Batteries are often presented as one of the great technologies of the future.

They are central to electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, home storage and the proposed electrification of almost every part of modern life.

The argument is straightforward. Fossil fuels provided society with abundant, concentrated energy. As those fuels become more difficult and expensive to obtain, electricity generated from renewable sources will take their place, with batteries providing the storage needed to make the system work.

Jeff Currie, the commodities economist, represents this view. He argues that electrification will create enormous demand for the materials required to build the new energy system – copper, lithium, nickel, graphite and other minerals. From this perspective, batteries are not a marginal technology. They are at the centre of a new industrial transformation.

However, Tim Morgan’s Surplus Energy Economics provides a very different starting point. His argument is that the world economy has not simply slowed temporarily. The era of economic expansion driven by increasing supplies of affordable surplus energy has ended, and the economy is moving into contraction.

From this perspective, the question is not how batteries will enable another century of economic growth.

The question is how batteries can help communities function in an economy with fewer resources available.

Batteries are not energy sources

The first principle is often overlooked.

A battery does not create energy.

It stores energy that has already been produced.

A battery is like a water tank. It can store water when supplies are plentiful and release it when needed, but it cannot create new water.

The same applies to electricity.

A battery charged from solar panels on a summer afternoon can provide power during the evening. It can help a house, farm or community manage short interruptions. It can smooth out the daily variations of renewable electricity.

These are extremely valuable functions.

But a battery cannot overcome a prolonged shortage of energy.

Several weeks of cold, calm and cloudy weather cannot be solved simply by installing more batteries. The challenge is not only technological. It is a question of scale, resources and the physical limits of energy systems.

The industrial problem

Modern batteries are remarkable achievements of industrial society.

They depend upon global mining, chemical processing, advanced manufacturing and international transport.

Lithium must be extracted and refined. Copper must be mined and processed. Graphite, nickel and other materials must be obtained and transformed into highly engineered components.

This requires enormous amounts of energy and industrial organisation.

The irony is that the technology intended to support a post-fossil fuel economy is itself a product of the high-energy fossil fuel economy.

As long as growth continues, this may not present a major difficulty.

But in a shrinking economy, every complex system comes under pressure.

From replacement to stewardship

A growth economy encourages replacement.

Products are designed, purchased, used and eventually discarded. New versions appear and consumers are encouraged to upgrade.

A shrinking economy works differently.

Resources become too valuable to waste.

Maintenance becomes more important than replacement.

Repair becomes more important than disposal.

This is where batteries become interesting.

They may no longer be viewed as consumer products with a limited life. They may become long-term capital assets requiring careful management.

Lessons from the wireless accumulator

This is not an entirely new idea.

When many households first owned radios, especially in rural areas before universal electricity supply, a wireless set often depended on a lead-acid accumulator.

The accumulator provided the low-voltage electricity needed by the radio valves. When it became discharged, it was not thrown away.

It was taken to a local garage, radio shop or electrical supplier.

There, it was inspected, topped up with distilled water and connected to a charging system. A controlled direct current slowly reversed the chemical reaction inside the battery and restored its charge.

The customer collected the accumulator and returned it to the radio.

The local supplier was not merely selling a product. It was providing an energy service.

The community understood that stored energy required management.

Battery husbandry

This older approach provides a useful model for the future.

Previous generations practised what might be called equipment husbandry.

A farmer maintained a tractor because replacing it was expensive.

A village maintained a water pump because it was essential.

Tools were repaired because they represented accumulated knowledge and resources.

The same principle may apply to batteries.

Battery husbandry means treating batteries as valuable assets rather than disposable objects.

It involves:

• extending battery life,
• careful charging and discharging,
• repairing damaged packs,
• replacing individual components where possible,
• recovering useful materials,
• sharing specialist knowledge locally.

A community skilled in battery husbandry would be less dependent on distant manufacturers and fragile supply chains.

Batteries as local infrastructure

In a shrinking economy, batteries may become part of local infrastructure.

A village might operate shared battery storage connected to solar panels.

A farm might store electricity to maintain refrigeration, water pumping and essential machinery.

A community workshop might repair battery packs and recover components from older equipment.

The important question changes.

It is no longer:

“How many batteries can we produce?”

It becomes:

“How can we obtain the greatest benefit from the batteries we already have?”

A different hierarchy of use

A shrinking economy will require different priorities.

Some uses of batteries may become difficult to justify.

Large battery packs moving heavy vehicles carrying a single person may appear wasteful when compared with other needs.

The same battery capacity used for water systems, food storage, communications, emergency services or local workshops may provide much greater community value.

The issue is not whether batteries are useful.

They clearly are.

The issue is where they should be used.

The future of batteries

Jeff Currie is right that batteries represent a major industrial demand for minerals and that electrification requires enormous investment.

Tim Morgan is right to ask whether the economic system required to build and maintain that technology can continue expanding in a world of declining surplus energy.

The localist answer lies between these two views.

Batteries are neither a magic solution nor an unnecessary technology.

They are valuable tools.

But in a shrinking economy their greatest contribution may not be enabling unlimited consumption. It may be helping localities preserve essential services, maintain resilience and make careful use of the energy resources that remain.

The future of batteries may therefore look less like a technological revolution and more like a return to an older principle:

Energy is something to be managed, maintained and husbanded carefully.

The battery may become the modern equivalent of the village mill, the water pump or the well – a vital local asset whose value comes not from novelty, but from dependable service over many years.

Dr Tim Morgan’s latest essay, #327: Surplus Energy Economics, is perhaps the clearest and most complete summary yet of the ideas he has been developing over the last thirteen years. Rather than introducing new theories, it draws together the evidence into one coherent explanation of why the era of economic growth is ending and what may follow.

For anyone interested in localism, it is an important document because it describes the physical limits that make a more local society not simply desirable but increasingly inevitable.

The economy runs on energy, not money

Morgan begins with a simple observation. The economy is not fundamentally a financial system. It is a system for supplying goods and services. Money merely records claims upon that production.

This seems obvious, yet modern economics often behaves as though money itself creates wealth. Governments, banks and investors increasingly judge success by GDP, stock market values and financial assets rather than by the economy’s ability to provide food, housing, energy and essential services.

Morgan argues that this is the wrong way round. Wealth comes first from energy and physical resources. Money only has value because it represents claims upon those resources.

The importance of surplus energy

Every energy source requires energy to obtain it.

Coal must be mined.

Oil must be drilled, transported and refined.

Wind turbines and solar panels must be manufactured, installed, connected to the grid and eventually replaced.

The energy left over after obtaining energy is what Morgan calls surplus energy. This surplus powers everything else in society – farming, manufacturing, healthcare, education, transport, entertainment and government.

His central argument is that the Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE) has been rising steadily for decades. More of society’s total energy is now consumed simply in obtaining more energy, leaving less available for everything else. According to his estimates, average ECoE has risen from around 2% in 1980 to more than 11% today.

This is not simply an energy problem.

It becomes an economic problem.

Why growth has stalled

Traditional economics assumes that growth can continue indefinitely through technology, finance and innovation.

Morgan disagrees.

He argues that technological improvements have not been able to overcome the steadily increasing energy cost of obtaining usable energy. As surplus energy falls, so does the ability of the economy to expand.

Debt, quantitative easing and financial engineering have delayed recognition of this reality but cannot remove the underlying physical constraint.

From this perspective, many of today’s problems begin to make sense.

• Falling living standards.
• Increasing inequality.
• Rising government debt.
• Asset bubbles.
• Political instability.
• Competition for resources.
• Declining affordability of essential goods.

