Our very ability to keep the lights on and maintain critical infrastructure is under threat. That is the stark message from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former ‘Chief’ of MI6. In the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Annual Lecture, Dearlove asked whether Britain has thought seriously enough about the vulnerabilities that are being introduced into our increasingly complex energy infrastructure. His answer was emphatic and sobering.

“We have as a nation negligently wandered close to a cliff edge,” he said. Britain has allowed the security dimension of energy policy to become an afterthought. We are, according to Dearlove, effectively inviting hostile disruption.

Decades of deindustrialisation have hollowed out our industrial base to such an extent that we have lost control over the production of crucial parts of the grid

Decades of deindustrialisation have hollowed out our industrial base to such an extent that we have lost control over the production of crucial parts of the grid

Decades of deindustrialisation have hollowed out our industrial base to such an extent that we have lost control over the production of crucial parts of the grid. The global market for grain oriented electrical steel (vital for producing transformers and generators) has become dominated by Chinese producers; in 2020, Britain lost its last domestic producer. The risk is that if our........

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