Our Take, with Doug Sheridan
Western nations need only stop subsidizing and mandating renewables and EVs: Instead, they should start supporting Western ICE auto manufacturers, again. That would be job and capital creating.
Our Take, with Doug Sheridan
Nick Timothy writes in the Telegraph, throughout the 1980s and 90s Britain generally had the third most competitive industrial electricity costs of the G7 economies. Since then the country has performed far worse as policy has deliberately increased the cost of energy.
In the five years before Tony Blair became prime minister, UK industrial electricity costs were around 9% higher than the average of the advanced economies comprising the International Energy Agency (IEA). By 2010, they were nearly 23% higher, and for the past five years... with Conservatives in power... have risen to 52% higher.
In China, responsible for 53% of global coal consumption, and where coal generates 61% of electricity, industrial electricity prices are around a quarter of those in Britain. Add to this low Chinese labour costs and the enormous subsidies provided through cheap loans and steel. Meanwhile, emissions associated with imports to Britain from China have risen 62% since the late 1990s.
One can blame China for abusing the world trading system it joined almost a quarter of a century ago—and indeed the EU is threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs—but the real problem is Western naivety. China was always going to flout the rules and use the system to its own advantage, and for years Western gov'ts turned a blind eye as it did so.
EVs are really only a visible example of what has been going on across industry for at least two decades. One result has been the empowerment of China. Another has been the enfeeblement of the UK's own industry.
The UK must overcome its great blind spots. It does need to reduce its dependence on foreign fossil fuels—not least because we should not rely on autocracies for energy—but policy must never run ahead of technology, and its net-zero targets are simply unrealistic and self-destructive. Something's got to change.
Our Take 1: Timothy has it wrong—it's not free trade that's ruining the UK and rewarding China. It's the hare-brained policy to convert Western energy and transportation systems to *inferior* technologies that China decided to bet big on years ago and now dominates. It makes no sense what we're doing.
Our Take 2: Want to send China's economy into a tailspin?
Western nations need only stop subsidizing and mandating renewables and EVs. If the market is allowed to work, Chinese EVs and solar panels lose. As it stands now, Western policy lifts China up as conquering hero. It's a huge unforced error on our part.