These are symptoms rather than separate problems.

The connection with localism

This is where localism enters the picture.

Many people still think localism is a lifestyle choice, a political preference or nostalgia for village life.

Morgan’s work suggests something much deeper.

As surplus energy declines, highly centralised systems become progressively harder to maintain.

Long supply chains.

Global food systems.

Just-in-time distribution.

Mass commuting.

Disposable consumer goods.

International tourism.

Large bureaucracies.

All depend upon abundant surplus energy.

As that surplus declines, societies naturally begin shifting towards simpler, shorter and more local systems.

Essential replaces discretionary

Morgan distinguishes between essential and discretionary activities.

Essential activities include food production, water, housing, healthcare and basic transport.

Discretionary activities include much of modern consumer culture – endless product choice, fast fashion, frequent flying, luxury consumption and many financial services.

As energy becomes scarcer, society increasingly directs resources towards essentials.

This is exactly the direction that localism has advocated for years.

The future economy is likely to become less concerned with consumption and more concerned with resilience.

A more labour-intensive society

Another conclusion follows naturally.

Where abundant fossil energy once replaced human labour, declining surplus energy means more work will again be done by people.

That does not necessarily imply hardship.

It may instead mean more gardeners, growers, builders, repairers, foresters, craftspeople, carers and local manufacturers.

Many activities abandoned because fossil fuels made them uneconomic may once again become worthwhile.

Small farms become viable.

Repair replaces replacement.

Local food processing returns.

Community skills regain their value.

What local communities should be doing now

Morgan ends on a remarkably optimistic note.

He argues that a post-growth economy is entirely manageable if societies begin developing local, bottom-up institutions before centralised systems weaken further.

That observation deserves careful attention.

Waiting until national systems fail would be a mistake.

Communities can begin preparing now by:

• rebuilding local food production;
• protecting agricultural land;
• developing local water resilience;
• encouraging repair and maintenance skills;
• supporting local businesses;
• strengthening community organisations;
• creating local energy where practical;
• reducing dependence upon long supply chains.

None of these requires waiting for government.

A different understanding of progress

The greatest value of Morgan’s work may be that it changes the question.

Instead of asking:

“How do we restart growth?”

we should perhaps be asking:

“How do we build good lives with less surplus energy?”

That is precisely the question localism seeks to answer.

The transition will not be easy. Many existing institutions were built during two centuries of expanding fossil-fuel energy and assume that growth will continue indefinitely.

But if Morgan is broadly correct, then localism is not an alternative to the future.

It is the future already beginning to emerge.

The sooner communities understand this, the more orderly, resilient and humane that transition can become.

The transition to renewable electricity is often presented as a simple replacement of one source of energy with another. Replace coal and gas with wind turbines, solar panels and batteries, and little else changes. The reality is very different. Every additional layer of technology needed to compensate for the shortcomings of intermittent generation makes the electricity system more complex, more expensive and potentially more fragile.

A recent warning from government technical experts illustrates the problem. Britain is rapidly installing large-scale battery storage systems to help stabilise the electricity grid when wind and solar output fluctuates. These batteries can respond almost instantly, making them valuable tools for balancing supply and demand.

However, the experts have identified an unexpected danger.

When the National Energy System Operator (NESO) issues a Capacity Market Notice warning that electricity shortages are becoming likely, battery operators have a commercial incentive to ensure their batteries are fully charged. If many operators respond at the same time by drawing large amounts of electricity from the grid, they could actually create the shortage they are preparing to prevent.

In other words, the solution itself could become part of the problem.

Complexity Creates New Risks

This is a classic example of what happens when increasingly complicated systems attempt to solve problems created elsewhere in the same system.

For over a century Britain’s electricity supply relied on large power stations producing continuous, predictable electricity. Demand varied throughout the day, but generation could usually be adjusted in a controlled way.

Renewable electricity changes that relationship. Wind turbines produce electricity when the wind blows, not necessarily when consumers need it. Solar panels produce their maximum output at midday rather than during the evening peak.

To compensate, we now need:

• enormous battery installations
• sophisticated forecasting systems
• automated trading algorithms
• reserve generating capacity
• expanded transmission networks
• increasingly complex control systems.

Every additional component introduces another possible point of failure.

None of these technologies is necessarily unreliable on its own. The problem is that the overall system becomes so interconnected that small events can trigger much larger consequences.

The Cost of Chasing Stability

Large batteries are impressive engineering achievements, but they are not free.

Consumers ultimately pay not only for the batteries themselves, but also for:

• construction
• maintenance
• replacement
• grid upgrades
• control systems
• reserve generating capacity
• market payments that keep backup systems available.

Much of this expenditure exists because renewable generation is intermittent. If electricity production were naturally predictable, many of these additional systems would not be required.

As the grid becomes more complicated, household electricity bills inevitably reflect that complexity.

Bigger Systems Need Bigger Solutions

National electricity networks have always been large engineering projects. But the increasing dependence on intermittent generation pushes centralisation even further.

The grid operator must monitor thousands of wind turbines, millions of rooftop solar panels, hundreds of battery installations and countless automated control systems.

Artificial intelligence, advanced forecasting and increasingly sophisticated computer control become essential simply to keep everything operating safely.

The irony is striking. Technologies often promoted as decentralised require unprecedented levels of central coordination.

What Localism Suggests

Localism approaches resilience from a different direction.

Rather than asking how to make one enormous national system increasingly sophisticated, Localism asks whether every community needs to depend so completely upon that single system.

Local electricity does not mean abandoning the national grid. Instead, communities could gradually develop complementary local energy systems that reduce dependence upon distant infrastructure.

These might include:

• local solar generation
• small-scale hydro where appropriate
• biomass from local woodland management
• combined heat and power schemes
• carefully managed community battery storage
• reduced overall electricity demand through efficient design.

The crucial difference is scale.

A community battery serving a village or neighbourhood is managed to meet local needs rather than participating in national electricity trading markets. Local users understand local demand patterns and can adapt their consumption accordingly.

If one local system develops problems, it affects hundreds or perhaps thousands of people rather than millions.

Resilience Rather Than Maximum Efficiency

Modern infrastructure has been designed to maximise efficiency.

Localism places greater emphasis on resilience.

An efficient system may perform extremely well under normal conditions but fail dramatically when unexpected events occur.

A resilient system may appear less efficient but continues operating when conditions become difficult.

Nature follows this principle. Healthy ecosystems contain redundancy, diversity and overlapping functions. If one species declines, others often compensate.

Highly centralised technological systems tend to eliminate redundancy because redundancy appears inefficient.

Unfortunately, redundancy is often what keeps systems functioning during crises.

Living Within Natural Limits

The battery warning is not really about batteries.

It is about the increasing complexity required to maintain an industrial energy system that is becoming harder to balance as high-quality fossil fuels become more expensive and renewable generation expands.

Each new technical solution creates further technical challenges.

More batteries require more control.

More control requires more computing.

More computing requires more infrastructure.

More infrastructure requires more investment.

The cycle continues.

Localism suggests a different path.

Rather than continually expanding technological complexity, communities can gradually reduce dependence on vulnerable national systems by producing more essentials locally – food, water, some energy, repair services and basic manufacturing.

This does not eliminate the national grid. It simply reduces the consequences when that grid comes under stress.

The future may belong not to the most technologically complicated societies, but to those that build the greatest resilience. True security comes not from ever more elaborate systems designed to prevent failure, but from communities that can continue functioning when those systems inevitably encounter their limits.

