When we think of the term ‘national security’ we probably first think of those things that readily come to mind when we consider what national security means. We consider things like the military, espionage and counter-espionage and counter-terrorism activities as all coming under the national security umbrella.

But there’s another resource that also needs to be considered as a national security issue and that is energy. For a nation to be in a position where it can push back against threats and defend its borders, society and economy, it must have access to secure and affordable energy supplies. I have come to believe that the current UK government’s obsession with Net Zero is damaging to Britain’s national security. A failure to extract gas and other fuels from underneath Britain puts the country in grave danger and increases our reliance on imported fuel products which can be readily disrupted either by market conditions or by other nations using their fuel producing ability as a weapon against their customers and political opponents.

Tim Worstall has written a brilliant piece for Net Zero Watch that states that a reliance on unreliable ‘renewables’ is going to end up going very badly for Britain. He urges that Britain should prepare itself for ongoing disruptions to natural gas supply by restarting fracking.

This is something that I completely agree with. We need this gas and we need it soon. We could get this gas quite quickly or relatively quickly as the technology for fracking is quite mature, reliable and proven unlike much of the technology behind renewables. We also have much of the technology, materials and personnel available to frack right here in the UK or which could be supplied by friendly countries. Unlike power sources such as Solar, we are with gas fracking not tied to hostile or potentially hostile nations as we are with regards China for the supply of solar cells. We could frack for gas using the technology and people we already have and not have to go cap in hand to nations who do not have the interests of either Britain or the West at heart.

Eventually there may well become available a clean form of power for electricity generation possibly in the form of small modular reactors or eventually from fusion. However these technologies are at least three decades away and even then they will be beset by difficulties in both development and implementation. In the meantime however we still need power and fracked gas is the best way to achieve this.

Energy is a national security issue as much as having a sound and efficient military and counter terror and counter espionage activities are. Unfortunately the Net Zero obsessives cannot grasp the fact that we need energy not just to survive, but to thrive as a nation and at the present time only fracked gas can give us a large proportion of that energy security that we require.

Not having a secure home produced source of energy whether it be gas, coal, hydroelectric or nuclear is debilitating for a nation and is just as dangerous as having a threatening enemy at the gate with a poor military for defence, or allowing unfettered access to the nation’s secrets for the agents of hostile nations. For a nation to not be blessed with readily extractable sources of energy due to history or geography is unfortunate it’s one of those things that can’t be helped. But to do what the British government has done which is deliberately turn away from these energy sources in order to satisfy the requirements of a ideology or dogma is both short sighted and criminally stupid.