Paving the Way for the UK Energy Independence: The New Energy Security Bill
Published 16 February 2023
Introduction
The UK government introduced in parliament on 6 July 2022 an Energy Security Bill, a major piece of legislation to help deliver the British Energy Security Strategy (BESS). Both the strategy and the bill are motivated by the high energy prices due to the economic recovery from the pandemic and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, and they are to ensure that the country is no longer held hostage by rogue states and volatile markets, while reindustrialising the economy and protecting people from high fossil fuel prices. The Prime Minister expressed the desire to create the Saudi Arabia of wind power, deliver one reactor a year rather than one a decade, produce vastly more hydrogen of low carbon hydrogen as the super-fuel of the future, and make use of the oil and gas in the North Sea as even the most evangelistic environmentalist would concede that it is simply not possible to end all fossil fuels overnight.
This paper will be part of the OGEL Special Issue on "The Impact of the War in Ukraine on the Energy Sector". More information here www.ogel.org/news.asp?key=718