How the pursuit of ‘energy dominance’ put the final nail in the coffin of electrification

Drilling for oil, you might tempted to believe, will always pay for itself as it produces the fuels needed for its continued extraction. The more oil we lift, the more fuel (and energy) we have, right? Wrong. Let me explain. A barrel of oil would produce 5.9 Gigajoules of energy when fully burned, which might sound like a lot. Considering the fact, however, that only 27% of what we call ‘oil’ can be turned into diesel—the most vital fuel of all—on a global average¹, and that diesel engines burn fuel at an average 35% efficiency, only a tiny fraction of the energy stored in a barrel of oil can be used to drill more wells, mine minerals, harvest fish/wood/crops, build infrastructure, power militaries or to transport goods across large distances. That roughly 10% of energy derived from a barrel of crude is what keeps billions of people and a globalized world economy alive. The rest remains embedded in products (plastics, solvents, lubricants, asphalt, wax etc.) or simply get burned for our convenience in cars and jets. Unlike in the US it’s perfectly possible to live a decent life without a car or flying around with jets in many other parts of the world. The same could not be told about diesel, without which perpetuating modern, high-tech civilization would be impossible.

Trying to squeeze more diesel fuel out of a barrel of oil, on the other hand, would not only cannibalize the output of other fuels (mostly jet and fuel oil) but would also increase the energy cost of getting the raw power we need, thereby defeating the very idea of getting more useful energy out of a barrel of oil. Thus, when a study on Energy Return on Energy Invested (Delannoy et al., 2021) concluded that we use up a little more than 15% of energy stored in a barrel of oil to explore, drill, lift and deliver the next barrel of oil, they pointed out something profound. We need more energy to extract oil than what we could obtain by burning it in tractors, trailers, trucks and all kinds of heavy machinery to maintain civilization as it is. Again: no oil well was drilled using gasoline nor any mineral was extracted or fish caught with airliners—not in any meaningful quantity at least. What’s worse, as the authors found, the energy cost of oil is projected to reach 50% by 2050 as low cost conventional reserves continue to deplete, and get increasingly replaced by unconventional oil and energy intensive methods required to push what remains to the surface. That’s clearly not going to work on a global scale. But then how does the math work with even today’s numbers?

Simply put: we use the rest of the global energy system to subsidize liquid fuel production. Many wells and pumps are now running on electricity, and much of the energy used in refineries comes from natural gas. Sure, when taking all fuels together, producing oil is still net positive in energy terms but extracting petroleum long ceased to be a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating process. Half a century ago when the energy cost of oil was a mere 3% (or less), the 10% useful work derived from the diesel portion of a barrel was more than enough to power the oil business AND provide 7% “free” energy to the economy. Now its the other way around: we are using more and more electricity, natural gas, and in some cases even “renewables”, just to keep diesel flowing and the world economy ticking.

‘Then why don’t we shift to other fuels or electrify transportation?’—the question poses itself. You see, batteries and hydrogen, the most often touted “alternatives” to oil, are a way of storing energy at a loss, and not a source of energy. Thus, in order to replace oil we would not only need to dig up all the raw materials required to build these technologies—by using diesel fuel, what else?—but we would also need to multiply the electric grid’s capacity in order to cater for battery charging and hydrogen production demands. Even when considering engine inefficiencies, and calculating with the net energy portion of diesel, jet fuel and gasoline only² we would still need to produce at least 395 kilowatt-hours of power for each barrel of oil replaced. For the 103 million barrels humans burned every single day in 2025—that energy amounts to 40.7 Terawatt hours per day, or 14,850 TWh for an entire year… And we haven’t even taken electric engine and AC/DC conversion losses (10%) or battery recharge cycle inefficiencies (another 10%) into account—let alone the enormous energy cost of generating hydrogen… Not to speak of transmission losses over the grid which could be as high as 60% in the case of America or 40-50% everywhere else. All in all, as this back of an envelope calculation shows, we would need to generate around 36,600 TWhs of electricity on top of the existing 32,600 TWhs produced annually—just to electrify every machine which currently burns oil products globally. And then we haven’t even mentioned electrifying the industry which would take a similar amount of electricity. Triple that grid Mr. President, please.

In order to achieve our current grid expansion goals (which are far-far lower than we calculated above) the US alone would need to install 5,000 miles of new high-voltage lines annually, yet actual additions have collapsed from nearly 4,000 miles in 2013 to a historic low average of just 392 miles between 2022 and 2025. During the same time period China has doubled it’s electricity generation and now consumes nearly 33% of all electric power generated globally, while America’s share has fallen below 15%. Yet, expanding the grid and generation capacity is not even the biggest concern here, no matter how insurmountable a challenge it might seem in the West. It’s not even battery manufacturing capacity, much of which was going into electric vehicles already, and has surpassed 1.5 Terawatts of storage created annually. It’s the global scale of the change, combined with the rapid depletion of resources needed to make the shift, that will eventually put the energy transition into death.

“I have to finish this sweater before I run out of yarn!”

As a 2024 (but now removed) study by Rystad found: we have no more than a couple of years before we max out global oil supply, facing a long decline afterwards. And while green energy fans might rejoice, while envisioning a smooth ride into an electrified utopia, they have to be reminded that we are still mining (and thereby destroying) the planet with diesel fuel. And without mining, there is no aluminum, nickel, copper etc. needed to build batteries and to expand the electric grid with. Nor food… Or long distance transportation… Let alone construction. The coming peak in supply is not a matter of investment decisions either: we are no longer able to replace those oil reserves we have used up³ and now have to live off of our legacy fields—much of which have already passed their production peak. Making matters worse while these older larger fields deplete slowly at first, their depletion rate accelerates with time. (These results were later confirmed by the IEA as well.) The oil economy faces a double whammy from worsening energy returns on investment on one side, and an absolute depletion on the other; leading to a precipitous fall in net value delivered to society.

And it’s not just oil, but copper as well. Independent from what happens to oil, or whether we manage to electrify mining or not, the world is rapidly approaching an inflection point where mined copper supply begins to fall—irrespective of demand or investment decisions. So, even as global mined copper output reached a record 22.8 million tons in 2024, the IEA expects global supply to peak later this decade (at around 24 million tons) before falling noticeably to less than 19 million tons by 2035, as ore grades decline, reserves become depleted and mines are retired. Despite the potential contribution from African copper, new greenfield supply will struggle to make up the difference, as it takes 17 years on average till a mine starts production from discovery, and as new mines cost more and more to open. Simply put, we have run out of time, capital, reserves and energy to prevent a massive shortfall in copper production by 2030.

On the demand side, at the same time, achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 would require a whopping 460% increase in copper production, which would necessitate the opening of 194 new large-scale mines over the next 32 years; tapping into imaginary reserves which are simply nowhere to be found. I think it’s not a terribly risky bet to say: it probably ain’t gonna happen… What you see here is what your ‘grandma running out of yarn before she finishes’ means in real life.

The Government’s decision to approve the One Earth Solar Farm in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire is another reminder that Britain’s planning system has become increasingly centralised. It is not simply about renewable energy. It is about who has the right to decide how land is used.

In this case, the Government’s own planning inspector recommended that permission should not be granted. The inspector had considered the evidence, weighed the arguments and concluded that the proposal should be refused. Yet the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, simply overruled that recommendation.

This illustrates one of the greatest weaknesses of Britain’s highly centralised system of government. Local people, local authorities and independent inspectors can spend years examining a proposal, only to have their conclusions swept aside by a minister in Whitehall.

That is not local democracy. It is central command.

The One Earth Solar Farm will cover thousands of acres of productive agricultural land. At a time when Britain imports a growing proportion of its food, replacing fertile farmland with industrial-scale energy developments raises serious questions about national resilience.

