Energy gap crisis looms large

Official figures show that demand for power will exceed supply from the national grid "within eight years". While the Labour government should have been dealing with this looming energy crisis it preferred to spend more time banning hunting with dogs, making it illegal to take photographs of policemen and pretending wind turbines are the answer to our needs. The Lib Dems have been inhabiting a parallel universe as this problem has got worse, with Nick Clegg previously claiming that similar findings were an attempt to scaremonger people and that the only challenge we've got is to make our energy generation "greener":

"The government has spooked everyone into thinking that we need nuclear by saying there's going to be a terrible energy gap - the lights are going to go out in the middle of the next decade.

"There's actually no evidence that's the case at all. They've raised the wrong problem in order to push the wrong solution."

It's a fact that wind turbines and other renewables are incapable of forming the baseload for our energy generation because they're so unreliable. For every 1GW of energy generated from wind we need 1GW of nuclear, coal or gas fired generation capacity standing by as back up. Nuclear is no good as a back up because it takes time to increase energy output when demand peaks suddenly. That leaves coal and gas. Politicians are frightened of the green lobby so they shy away from coal, and we're competing more than ever with other European countries for Norwegian and Russian gas, which is forcing prices up ever higher.

We've got to pay for our energy generation through our electricity and gas bills, so why are we being forced to pay twice for our energy just to have some wind turbines producing a fraction of the energy we need?

Labour have been a waste of space and the Lib Dems are living in a dream world. So the Conservatives are the last hope for presenting the country with a realistic energy policy that meets our current and future needs. It would mean ignoring EU rules. But if we don't the lights will be going off within a decade. It could even be sooner if any of the existing power stations develop faults. Tinkering around with renewables because they're portrayed as eco-friendly and make money for some businesses that have invested in them isn't going to fill the coming energy gap. The Conservatives have to accept that and push for more conventional energy generation capacity right now.