irrelevant.
I do like BiND’s suggestion, though… Except that the period should be more in line of two years, maybe even five.
It takes time to set up stuff and produce to levels that have an economic effect…
The fact that it will make mr. Skidmore sweat bullets for so much longer before the inevitable happens is a pleasant bonus.
“It’s a very cool system – why not use it?”
Because fracking might work, of course.
“net zero advisor”????
well, there’s the problem.
“net zero advisor”. Shares an office with the unicorn wrangler and the sunlight from cucumbers coordinator. On the ‘B’ Ark.
‘… emerging renewable technologies.‘
What is ‘emerging’ exactly? What are these technologies – wind, solar? These have been emerging since God was in short trousers and so wonderful we abandoned them as soon as we invented coal, oil, gas as resources.
Or are we talking about the ‘yet to be discovered’ technologies once we stop Big Oil from preventing their discovery and toss a lot of taxpayers money at ‘Green research projects’?
My MP. Not what you would call a Conservative at all. I didn’t vote for him and won’t be in future.
‘hang him’
I think you’ve really got to the heart of the matter here, Bloke in North Dorset.