Many of these low-lying areas have also experienced flooding. Large solar arrays alter the way land is managed. Maintenance tracks, fencing, drainage works and extensive ground disturbance can affect the movement of water across the landscape. Whatever mitigation measures are proposed, flooding risks should always be considered carefully before approving developments of this scale.

Local communities understand these landscapes far better than distant departments in London. They know where water collects, which fields remain wet throughout the winter and how changing land management affects neighbouring properties.

This is precisely why decisions should be made as close as possible to the people who live with the consequences.

Localism does not mean opposing renewable energy. It means asking whether electricity generation should become another function returned to the locality rather than imposed from above.

Instead of a handful of enormous solar installations owned by large corporations, localism points towards many smaller schemes owned by communities, farms, cooperatives and local businesses. Electricity generated close to where it is used reduces transmission losses, spreads risk and allows income to remain within the local economy.

Large developments also make communities increasingly dependent upon national infrastructure and national political decisions. Smaller locally owned systems build resilience because they can evolve with local needs and local resources.

The approval of the One Earth Solar Farm therefore represents more than another planning decision. It demonstrates how Britain’s planning system has drifted away from local accountability.

When ministers can overrule their own inspectors, local consultation becomes little more than a procedural exercise. The message is clear: decisions are made in Whitehall, not in the communities that must live with them.

If Britain is serious about creating a resilient future, we need more than renewable energy. We need a planning system that trusts local people, protects productive farmland, respects local knowledge of flood risk and allows communities to shape their own future.

That is what localism is about.

One of the less publicised features of Britain’s electricity system is that wind farms are often paid not to generate electricity.

This may seem extraordinary. The country is investing billions of pounds in renewable energy, yet at times electricity producers are instructed to switch off turbines even when the wind is blowing strongly. The reason is simple. The electricity cannot always be transported to where it is needed.

Most of Britain’s largest wind farms are located in Scotland and offshore in northern waters. Much of the demand for electricity, however, is in England. The national grid must therefore move huge quantities of electricity over long distances. When transmission lines reach their limits, the system operator has little choice but to reduce generation.

The result is a curious situation. Wind farm operators receive payments to stop producing electricity, while gas-fired power stations elsewhere may be paid to generate more power to meet local demand. Consumers ultimately bear the cost through their electricity bills.

This problem highlights a weakness in highly centralised systems. The further production is separated from consumption, the greater the infrastructure required to connect them. Large transmission networks are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and increasingly difficult to expand.

From a localist perspective, the lesson is clear. Whenever possible, production and consumption should be brought closer together. Electricity generated near where it is used requires less infrastructure, suffers fewer transmission losses, and reduces dependence on large national networks.

This does not mean abandoning the national grid. Large-scale infrastructure will always have a role in providing resilience and balancing supply across the country. However, the present situation suggests that excessive dependence on distant generation creates costs that are often overlooked.

As the economy evolves away from the assumptions of perpetual growth, questions of affordability become increasingly important. Building ever more transmission capacity to carry electricity over hundreds of miles may prove difficult to justify in a society facing financial constraints.

A localist alternative would encourage greater use of local generation, local storage, and local consumption. Electricity generated within a locality could be used within that locality wherever practical. The national grid would remain as a strategic backbone, but not as the sole means of connecting every producer to every consumer.

The payments made to wind farms not to generate electricity are therefore more than an accounting curiosity. They are a reminder that distance carries a cost. In an age where affordability is becoming as important as efficiency, bringing production closer to consumption may increasingly become not merely desirable, but necessary.

Much attention has been given to the rapid growth of solar farms across Britain. Vast areas of land are being proposed for solar development, with the expectation that they will provide clean electricity for decades to come. However, a less visible problem is emerging. In many cases, the electricity network itself is struggling to cope.

Large solar farms do not simply feed electricity directly into nearby homes. The power must first be converted, stepped up to higher voltages and then connected to the National Grid through substations and transmission lines. In many parts of the country, the necessary capacity is not available.

As a result, some solar projects are being delayed for years while waiting for a grid connection. Developers have reported being offered connection dates extending well into the 2030s. Others have had to scale back their plans, while some projects have been abandoned altogether because the cost and delay of obtaining a connection made them uneconomic.

This problem has become so significant that the electricity system operator has had to reform the entire connection process. The queue of projects seeking access to the grid had grown far beyond what the existing infrastructure could accommodate.

The underlying issue is that Britain’s electricity network was designed around a relatively small number of large power stations. Today’s energy strategy is based on thousands of dispersed generators, including solar farms, wind farms and battery installations. The transmission system is now having to catch up.

The consequence is that the true cost of large-scale renewable energy is not simply the cost of the panels or turbines. It also includes the substations, pylons, cables and other infrastructure needed to transport the electricity from where it is generated to where it is consumed.

There is also the question of affordability. Britain is carrying historically high levels of public debt, while households, businesses and local authorities are already under financial pressure. Building thousands of miles of new transmission lines, substations and grid connections will require very large investments. Ultimately, these costs must be met by taxpayers, electricity consumers or both.

This raises a difficult question. When it is recognised that the economy is shrinking, not growing, will society be able to afford the scale of investment required,

The Telegraph article on batteries helping Britain “beat the surge in energy bills” describes a rapidly expanding world of domestic storage systems, smart tariffs, and household-scale electricity management, where batteries are charged when power is cheap and discharged when prices spike, smoothing out the cost of living pressures linked to volatile energy markets.

On the surface this looks like a sensible technological response to high electricity prices. Batteries, especially when paired with solar panels or smart tariffs, can reduce bills significantly by shifting consumption away from peak pricing and into low-cost periods. But in a shrinking economy, the deeper question is not whether the technology works, but whether society can afford the continual renewal of it.

Every battery, inverter, heat pump, photovoltaic panel, control system and power electronic device has a finite life. Typically around 10 to 15 years for many components, sometimes less for heavily used systems. That means a permanent cycle of replacement, recycling, upgrading and reinstallation. Even if unit costs fall, the economy must still sustain continuous capital renewal across millions of households, transport systems, and industrial users.

In a growth economy this is assumed to be manageable because rising output absorbs replacement costs. In a shrinking economy the assumption breaks down. Income growth slows or reverses, discretionary spending falls, and both households and institutions become increasingly sensitive to upfront capital costs. A technology that reduces running costs but requires high initial investment can become structurally unaffordable for large parts of the population.

This is where the tension becomes clear. Battery systems may reduce exposure to high electricity prices, but they do not remove the need to pay for the infrastructure itself. A household battery system still requires purchase, installation, maintenance, eventual replacement, and the supporting grid and control systems behind it. Even optimistic estimates suggest multi-thousand-pound costs and lifetimes of a decade or so, meaning repeated investment over time.

If the economy is no longer expanding in real terms, the question becomes: who finances this continual turnover? Government subsidy? Private borrowing? Higher electricity tariffs to fund grid stability? Or selective adoption by wealthier households only?

This is not just a domestic issue. It extends across transport and national infrastructure. Electric trains, trams, and electric vehicles all depend on large-scale electricity supply, much of it increasingly expected to be intermittent renewable generation buffered by storage. Batteries can smooth demand peaks, and grid-scale storage is expanding rapidly, but the system still depends on massive capital investment in generation, storage, transmission, and replacement cycles.

