Helm Talks - energy climate infrastructure & more
Episodes
No such thing as free electricity
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as “free” electricity. What is true is that there are going to be days in summe...
Sticky plaster energy policy is falling apart
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Another day and another bit of sticky plaster is applied. With the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world, the government is increasi...
Gas prices, gas mistakes and gas policy
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The news is very much about gas price shocks, but this is to misunderstand the fundamental difference between temporary shocks and long-term trends. G...
Britain's industrial energy price crisis
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Britain is facing a deep industrial energy price crisis, with many major industries collapsing or shrinking because UK electricity costs are among the...
The energy security gap
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The International Energy Agency, at its recent ministerial meeting (Feb 18th/19th), agreed on one top priority: energy security. Hybrid warfare, cyber...
Back to the 1950s
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Several key industries have fallen back to production levels last seen in the 1950s. Car production has dropped to its 1952 level at around 700,000 ve...
What nationalisation really means
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Many people in the Labour Party support bringing utilities like water (in particular, Thames Water) and electricity transmission back into public owne...
2030
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As 2026 begins, and people look ahead to what it might bring, this podcast focuses on the likely, more profound, economic and geopolitical shifts expe...
Five reasons why growth is so elusive
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it that this government, and its predecessors, find economic growth so hard to attain? In the UK, growth remains stubbornly low for a number of...
The real lessons from COP30
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are five major lessons from COP30. They are not the ones the climate community has highlighted, but they really matter and will shape the post-C...
The great capital maintenance failure
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the Chancellor gears up to deliver the Autumn Budget next week, let’s look behind the headlines at the reality of what is going on with the UK’...
Locking in permanently high costs for British energy
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
British energy policy, once heralded as a pathway to cheap, secure and decarbonised power, has instead resulted in some of the highest energy costs gl...
Why is UK infrastructure so expensive?
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The UK’s infrastructure costs are amongst the highest globally, making ambitious projects—like new nuclear plants, HS2, and airport expansions—e...
Water: what to do after Cunliffe?
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few people have much good to say about the water industry, and the blame game is fully engaged. But what to do? There are four possible options: conti...
Why electricity prices are so high and why renewables are not cheap
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why when solar and wind are supposed to be nine times cheaper than gas are electricity prices in the UK amongst the highest in the world? Why when th...
The changing net zero zeitgeist
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-2030s, historians may look back and note that, despite numerous COP meetings and agreements like the Paris Agreement, global carbon emissio...
Fiddling the books on debt
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The UK’s national debt now stands at around 100% of GDP, meaning that the country has borrowed the equivalent of an entire year’s economic output....
The dark economic clouds revisited
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The economic outlook for the UK is bleaker than the government would have us believe. The government's ambition to be the fastest-growing economy in t...
Thames Water – the unacceptable face of water privatisation
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How have investors managed to turn Thames Water, despite its extraordinary debt, inefficiency and poor performance, into a company that offers rich fi...
Heathrow Airport shutdown - a lesson in resilience
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The recent fire at an electricity substation shut Heathrow Airport for 24 hours, causing chaos in the skies and across international airports. In doin...
Defence versus net zero
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Retreats on manifesto promises (electric vehicles and gas boilers), alongside the plans for carbon-intensive housebuilding and airport expansion, as w...
Climate cakeism
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The UK government and the Climate Change Committee (CCC), with its 7th Carbon Budget, are keen to portray a "cakeism" narrative, suggesting that econo...
Why are UK energy prices so high?
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The UK has very expensive electricity for both the industrial sectors and consumers, despite the government’s policies that are intended to deliver ...
Crossing the Rubicon – what it really takes to grow an economy
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Economic growth is the government’s new mantra, but what exactly does it mean, and how exactly is it achieved? Who is going to pay for it? The gover...
Energy costs and economic growth
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The government’s number one mission is to grow the economy, by building more houses and sprinting to net zero by 2030. On the energy side, we’re t...
The great COP-out
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the many tens of thousands fly back home from Baku after this year’s COP, where have the 29 attempts among the world’s nations to tackle climat...
The UK’s new growth industry – regulation
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The British economy is going to see more regulators, more regulatory bodies, more intervention in the private sector – all requiring businesses, on ...
Transformation – a case of blood, sweat, tears … and many years
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The government is planning radical transformation, to health, education, rail travel, and with a view to achieving net zero electricity by 2030. These...
Britain's four fundamental economic problems
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The government’s overriding objective is economic growth, and it plans to get there by building lots more houses, and a dash for net zero electricit...
Zombie utilities
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
‘Easy money’ (quantitative easing and low nominal/negative real interest rates) has left a legacy of lots of zombie companies that should not stil...
