Tom Fairless

in the transmission networks needed to move that intermittent burst of energy that renewables provide, or investing in sort of more constant sources of energy like nuclear power.

And then it was bad luck in the sense that there was a war in Ukraine, which pushed up the cost of gas, which underpins the cost of electricity for a lot of European nations, and interest rates also went up.

So it became a lot more expensive to finance these products.

So the net result is that consumers in Europe are being hit by a double whammy.

They're still at the mercy right now of imported volatile fossil fuels, while also shouldering enormous upfront costs to build out this new green energy infrastructure.

Yeah, there have been a series of, especially in the chemicals industry, of firms effectively shutting up shop.

in Europe to then move production to places like China.

So you have this kind of perverse effect where the energy intensive industry isn't stopping, it's just happening the other side of the world and its products are then being shipped all the way back to Europe to be consumed.

So in a weird way,

There's no net reduction in pollution.

If anything, it's worse.

And that seems to be a big effect.

And the secondary effect is really on people on the ground.

I mean, everyone's energy bills in Europe have gone up substantially.

And that is exacerbating a cost of living crisis in the UK.

And it's also feeding into a sense that the system has failed them.

They were promised cheap energy as part of this transition.

And politicians across the board said that this is something that would leave people better off.

But in fact, they're paying more.

The fact is Europe's quite far down this transition road.