The logical conclusion often presented is decentralisation: local generation and local storage. Solar photovoltaics on buildings, community-scale batteries, heat pumps, and local energy balancing. But this raises another difficulty. Local systems may reduce dependence on national grids, but they do not reduce the total capital burden. They simply redistribute it. Every locality would still need to finance its own generation assets, storage systems, maintenance expertise, and eventual replacement cycles.

So the question becomes sharper: can localist communities realistically fund full energy self-reliance under conditions of economic contraction? And if they cannot, what level of external support or cross-subsidy would still be required?

Electricity from photovoltaics and heat pumps is often presented as “free after installation”, but in practice it is capital-intensive infrastructure spread over time. In a shrinking economy, capital-intensive systems become harder to sustain precisely because future surplus income is smaller.

This leads to a more uncomfortable possibility. Rather than a smooth transition to decentralised clean energy, society may face a selective transition. Wealthier households and well-capitalised institutions adopt batteries, heat pumps, and electric mobility. Others remain dependent on older, more centralised systems, or face rising inequality in access to energy resilience.

The deeper issue is not whether batteries or renewables work. They do. The issue is whether a society with tightening financial capacity can continuously renew a highly engineered energy system at scale, across every household, vehicle, and transport network, without a growing burden of cost and complexity.

In that sense, the energy question is not only technological. It is economic. And in a shrinking economy, the central constraint may turn out not to be innovation, but affordability over time.

A recent article discussing a 2018 Harvard study has reignited debate about one of the central assumptions of modern climate policy – namely, that large-scale wind energy automatically reduces environmental harm.

The study, published in the academic journal Joule, argued that if the United States were powered predominantly by wind turbines, the turbines themselves would alter local climate conditions by mixing warmer upper air with cooler surface air, especially at night. The result, according to the study, would be measurable local surface warming.

The article presents this as a profound contradiction. If the purpose of decarbonisation is to reduce warming, what happens if one of the principal technologies used to achieve it creates warming of its own?

This issue deserves careful thought, because it reveals something much bigger than a dispute about wind turbines. It highlights the growing tension between industrial-scale technological solutions and the realities of the natural world.

The Harvard study did not say that wind turbines create new heat in the way greenhouse gases trap additional heat in the atmosphere. Instead, the turbines redistribute existing heat through turbulence. Large rotating blades disturb the natural layering of air, especially at night when the atmosphere is calmer. Warmer air from above is mixed downward, slightly raising surface temperatures near large wind installations.

The effect appears to be real and measurable at local scale. However, the way the findings are interpreted politically is another matter entirely.

Supporters of wind power argue that local temperature changes from turbines are fundamentally different from long-term global greenhouse warming.

Critics argue that ordinary people experience local conditions, not global averages, and therefore immediate warming near turbine concentrations matters greatly.

What is striking is not merely the scientific disagreement, but the scale of industrial intervention now being contemplated. Replacing fossil-fuel electricity entirely with wind would require an extraordinary transformation of landscapes. Vast areas of countryside would become energy production zones, filled with turbines, access roads, substations, transmission lines, maintenance systems, and backup infrastructure.

This is where the issue moves beyond climate science into the wider question of how industrial civilisation attempts to solve problems.

Modern societies increasingly assume that every difficulty can be overcome through another layer of technology, finance, regulation, and construction. Yet each solution creates additional complications which then require further solutions. Wind turbines reduce one category of emissions while introducing other effects involving land use, mineral extraction, intermittency, visual impact, ecological disturbance, grid instability, and now possibly local climatic alteration.

The deeper problem may not be wind itself, but scale.

Industrial societies always seek gigantic centralised systems because the entire financial and political structure depends upon continuous expansion.

Energy systems are expected to power endless economic growth, mass mobility, global supply chains, artificial intelligence, data centres, and ever-increasing consumption. Under those conditions, no energy source is ever sufficient for long.

This is why the debate often becomes polarised between supporters of fossil fuels, wind, solar, or nuclear power, when the more fundamental issue concerns the size and expectations of the economy itself.

If societies continue to attempt to maintain present levels of industrial consumption indefinitely, every energy source will face serious consequences.

Fossil fuels contribute to atmospheric carbon accumulation.

Wind requires enormous land transformation and industrial infrastructure.

Solar requires vast mining operations, transmission systems, and large areas of land coverage.

Nuclear introduces long-term waste management, security requirements, and extremely centralised political control.

None of these systems truly escapes the laws of nature. They merely redistribute pressures in different ways.

From the perspective of localism, the most important lesson may be that the future cannot simply be engineered through larger and more complex national systems. Instead, societies may gradually be forced toward lower-energy, more local, and less consumption-driven ways of living.

In such a future, the objective changes completely.

Instead of asking how to sustain infinite industrial growth with alternative energy, communities should begin to ask how to live well with less energy overall.

That change alters everything.

Smaller local economies require less transport.

Local food production reduces dependence on refrigerated global supply chains.

Repair replaces disposal.

Housing adapts to climate rather than depending entirely upon mechanical heating and cooling.

Daily life becomes physically closer to people’s homes.

Under those conditions, energy systems also become smaller, more diverse, and more adapted to locality rather than dominated by gigantic national infrastructures.

This does not necessarily mean wind turbines disappear entirely. Small-scale local generation may still have a role. But the industrial dream of covering whole continents with vast energy machinery begins to look increasingly like another temporary phase of late industrial civilisation rather than a permanent solution.

The Harvard study, therefore, matters less because it proves or disproves wind power and more because it exposes the unintended consequences that emerge whenever industrial society attempts to overpower natural limits with still larger technological systems.

The central issue may not be whether wind turbines warm the air slightly.

The central issue may be whether humanity is finally approaching the point where it must stop trying to sustain unlimited industrial expansion altogether.

Why the Replacement of Renewables Reveals the Limits of the Energy Transition

Public discussion about the future of energy assumes that replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies will create a sustainable system. Yet when we look carefully at the material reality of renewable infrastructure, a different picture emerges. The evidence suggests that the modern technological energy system, whether fossil-based or renewable-based, is not sustainable in the long term.

This matters because policy is currently being built on the assumption that sustainability can be achieved simply by changing energy sources. In reality, the problem is deeper than that.

Solar Panels: A Replacement Industry, Not a Permanent Solution

Solar panels are widely presented as clean, long-term energy infrastructure. However, they have productive lifetimes of around 25 to 30 years. After that period their output declines significantly and they must be replaced.

This means solar power is not a permanent installation. It is a rolling replacement programme.

International projections indicate that global solar panel waste could reach tens of millions of tonnes by mid-century. Some estimates suggest around 78 million tonnes by 2050. Annual solar e-waste alone could reach millions of tonnes each year by the 2030s.

Solar panels also contain heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. These materials can enter soil and groundwater if panels are not carefully processed. Recycling remains technically difficult and energy intensive.

What appears to be a clean energy technology is therefore also a future waste stream.

Wind Turbines: Large Machines with Large End-of-Life Problems

8

Wind turbines face similar challenges.

Modern turbine blades can weigh up to 15 tonnes each. They are difficult to recycle because they are made from composite materials. In many cases they are currently shredded and mixed into concrete, or simply stored.

Even more significant are the reinforced concrete foundations and offshore installations. These require major energy inputs to construct and will require major energy inputs to remove.

Maintenance costs also increase as turbines age. Decommissioning costs are often underestimated in project economics.

Germany has already acknowledged the scale of this issue. Millions of tonnes of turbine blade material are expected to reach end of life without a clear recycling pathway.

Wind power therefore depends on continuous industrial replacement, not permanent infrastructure.

Heat Pumps: A Quiet Example of the Same Pattern

7

Heat pumps are another example.

