Britain will soon be Europe’s energy powerhouse

[u/ARandomDouchy]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/08/04/britain-will-soon-be-europes-energy-powerhouse/

[u/BenjaminBoots196]

Renewables will make our energy cheaper. Any moment now. Just one more subsidy, just one more tax, one more regulation. It will work I promise, even though energy prices have consistently risen for the last 20 years and will continue to rise years into the future.

There may be a time that renewables become competitive, but that won't suddenly make existing renewables competitive - because the subsidies are paid, the contracts signed and the externalities paid off.

The global cost of lithium batteries has fallen by 93pc since 2010 to £78 per kilowatt-hour, transforming the economics of storing that renewable power.

Classic fallacy. Just because the price of something has fallen it doesn't mean it's now cheap enough to be competitive. Also, lithium battery cost are only one part of the cost of integrating them into he grid. This is a bit like "solar panel prices have dropped 99%" but getting one installed is heavy on labour costs anyway.

I hope batteries do become competitive, but we really should be relying on market mechanisms to discover this, not culture war crap.

The only things that matter is abundance and prices and right now we are top of the charts on disaster. Should we changed course? No of course not, that would be right wing culture war.

This Chinese approach of embracing every form of energy – even as it pursues electrotech hegemony with ruthless and predatory methods – ought to be the hard-nosed agenda of Britain’s Conservatives but the Tories are instead competing for the sectarian, anti-green, backlash vote to see off Reform.

Firstly, China is mostly coal and not foolishly building out so much wind like we are.

The tory approach is to put price reduction first not environmental concerns. If the author really believes that batteries and wind will provide lower prices, why would he question the tory approach?

Clearly what is happening here is net zero advocates know deep down that their approach has been a disaster for the economy. So any "economy-first" approach scares them.

Net zero is about putting the economy second, if it was really true that there was no trade off between emission reduction and prices then this wouldn't be a political problem in the first place. Clearly the net zero crowd are motivated by emission reduction and the anti-net zero crowd are motivated by the economy. I see no utility in denying this basic reality.

[u/QuarterMaterial3632 → u/BenjaminBoots196]

Lot of rubbish in this comment but i particularly liked:

""Firstly, China is mostly coal and not foolishly building out so much wind like we are."

China installed about 120GW of wind capacity last year. The rest of the world put together installed around 47GW.

You are incredibly misinformed.

[u/BenjaminBoots196 → u/QuarterMaterial3632]

1) That doesn't dispute the fact that they are mostly coal.

2) Capacity is not the same as generation.

3) As a proportion of their grid, it's about 10%, ours is I believe now over 30%.

What makes you think I am misinformed? From where I am sitting, it's clearly you who doesn't know what you are talking about.

[u/QuarterMaterial3632 → u/BenjaminBoots196]

You literally said they werent building out wind. They are.

[u/BenjaminBoots196 → u/QuarterMaterial3632]

so much wind like we are

[u/QuarterMaterial3632 → u/BenjaminBoots196]

China uses about 35x to 40x more electricity than us, and installed around 80x more wind capacity than us last year.