The location of Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps’s net zero relaunch today shows there has been a change of emphasis since the PM set up the Department for Energy Security and Climate Change last autumn.
One suspects a bit of ideology creeping in: fossil fuels have become a great bogeyman, and nothing will make them acceptable
Whereas Boris Johnson might have sought to make such an announcement at a wind farm or solar farm, today’s relaunch took place at Culham in Oxfordshire, the site of Britain’s nuclear fusion research facility. Fusion is the holy grail of carbon-free energy which even enthusiasts admit is decades away from being commercialised, if it can be at all. But it is a hint that the government is no longer going to try to power Britain with wind and solar energy alone. A competition to pick out the most promising modular nuclear reactor designs – for further funding and development – is one of the strands of today’s announcements.
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