They are currently being promoted as a key technology for domestic heating. Yet they are heavy industrial devices with compressors, electronics, refrigerants and metal components. Their expected service life is typically around two decades.

Our own experience illustrates the point clearly. A heat pump installed in 1998 required replacement after about 22 years. That was entirely normal performance.

Now imagine millions of homes installing heat pumps across the country. In 20 to 25 years these systems will also need replacement.

The energy system being built today therefore commits society to a large future wave of technological renewal.

Whether that renewal will be affordable in a contracting economy remains an open question.

Replacement Requires Energy

The key issue is often overlooked.

Renewable technologies do not replace themselves.

They must be mined, manufactured, transported, installed, maintained and eventually dismantled using large quantities of energy and materials. Much of this energy currently comes from fossil fuels.

In other words, renewables depend on the legacy energy system they are supposed to replace.

This creates a structural contradiction at the centre of current policy.

The Deeper Problem: Technology Itself Is Not Sustainable

The most important conclusion is not about solar panels or wind turbines alone.

It is about technology as it is commonly understood in modern industrial society.

Modern technology operates through cycles of extraction, production, installation, maintenance and replacement. Each stage requires energy and materials. Each stage produces waste.

There is therefore no such thing as permanently sustainable industrial technology.

What exists instead is a managed replacement cycle.

The present energy transition assumes that changing energy sources will make the system sustainable. In reality, the replacement cycle continues regardless of the energy source.

A Future Constraint That Is Rarely Discussed

There is another implication.

If future energy availability declines, the ability to maintain large technological systems may also decline.

At that point the challenge will not be how to expand renewable infrastructure, but how to replace it.

This possibility is rarely included in policy planning.

Yet it may prove decisive.

The Real Conclusion

The evidence from solar panels, wind turbines and heat pumps points toward a simple but uncomfortable truth.

The present energy transition is not moving society from an unsustainable system to a sustainable one.

It is moving society from one replacement-dependent system to another replacement-dependent system.

Recognising this does not weaken the case for renewables. It strengthens the case for realism.

If sustainability is to exist at all, it will not come from changing technologies alone. It will come from reducing dependence on large-scale replacement-based systems and strengthening smaller-scale, longer-lived local arrangements.

That is where the real transition still lies. 🌿

Here is a realistic sketch of what a typical UK locality energy mix might look like by mid-century if three things happen together:

• fossil fuel availability declines
• global supply chains become less reliable
• the economy shifts from growth to maintenance and adaptation

This is not a prediction. It is a maintainability model — what is most likely to keep working rather than what is easiest to install today.

1. The biggest change: energy demand falls before supply stabilises

The first adjustment is not technological. It is structural.

Energy demand falls because:

• fewer imports
• less long-distance travel
• smaller manufacturing sector
• reduced discretionary consumption
• more local production
• fewer energy-intensive services

So the future system does not need to replace today’s national consumption level.

Instead, it supports:

homes
food production
local transport
essential services
repair trades
small workshops

2. A realistic locality electricity mix

A typical locality might draw electricity from a combination like this:

Rooftop solar – the backbone of local daytime supply

Already widely installed and easy to maintain.

Likely uses:

• direct household consumption first
• small shared storage second
• limited export to local networks

Over time:

inverters become the limiting component rather than panels.

Small onshore wind – the winter stabiliser

Solar is weak in winter.

Small wind fills that gap.

Typical roles:

• farms
• workshops
• community systems
• edge-of-settlement installations

Winter wind becomes extremely valuable as heating electrifies gradually.

Micro-hydro – the hidden long-life contributor

Where geography allows, hydro becomes one of the most reliable sources:

• continuous output
• long lifespan
• low maintenance
• mechanically simple

Some systems could run for generations.

Legacy large wind farms – partial continuing contribution

Existing infrastructure does not disappear overnight.

Instead:

some turbines remain operating
some are refurbished
some are abandoned

Their contribution gradually declines but remains useful for decades.

3. Heat becomes more local than electricity

Heat dominates UK energy demand.

The locality mix likely includes:

Managed woodland

Supports:

• domestic heating
• small workshops
• food processing
• drying crops
• charcoal production

Wood fuel becomes strategic rather than decorative.

Heat pumps where buildings allow them

Most effective in:

• newer homes
• insulated homes
• shared systems
• community installations

Less effective in older rural housing without insulation upgrades.

Solar thermal (often overlooked but important)

Very durable technology.

Useful for:

• hot water
• summer heating loads
• reducing electricity demand

Lower complexity than PV systems.

4. Transport energy shifts from national to local scale

Future locality transport energy probably looks like:

walking
mobility scooters
electric bicycles
shared small EVs
electric buses on key routes

Private long-distance EV ownership becomes less common than today’s expectations assume.

Rail remains important where it already exists.

5. Storage becomes smaller and more distributed

Instead of large national battery systems:

expect more:

hot water tanks
thermal storage
gravity storage
small shared batteries
vehicle-to-home electricity use

Storage shifts from industrial infrastructure to household infrastructure.

6. The electricity grid becomes simpler, not larger

Today’s planning assumes grid expansion.

A contraction scenario suggests:

shorter distribution routes
stronger local balancing
less long-distance transmission
more neighbourhood-level coordination

The grid becomes more like a network of local systems joined together, rather than one fully centralised machine.

7. What a mid-century locality energy pattern might look like in practice

A typical locality might rely on something like:

summer electricity mostly solar
winter electricity mostly wind
continuous contribution from hydro where available
heat largely from wood + heat pumps
transport mostly electric but shorter range
storage mostly thermal rather than chemical

National infrastructure still exists, but local reliability matters more than national optimisation.

8. The most important shift: maintenance replaces expansion 🔧

The defining feature of the future system is not technology choice.

It is this:

energy systems are designed to last longer, be repaired locally, and replaced less often

That change alone reshapes:

skills
employment
settlement patterns
woodland management
building standards
local workshops
community cooperation

It is exactly the sort of transition your wider work on the emerging local economy has been anticipating.

Professor Sir Dieter Helm

9 March, 2026

Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford

It takes a crisis to reveal the underlying state of Britain’s energy insecurity, and its defence. By now we should be basking in the success of “getting out of gas”. We do after all have a lot of renewables. These, we have been told, are nine times cheaper than gas. We don’t have much nuclear left, and we have got out of coal, so all our bets are in the renewables basket. We should be well on our way now to being a “clean-energy superpower”, relying on “home-grown energy” that should be bringing down energy bills by the now legendary £300.

None of this is so far realised. Britain has the highest industrial power prices in the industrial world, so no other country is looking to it to see how they could emulate it. On the contrary, everyone else wants to work out how Britain has ended up in such an unenviable position. We turn out to be utterly reliant on foreign supply chains for the renewables and the transmission and batteries needed to deal with all this intermittent generation. It turns out that we already need twice the capacity (120GW and counting), twice the grid, and all the batteries and storage, plus lots more interconnectors to service a firm-power demand peak of 45GW – which we used to meet comfortably with just 60GW of capacity.

Having got out of coal, and betting on intermittent low-density and geographically distributed renewables, it turns out that we have become more rather than less dependent on gas for our energy security. Iran’s interruption of its LNG gas shipments out of the Strait of Hormuz and the attacks on Qatar reveal how threadbare Britain’s energy security actually is. Why, given we don’t buy LNG from Qatar? Why do we seem to be worse hit than China, Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan, all of which buy a lot of gas from Qatar? And why, given we have very little dependency on Gulf oil, compared with China (40% of all its oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz), India (15%), and Japan and South Korea (12% each)?