Dash for growth means dash for debt
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Labour government is on a mission to grow the economy to pay for all the public expenditure needed. But where will this growth come from? Previous...
The free-lunch election
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The uninspiring ideas and promises from both main parties since the election was announced make for a depressing read. In trying to get our votes – ...
Privatisation casualties piling up
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The privatisation casualties are starting to stack up – earlier failures included Railtrack, and more recently there is Thames Water. Royal Mail is ...
Fudging the fiscal rules
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Labour Party, like the Conservatives, has committed to borrow only to invest, to fund current spending only from current income, and to get debt a...
Failing utilities – is special administration the solution?
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is to be done about the UK’s failing utilities? The current back-stop is special administration, opening up the possibility of wider restructur...
Fiddling the figures – iron fiscal rules are not what they seem
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Iron fiscal rules that allow borrowing only for investment might seem like a sensible strategy, but the figures have repeatedly been fiddled to make t...
Three energy policies
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to addressing the trilemma of energy policy in the UK (net zero, energy security and customer affordability), there are three overall po...
Network Rail, Royal Mail, and Thames Water - three failing utilities
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Network Rail, Royal Mail, and Thames Water are all examples of serious failure, with major economic and social consequences. None has lived up to the ...
Territorial carbon emissions don’t tell the full story – the cases of Grangemouth and DRAX
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our politicians may claim that the UK is on its way to net zero electricity, but the potential closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery provides an ill...
The remarkable net zero political consensus – and why it's wrong
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The political consensus about how the UK will achieve net zero by 2035 is remarkable, centred as it on the assumption that consumer bills must not go ...
Net zero realism
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s time for climate realism. The political rhetoric of low costs and ever-falling energy bills has inevitably collided with the reality of the act...
The Treasury blame game
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Treasury gets accused of not spending enough on school roofs, on health to cut the waiting lists, on local government and social care, on subsidis...
Why does everything seem to be broken?
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Air traffic control, school buildings, the railways, potholes in the roads, leaking water pipes, local electricity networks failing when the wind blow...
Labour's big bet on economic growth
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Labour has been busy setting out its plans for the economy, and its pitch to potential voters, of no new income or wealth taxes. Instead, the essentia...
Beggars can't be choosers
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“Unlocking” and “unleashing” funds is not as straightforward as UK politicians would have us believe. The simple fact is that there are few UK...
Net zero crunch time
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The net zero electricity targets in the UK are fast-approaching. On current policies, there is little chance that we get there by 2035, let alone Labo...
Borrowing to save the planet
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The government would have us believe that not only can we get to net zero in electricity by 2035, but that it won’t cost very much. All the green in...
Parallel universes - climate science versus climate reality
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The science on climate change is pretty clear and not new. The latest IPPC report is pretty dire in its predictions, but our understanding of the scie...
Getting real about Britain’s contribution to tackling global warming
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What role can the UK seriously can play in tackling climate change? The “delusion of grandeur” we have been led to believe is that we can do it al...
The great subsidy game
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Getting to net zero is necessary but it will not be cheap. Everyone is clamouring for government subsidies: steel, battery factories, offshore wind, f...
Labour's five missions
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition, has come up with his five missions to match Rishi Sunak’s five pledges. But taking a look at two specificall...
The UK privatisation experiment - a success or not?
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What was privatisation really all about? Its advocates thought private sector meant efficiency, versus the failing, inefficient, public sector entitie...
The consequences of living beyond our means
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While each of the current challenges in our core services (NHS, Royal Mail, water, rail, etc) may have has its own explanations, causes and proposed f...
Where is the money coming from for investment?
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With a lot of investment required for UK infrastructure – in water, in broadband/fibre, in the wind farms, the electricity grid, in heating conversi...
Gas next winter - no need to panic
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the International Energy Agency forecasts another gas crisis in 2024, let’s look at the facts. There are three reasons why the IEA’s fears may ...
Greta Thunberg was right about COP27
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Greta was right. COP27 has not made serious progress on mitigating climate change. Instead of concentrating on addressing the failures at Glasgow to s...
COP27 – it's all about the money
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
26 COPs to date have not delivered, so why will COP27 (or even the next 27 COPs) be any different? It won't and here is why. It's all about the mon...
What happens if gas prices continue to fall?
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever there is a fossil-fuel price shock, there’s a great temptation to think that the higher prices are here to stay, that this is the ‘new no...
The Retreat From Net Zero, And How To Stop It
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The sound of Russian gunfire and the alarm has gone off on energy security. The retreat from the net zero strategies is all too apparent: keeping coal...
