Too late a call I think. As the recent AR7 auction made clear, the UK will be saddled with (extortionately) high energy prices for another two decades. Even if the global thinking is shrinking, why would you invest in the UK. Even if a business qualified for the EII, the discount would only be 65% - only twice as expensive.....
Almost worse than energy prices are politicians and civil servants who wouldn't recognise industry if it exploded out of their humanities degree over breakfast.
If local production is important - and if we are reinstating Dad's Army, it really ought to be - then there is a price to be paid. If we could find the cash, I'm not sure we could find the will.
LOL I just knew the response to this article would be "high energy prices" and not of course the free market / free trade theory, investment banking practices, multinational corporations ands their supranational trade organisations which are actually responsible
The personality type which moans endlessly about energy prices is the exact same personality type which in the 1980s said "all this production can be done cheaper in Asia".
The Labour party spent the entirety of that decade saying deindustrialisation was a disaster and whether you like it or not they're still the only people who take it seriously as an issue. But the power centre and the purse strings refuse to create the money necessary to revive whole swathes of the country.
No need to "find" anything. Simply create the money direct. And if the answer to that is "inflation" the response has to be "why print bonds and sell them for interest when you can just create the money directly?" It doesn't mean there is no limit to how much money can be created but of course the people who oppose MMT never say a dickie bird about the banks creating 97% of the money supply via privately issued loans.
Money Trevor is a human construct, trust is what gives money its power, outside of the human brain money is worthless, you can’t eat money. Energy is the real economy and the energy humanity has been getting for free is becoming harder to obtain. We are all on the gallows, some will die before nature pulls the leaver opening the trapdoor. What you’ve suggested is that whilst the rope around peoples necks tightens (inflation) the rope of the young and future generations can be lengthened by creating money from wherever, but whatever when that trapdoor opens we’ll all be in free fall until necks are ripped off.
Humanity will do anything but face up to where the problem really lies (perhaps it’s because it’s a taboo subject), for that you need to view Dr. Sofia Pineda Ochoa’s recent 2025 documentary film (free to view on YouTube) “GREENWASHED | Full Documentary [Official]”🤔
The planet director in the video says specifically their energy costs are 4x competitors. For something like saline evaporation where energy is nearly your only cost, there is no way to recover from that. Labour and left wing academia has consistently pushed for policies that caused this energy price gap - it is on them.
You're in total denial that the privatisation of energy generation has utterly failed. Ditto where all the climate alarmism comes from (the Rockerfeller Foundation etc.). It's on your Tory mates
It's worse than that Trevor there's massive government intervention. Go look at AR7 and compare it to the cost of energy from gas (without a carbin tax), go find out about the costs of backing up intermitent generation and then go compare the total cost of renewables to the cost of electricity in America for example. That should tell you all you need to know about the energy strategy. Further privatised or private with heavy industry and chemicals if your energy price isn't competitive then you need big subsidies to cover that up.
The energy industry isn't actually privatized, the government sets prices and manipulates the markets to obtain political outcomes. If the industry were genuinely private the government wouldn't do that kind of thing.
Tax avoiding Jim Ratcliffe (worth £17bn+) registers for tax in Monaco to save £4bn in tax yet Ineos - the world's biggest chemical company and his company - can't afford to invest in new plant without going cap in hand to the taxpayer...
Ineos could afford it. But the benefit cost analysis says that it's not worth doing so, that it won't make back the money spent in any reasonable time if at all.
Companies are not charities, nor do they care about the words of governments. Only their actions.
Ed - another excellent but disturbing analysis. The unmitigated facilities degradation you show in the video is truly shocking and as bad as any I have seen anywhere in the world (including former eastern bloc and "third-world") operations - I am sure you get the point, how low can we go?. I am really surprised that the UK HSE allows INEOS to operate in this way. £150 million is a relatively small investment for a corporation the size of INEOS. Their Chairman certainly endorses more on sponsorship of cycling, sailing and Manchester United (is that sponsorship of business??) - it says a lot about priorities. I have commented before on Wilton - it is a massive regional and national concern, especially as many of the net-zero initiatives that were planned for Teeside appear to now be floundering largely because SABIC is shutdown and the demand for industrial scale hydrogen is diminishing.
Rather rapid trend even since Material World? Many thanks for this and the Sky News video.
Stand back a bit? A thesis I see developing in N. America (e.g by Art Berman, career as an oil & energy expert), suggests, that even there, if you off-shore industry because it is 'cheaper' elsewhere, you off-shore industrial growth, with no way back. In this latest modern global industrial iteration are we beginning to see an approaching 'Peak Growth'? The old Limits to Growth trajectory is perhaps increasinglyy writ large when 'old' industrial capacity is not replaced, and net vital product decreases, one 'advanced' economy at a time?