China, India and Japan have little gas or oil. China and India have lots of coal, with China burning more than 55% of all the world’s coal (!), and building another 400GW of coal generation capacity – all firm power, as against China’s wind (at around 24% load factor) and solar (at around 20% load factor).

Britain should be in a much better position. It has oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, and Norway nearby to provide over 30% of Britain’s gas, and it has good wind flows in the North Sea too. It is not in the league of the world’s energy superpower: the US. The US is by far the world’s largest oil producer, and its shale gas has translated it from what was supposed to be a major importer of Qatar LNG to first self-sufficiency from its shale gas, and in the last ten years it has become the world’s greatest LNG exporter. Ten years ago, it did not export gas; 20 years ago, the shale revolution had not got going.

Why, then, is Britain in such an energy mess? Part of the answer is its gas policies. Put aside the simplistic slogans about getting out of gas, and recognise that Britain will be dependent on gas for at least another couple of decades and probably more. Because of the energy mix that has been chosen (no coal, a fast decline of nuclear, and lots and lots of intermittent renewables), it will need gas to guarantee firm electricity supplies.

Whatever the political rhetoric from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, this is a reality. It is even clear in the scenarios of the National Electricity System Operator (NESO). It turns out that gas is critical to the renewables policies. It is not renewables instead of gas; it is renewables and gas. Energy security depends upon it, just as it depends on all those foreign supply chains of critical minerals and especially rare earths, and on all the solar panels and wind turbines made in China and elsewhere. If the Iran war has displayed that the emperor of the clean-energy superpower has no clothes, wait to see what happens if and when China invades Taiwan.

It turns out that our energy policies have not just weakened our energy security; it is much worse, they have undermined our defence. Why? Because they have undermined our defence industries and have also exposed us to having our energy supplies adversely hit by cutting the many interconnectors we now need to keep the lights on.

On the former, high energy prices have led to a cascade of exits from energy-intensive industries, and in short order. Gone is Grangemouth, a refinery in Scotland, one in Hull, most of the steel industry, the fertiliser industry, and the fibreglass industry. Our ability to produce the petrochemicals and refined fuels is now more dependent on imports. We don’t have our own steel in the volumes and of the quality we would need for a rapid militarisation.

On the latter, it is hard to think of a way to make Britain more vulnerable to a hostile power. Let’s call it Russia. One pipeline is responsible for 30% of our gas supplies (from Norway). We have virtually no gas storage. The cables are obvious sitting ducks for cutting. The North Sea wind farms are perfect targets for swarms of drones, the new weapon of choice in aggressive attacks. And for all this we have perhaps one boat that patrols all this offshore infrastructure.

A proper defence policy would ensure that the defence supply chain has a lot of home-grown industrial support. It might even look to provide long-term energy pricing at competitive costs. It would have a navy capable of policing and defending its offshore infrastructure. Sadly, none of this is in good shape.

Back home, the central pillar of energy policy should be security. It is no good being “green” if you cannot defend your country. In the British case, a central piece should be a gas security policy, not bleating on and on about “getting out of gas”. We need gas and we will go on needing it for a long time to come. It is essential in the renewables strategy. It is not fossil fuels versus renewables. The reality is that it is both and it is going to continue to be both.

What should a gas policy look like? It has several parts: securing sufficient gas supplies; having enough storage to withstand shocks; providing an economic framework for gas generation of electricity that takes account of the impact on intermittency from wind and solar on the demand for gas-generated electricity; and a defence force capable of protecting the offshore gas infrastructure. Britain fails on all of them.

Let’s start with gas supplies. Since we are going to burn lots of gas for a long time to come, why would it be sensible to close off the development of Britain’s own North Sea gas reserves, and penalise existing production with extremely high taxes? No other country in the world is following Britain’s “leadership” on all this. Why is it sensible to instead rely as a consequence on Norway and LNG cargoes from the US instead?

The anti-North Sea oil and gas approach is best regarded as a mix of ideology and expediency. The ideology stems from the remarkable simplicity of the idea that Britain can continue as a major world economy relying overwhelmingly on wind and solar, and the hope of further nuclear in due course. Not coal like China and India, not coal and gas like the US. The aim appears to be the first country to be overwhelmingly based upon renewables and as quickly as possible. It is a piece of progressive ideology with little evidence to support it and little environmental benefit. It is one hell of a bet, and it is one that increases emissions by using at the margin the much more polluting US shale-based LNG over North Sea pipeline gas.

The expediency arises because of the desperate fiscal position Britain has got into. It needs the money, and hence it can justify higher taxes.

The consequence of these North Sea policies – higher taxes, banning new licences – is both immediate and medium-term. It is immediate because it tells the North Sea oil and gas companies they are not welcome (as, indeed, leading politicians have told them to their faces). These companies see much better prospects elsewhere. Lots of countries are boosting their oil and gas production. Why spend at the margin on maintaining existing assets when the government is so hostile to their very existence. Time for them to look elsewhere – as indeed they are already doing.

Instead of securing our gas supplies, we become dependent on the US LNG at the margin. That is what minsters mean when they talk of being exposed to world prices. Right now in the midst of the Iran war, the US is in a great bargaining position. Everyone wants cargoes of US LNG, and in the Far East they are willing to pay top dollar for them. Britain is not top of the pile, and US companies will be mindful of the rapid deterioration of the “special relationship”. Hence the price to Britain goes up.

If instead we looked to the North Sea to provide a medium-term secure supply, the opposite policies would be the better way of proceeding. Start with asking what long-term take-or-pay contracts could be struck in return for the development of newer fields, and the continuation of production from declining fields. Tie that long-term contract price to industrial energy costs, notably for critical energy-intensive industries, and especially those necessary for the defence supply chain. Companies could have fixed-price electricity supplies, and oil and gas companies could have the security of contracts to finance their investments.

Next up is storage. Britain has very little, and for a good historical reason. In the “old days” of the “bad old British Gas”, Britain insisted that British continental shelf gas production should be landed in Britain and sold under contract to British Gas. These contracts allowed British Gas to flex its gas-take, treating the gas wells as in effect storage sites to be drawn upon as needed. It therefore did not need much storage. Germany, by contrast, has built large-scale storage, with up to three months of supplies. Britain has a few days at best. Hence the criticality of those US LNG cargoes now.

In Britain, energy storage issues are very much to the fore when it comes to renewables. The government backs pumped-hydro storage, and it is active in promoting grid-supporting batteries. But on gas it is silent. Even the Rough storage facility is under pressure. In the “bad old days”, there were big seasonal swings. Hence a gas storage facility could be filled cheaply in summer, and then sold down at higher prices in winter. The economics of renewables with zero marginal costs and the rapid decline of energy-intensive industries have undermined this. Hence the commercial case for storage has collapsed. The result is that just when we need storage, we will have almost none.

The commercial impact of renewables has one further blow for gas. Conventionally a new gas station was built and initially run flat-out, recovering its capital costs, and only later moved up the merit order to become more flexible in use. This commercial case has been turned on its head. Why? Because renewables always run when they can (when the wind blows and the sun shines). They are paid a contract-for-difference (CfD) fixed price (even if the power is not needed), and hence the fact that their marginal costs are zero does not impact on their revenues – but it does on the gas power stations. When the wind blows and the sun shines enough, the wholesale price of electricity collapses and the gas power stations cannot recover even their gas supply costs. At other times, when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, the wholesale price shoots up and the gas power stations are needed to generate.

The result is that the intermittency of wind and solar renders the gas power stations intermittent too (and this is true for nuclear too). The consequences for the economics of a gas power station are dire. It does not know how much gas it will need and when, and it cannot contract on any basis other than “on demand”. The result is that there is little or no incentive to build new ones, and an increased incentive to close existing ones earlier.