Windfall taxes are a mark of energy policy failures
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Faced with sharply rising household energy bills, there is great political consensus that this is a good time to bash the companies with a windfall ta...
How to pay for energy
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do we pay not just for the immediate costs of energy, but for the full transition to net zero? Right now the UK economy is around 80% dependent on...
Paying too much for energy
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From April, the average household will be paying around £2,000 a year for their energy. By October it may be closer to £3,000. Many will struggle to...
Sustainable farming and net zero – a long way to go
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What would sustainable agriculture look like? It would be zero carbon consumption or better, deliver food sustainably whilst preserving and enhancing ...
Don't bank on energy prices falling any time soon
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The reasons why energy prices have shot up are well known: the Russians and extra demand in the Far East when it comes to gas, exacerbated in the UK b...
The first net zero energy crisis
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Energy price crises are usually triggered by external events. But the UK has been hit particularly hard by the global gas price increases, and for mai...
Are the wheels falling off the electricity model?
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
30 years after privatisation, the electricity model looks to be in deep trouble. In addition to the collapse of 25 suppliers, and the knock-on increas...
COP26 – progress or just more blah, blah, blah?
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is COP26 the “real deal”, marking the point when we “turned the corner” on climate change, or is it what Greta Thunberg calls “blah, blah, b...
The gas and the electricity price crisis - fundamental causes and big consequences
02 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The gas crisis is very predictable and has caught the government and the regulators asleep at the wheel. Virtually no storage, suppliers without prope...
Do electricity prices really need to go up?
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why are electricity prices going up? Why is the price cap being reported raised by Ofgem? Do prices really have to go up, or should they be coming dow...
Net zero and greenwashing electricity
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's about time the government and the regulators took a good hard look at so-called green and renewables-only electricity contracts. Consumers – yo...
The EU leads on climate change – again
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The new EU climate change package sets the pace for others to try to match in the run-up to COP26. It has a central architecture, built around carbon ...
COP26 – time to get real about fossil fuels
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With just 29 years to go to the 2050 target date, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has done a great service in making a stab at the scale of the ...
Net zero: keeping our homes warm without frying the planet
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are not short of ambitious carbon targets. We have a 78% reduction target for 2035 – just 14 years away – and 100% by 2050. So far, the focus h...
Trade - is free trade fair?
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Post BREXIT, the first trade deal has been deliberately designed to put grit in the wheels of trade with the EU. Now comes India and Australia and the...
Net zero - why we need a carbon border tax
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It is simply not good enough to reduce terrestrial carbon production emissions to net zero by 2050 on a unilateralist basis, and to expect that this m...
COP26 - too much hype, too little substance
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The hype around COP26 is getting out of hand. The excitement is palpable - the US and China, and then the other world’s leaders are all, if one bel...
Net zero - is economic growth possible?
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is economic growth possible? Is it even desirable? Lots of environmentalists think we have to get off the growth conveyor belt, seeing it as a road to...
What is a carbon offset worth?
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Carbon offsets are all the rage. As companies declare their net zero targets, they are reaching for offsets to make the numbers add up. Landowners see...
Bespoke carbon taxes - should beef and dairy be singled out?
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The government has been kite-flying proposals for beef and dairy carbon taxes - to signal to environmentalists that it is “on their side” and to s...
Net zero gain - how to build better
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, developers applied for planning permission and they either got it or not. Now they have to deliver Net Biodiversity Gain, a very lim...
How green is the government really?
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Boris Johnson, like David Cameron, has started out talking the green talk. Standards here in the UK, post the BREXIT transition, are going to be highe...
Net zero policy in 2,000 pages
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of 2020 the government and the Climate Change Committee produced a blitz of documents. We had the Ten Point Plan, the National Infrastructu...
How much is it going to cost to meet the net zero target?
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Climate Change Committee, in its 6th Carbon Budget, tells us that the answer is not very much, if anything, once fuel savings are taken into accou...
Net zero, green recovery and green industrial revolution plans – what's in a number?
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the UK and the EU, grand Ten Point and Green Recovery Plans are all the rage. In the UK, everything adds up to 10; in the EU it was 20, with its "2...
COP 26 and global climate agreements - will they work?
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In November 2021, world leaders will gather in Glasgow to try once again to crack climate change. It is a formidable task: none of the previous agreem...
Nature-based solutions to climate change
25 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The big focus in the net zero debates so far has been on emissions – in particular emissions from coal- and gas-fired power stations, and from vehic...
Carbon pricing and carbon taxes - an essential part of a net zero strategy
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To meet the net zero target by 2050 a carbon price is a necessary (but not sufficient) part of the decarbonising policy architecture. Its time is comi...