This week the UK Government launched its Powering Up Britain plan to deliver both energy security and the transition to Net Zero. The plan is wrapped in political rhetoric about sticking it to Putin by not using his gas, and backed up by more detailed supplementary documents.

My high-level assessment: if we could wind back the clock 30 years,this might be a good time to talk about developing new technologies such as Small Modular Reactors Carbon Capture and Storage, pumping the CO2 captured from fossil fuel powered electricity generation into the caverns beneath the North Sea whence those (Great British) fossil fuels came.

Why if we could wind the clock back 30 years? Because these “exciting” new technologies DO NOT EXIST at the scale required and it might easily take this long to develop them to that point. If we keep on with business as usual while we wait for the (Great British) boffins to save us from impending doom we will be, quite simply, in a world of pain. The climate is collapsing before our very eyes and we are reaching tipping points in this collapse that we did not expect to see for decades.

Quite simply, we cannot afford to wait. We need to act now with the resources that we do have at our disposal today. Fortunately, they are prodigous.

Before we worry about Powering Up Britain, we need to Power Down Britain . Quite simply, the less energy we use, the less we have to generate from renewable sources. Then we can Power Up by using currently available technologies such as wind and solar, supported by investment in developing better storage and a smarter grid to move the energy from where it is generated to where it is needed, including cooperation with our windy and sunny European neighbours.

By all means let’s invet in developing technologies such as CCUS and Direct Air Capture of CO2, but let’s not wait until they are ready to get started. We simply DON’T HAVE THE TIME.