Brilliant film. You are, by far, the best national journalist for these issues. My fear is this is all too late and that we are on an irreversible path. This week's news on AR7 is another hammer blow.
Material World is the most interesting and informative book I have read on the resources and processes needed to maintain our 21st century living standards. The section on Silica is especially relevant to the small former-gold-mining town in NZ where I live, given that under optimal conditions the waste by-product, quartz, is now more valuable to society than the original target mineral. With your permission Ed, may I use extracts from the Material World audiobook as training material for tour guides at the local Mineral Museum?
I think people aren't talking about it that much because:
1. it's complex
2. it's out of sight for most people
3. when it is talked about there are incorrect or counter intuitive statements like "we don't need energy to be cheaper" and then "our energy prices at 4x USA"
4. there are minimal practical solutions presented in your arguments, so it feels hopeless... where as actually there are loads of positive ways forward. I'd request that instead of beginning your articles by saying "this all feels hopeless", point to some of the radical shifts that you highlighted within the video itself and also to other things like practical changes to the net-zero policy to not penalise our domestic industry? One of the sarcastic youtube comments captures that perfectly "UK-made ammonia destroys the climate. Make it in China and ship it back, and global warming disappears. Incredible logic."
Great piece. To quote your closing question, more people aren't talking about it because vanishingly few people understand even the most basic aspects of manufacturing and industrial policy. Young adults entering the workplace today are the third successive generation of Britons who have got used to the notion that products and commodities (including food... you could do a similar piece on what's happening with UK wheat, for example) just magically appear while all the clever people go into finance or the 'knowledge economy'. Fixing this would have to be a whole-of-society generational mission not just a series of embarrassingly small-scale hard-hat photo ops for junior cabinet ministers. It would also require, in part, the rejection of some of the core principles of globalisation and global finance.... capital would need to flow to a bunch of inefficient and (objectively) undeserving recipients - UK will never beat China on cost - to serve a higher national purpose. Not impossible, and if the global order continues to break down under Trump etc potentially unavoidable, but a big stretch either way.
Are desalination plants a factor here? Brine is a side product they have to get rid of. So spending money to make brine on purpose from salt deposits seems like a waste.
A great, but sad story. The quality of these videos is so high that you really make me more and more curious what else Sky News has to offer (I am Norwegian). Also, I know this is non-relevant, but I really like the music used in the background.
and NZ's beautiful canned Golden Queen peaches are no longer profitable to make in the face of cheap inferior imports grown elsewhere. How do we stop the madness..
Timely as Ontario, Canada seems to be having a shortage of salt for our roads. I'm not sure if it's a true shortage or a matter of poor planning. I have coincidently been in a salt mine myself for a job interview that didn't work out.
Too late a call I think. As the recent AR7 auction made clear, the UK will be saddled with (extortionately) high energy prices for another two decades. Even if the global thinking is shrinking, why would you invest in the UK. Even if a business qualified for the EII, the discount would only be 65% - only twice as expensive.....
Almost worse than energy prices are politicians and civil servants who wouldn't recognise industry if it exploded out of their humanities degree over breakfast.
If local production is important - and if we are reinstating Dad's Army, it really ought to be - then there is a price to be paid. If we could find the cash, I'm not sure we could find the will.
LOL I just knew the response to this article would be "high energy prices" and not of course the free market / free trade theory, investment banking practices, multinational corporations ands their supranational trade organisations which are actually responsible
The personality type which moans endlessly about energy prices is the exact same personality type which in the 1980s said "all this production can be done cheaper in Asia".
The Labour party spent the entirety of that decade saying deindustrialisation was a disaster and whether you like it or not they're still the only people who take it seriously as an issue. But the power centre and the purse strings refuse to create the money necessary to revive whole swathes of the country.
No need to "find" anything. Simply create the money direct. And if the answer to that is "inflation" the response has to be "why print bonds and sell them for interest when you can just create the money directly?" It doesn't mean there is no limit to how much money can be created but of course the people who oppose MMT never say a dickie bird about the banks creating 97% of the money supply via privately issued loans.
Money Trevor is a human construct, trust is what gives money its power, outside of the human brain money is worthless, you can’t eat money. Energy is the real economy and the energy humanity has been getting for free is becoming harder to obtain. We are all on the gallows, some will die before nature pulls the leaver opening the trapdoor. What you’ve suggested is that whilst the rope around peoples necks tightens (inflation) the rope of the young and future generations can be lengthened by creating money from wherever, but whatever when that trapdoor opens we’ll all be in free fall until necks are ripped off.