The implication for gas policies is that if the gas is needed for security of supply and to maintain firm electricity power supplies, then it will need contracts. It is not just wind and solar that need government-backed contracts. There needs to be a strategic gas reserve, and gas power stations need to be paid to be available whether or not they are used. They could have a formal regulated asset base (RAB), like Sizewell and the electricity networks, or a capacity contract tailored to their peculiar circumstance driven by the intermittency of wind and solar.

And there we have the energy security policies. North Sea gas supplies from the British sector as well as Norway, long-term contracts for new supplies, industrial electricity contracts for energy-intensive industries – notably in the defence sector – backed by gas longer-term contracts, investment in storage, and a strategic gas generation reserve, to which is added a North Sea defence capability to protect the Norwegian gas pipeline and to ensure that the electricity interconnectors are protected from attacks by Russia or others.

None of this is anti-renewables, or against addressing climate change. Indeed, it is essential to both. The climate change agenda will not survive if the lights go out, or if security is undermined. Without gas, the energy mix will be subject to great volatility and much higher costs. Net zero and high prices have already proved difficult bedfellows.

Which brings us back to Iran and the Iranian war. One aspect of energy markets which our political leaders seem incapable of understanding is that a shock is not the same as a trend. It was a mistake made when Russia invaded Ukraine. Gas prices spiked, and politicians ranted on and on about the future of high and volatile gas prices. They are not the first to make this sort of mistake. When oil prices peaked after the Iranian Revolution back in 1979, politicians convinced themselves that the price of oil would go ever upwards, and even convinced themselves of the nonsense of peak oil. They repeated the error as oil prices peaked in late 2014.

What they forget to mention (or even notice) was that what went up came down again. After the Iranian Revolution by the mid-1980s oil prices were back down to $10/barrel and stayed there for the rest of the century, with one blip – the First Gulf War, when they went up to $30/barrel and then fell quickly back to $10/barrel. By the late 1990s, The Economist ran a front page cover asking whether oil companies could survive $9/barrel oil. After Russia invaded Ukraine the gas price fell back. By early 2026, it was 90% lower than its peak, and it had fallen 40% in 2025. The current shocks in this Iranian war are not trends, whatever the hysteria in the press. Price going up is a response to supply shocks as the market way to ration the supplies. Those without other contracted options from core supplies (like China and India with Russia) or without storage are desperate and pay top dollar. They cannot deplete storage they don’t have and wait and see, or look elsewhere.

After a shock, the reaction is typically to take more precautions against future shocks. No doubt lots of gas importers will be increasing their storage and diversifying their supplies. They will want to maximise their own production if they have it. The result is more resilience and the price falls. This time, the great gamble on the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz may greatly weaken the market power of the Gulf States. Iran, too, might start to ramp up its production, as will probably Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Markets work after a lag. For all the alarmism in the short term (and it might be tough), the consequence of the shock now is probably lower oil and gas prices in the future. The Gulf is not the monopoly it once was. The US once desperately needed Gulf oil, as Jimmy Carter found out. Now the US does not need Gulf oil or gas. The world needs US oil and gas. It is the energy superpower now. Britain should take note. It has made itself more energy insecure and dependent on the US.

The UK’s electricity strategy assumes a rapid expansion of offshore wind. In energy policy terms this looks logical. The resource is large, domestic, and low-carbon. Renewables already provide a substantial share of national power, and offshore wind capacity is set to grow sharply over the next decade.

But futurists increasingly ask a different question. Not how much electricity can be generated, but whether the national system can carry it, store it, and rely on it when conditions change.

Carrying Offshore Wind Power Inland

Offshore wind is mostly generated far from where electricity is used. Large volumes of power must be brought ashore and then transmitted across the country. This places enormous strain on the high-voltage transmission system operated by National Grid.

Futurists point out three structural problems.

First, grid capacity is already constrained. Many offshore wind projects are ready to generate but cannot connect because transmission upgrades are years behind. Queue backlogs now stretch well into the 2030s.

Second, the grid was never designed for this pattern of flow. It evolved around centralised power stations located close to industrial demand. Offshore wind reverses that logic, pushing large, intermittent surges of electricity into a system that must then move it long distances.

Third, public resistance is growing. New pylons, substations and overhead lines cut through countryside and settlements. Planning objections are not a side issue – they are becoming a binding constraint.

From a futurist perspective, the problem is not engineering alone. It is social and political capacity to keep expanding a national system indefinitely.

The Hard Reality of Windless and Sunless Days

A deeper concern lies in the weather itself.

The UK regularly experiences winter high-pressure systems that bring days, sometimes weeks, of cold, still air. These are precisely the moments when electricity demand rises sharply, while wind output collapses.

Solar contributes little at this time. Batteries help only briefly. Long-duration storage at national scale remains limited and costly.

Futurists therefore stress that the issue is not average annual generation, but system reliability during prolonged lulls. These conditions are not rare anomalies. They are recurring features of the British climate.

This creates a growing tension. The more the system relies on weather-dependent generation, the more complex and expensive it becomes to guarantee supply during unfavourable conditions.

Can the Grid Expansion Be Funded?

Official plans assume massive investment in new transmission lines, offshore connections, substations, and reinforcement of local distribution networks.

The question futurists increasingly ask is simple. Who pays?

Grid expansion costs run into tens of billions of pounds. These costs ultimately fall on electricity consumers through higher bills, or on the state through borrowing and subsidy. Both routes assume continued economic growth and political consent.

In a future shaped by:

• stagnant or contracting real incomes
• rising public debt
• declining discretionary spending

the assumption that society can endlessly fund large, capital-intensive national infrastructure becomes fragile.

Futurists argue that there is a growing mismatch between industrial-era infrastructure ambitions and the economic reality of a society moving into long-term contraction.

Localism as a Structural Alternative

This is where localism enters the discussion, not as ideology but as system design.

Rather than forcing ever more electricity through an increasingly stressed national grid, futurists suggest a gradual shift toward local energy systems.

These include:

• local wind and solar used close to where it is generated
• small-scale storage tied to communities rather than the national system
• demand adapted to local supply conditions rather than the other way round

Under localism, the grid still exists, but it becomes a supporting network, not the single point of failure on which everything depends.

Local systems are inherently more resilient. When national supply tightens, local generation and reduced demand soften the impact. When failures occur, they are smaller, slower, and easier to manage.

From a futurist viewpoint, this mirrors wider economic trends. As national systems struggle with scale, cost and complexity, informal and local arrangements expand naturally.

A Change in Expectations

The deeper shift is cultural.

For decades, the assumption has been that electricity will always be available, instantly, everywhere, regardless of weather or cost. Futurists increasingly question whether this expectation itself belongs to the era of cheap fossil energy.

In a constrained future, electricity becomes something that is:

• more variable
• more locally managed
• more closely matched to essential needs

Localism does not promise unlimited power. It promises adaptation.

The Bottom Line

Futurists are not arguing that offshore wind is a mistake. They are arguing that building generation faster than the system can carry, store and socially accept it creates new vulnerabilities.

They question whether:

• the national grid can expand at the required pace
• the funding model is sustainable in a shrinking economy
• reliance on weather-dependent generation can be made fully reliable at national scale

Many conclude that the long-term answer does not lie in ever-larger national systems, but in a gradual shift toward locality-based energy, reduced expectations, and resilience through simplicity.

In that sense, localism is not a retreat. It is an adaptation to physical, economic and social limits that are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.