Humanity will do anything but face up to where the problem really lies (perhaps it’s because it’s a taboo subject), for that you need to view Dr. Sofia Pineda Ochoa’s recent 2025 documentary film (free to view on YouTube) “GREENWASHED | Full Documentary [Official]”🤔
The planet director in the video says specifically their energy costs are 4x competitors. For something like saline evaporation where energy is nearly your only cost, there is no way to recover from that. Labour and left wing academia has consistently pushed for policies that caused this energy price gap - it is on them.
You're in total denial that the privatisation of energy generation has utterly failed. Ditto where all the climate alarmism comes from (the Rockerfeller Foundation etc.). It's on your Tory mates
It's worse than that Trevor there's massive government intervention. Go look at AR7 and compare it to the cost of energy from gas (without a carbin tax), go find out about the costs of backing up intermitent generation and then go compare the total cost of renewables to the cost of electricity in America for example. That should tell you all you need to know about the energy strategy. Further privatised or private with heavy industry and chemicals if your energy price isn't competitive then you need big subsidies to cover that up.
The energy industry isn't actually privatized, the government sets prices and manipulates the markets to obtain political outcomes. If the industry were genuinely private the government wouldn't do that kind of thing.
Tax avoiding Jim Ratcliffe (worth £17bn+) registers for tax in Monaco to save £4bn in tax yet Ineos - the world's biggest chemical company and his company - can't afford to invest in new plant without going cap in hand to the taxpayer...
Correct. The kudos that that man gets is entirely unjustified
Ineos could afford it. But the benefit cost analysis says that it's not worth doing so, that it won't make back the money spent in any reasonable time if at all.
Companies are not charities, nor do they care about the words of governments. Only their actions.
Radcliffe supported Brexit then fled to Monaco. Avoiding mi llions in tax. Shameful,selfish man
But he has to pay for his professional bicycle team! 😤https://www.ineosgrenadiers.com
Always find your articles and books enlightening, Ed - I especially liked Material World. Currently reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.
Essential work.
Ed - another excellent but disturbing analysis. The unmitigated facilities degradation you show in the video is truly shocking and as bad as any I have seen anywhere in the world (including former eastern bloc and "third-world") operations - I am sure you get the point, how low can we go?. I am really surprised that the UK HSE allows INEOS to operate in this way. £150 million is a relatively small investment for a corporation the size of INEOS. Their Chairman certainly endorses more on sponsorship of cycling, sailing and Manchester United (is that sponsorship of business??) - it says a lot about priorities. I have commented before on Wilton - it is a massive regional and national concern, especially as many of the net-zero initiatives that were planned for Teeside appear to now be floundering largely because SABIC is shutdown and the demand for industrial scale hydrogen is diminishing.
Rather rapid trend even since Material World? Many thanks for this and the Sky News video.
Stand back a bit? A thesis I see developing in N. America (e.g by Art Berman, career as an oil & energy expert), suggests, that even there, if you off-shore industry because it is 'cheaper' elsewhere, you off-shore industrial growth, with no way back. In this latest modern global industrial iteration are we beginning to see an approaching 'Peak Growth'? The old Limits to Growth trajectory is perhaps increasinglyy writ large when 'old' industrial capacity is not replaced, and net vital product decreases, one 'advanced' economy at a time?
Brilliant film. You are, by far, the best national journalist for these issues. My fear is this is all too late and that we are on an irreversible path. This week's news on AR7 is another hammer blow.
Nothing is irreversible. Get a grip
Material World is the most interesting and informative book I have read on the resources and processes needed to maintain our 21st century living standards. The section on Silica is especially relevant to the small former-gold-mining town in NZ where I live, given that under optimal conditions the waste by-product, quartz, is now more valuable to society than the original target mineral. With your permission Ed, may I use extracts from the Material World audiobook as training material for tour guides at the local Mineral Museum?
I think people aren't talking about it that much because:
1. it's complex
2. it's out of sight for most people
3. when it is talked about there are incorrect or counter intuitive statements like "we don't need energy to be cheaper" and then "our energy prices at 4x USA"
4. there are minimal practical solutions presented in your arguments, so it feels hopeless... where as actually there are loads of positive ways forward. I'd request that instead of beginning your articles by saying "this all feels hopeless", point to some of the radical shifts that you highlighted within the video itself and also to other things like practical changes to the net-zero policy to not penalise our domestic industry? One of the sarcastic youtube comments captures that perfectly "UK-made ammonia destroys the climate. Make it in China and ship it back, and global warming disappears. Incredible logic."
Great piece. To quote your closing question, more people aren't talking about it because vanishingly few people understand even the most basic aspects of manufacturing and industrial policy. Young adults entering the workplace today are the third successive generation of Britons who have got used to the notion that products and commodities (including food... you could do a similar piece on what's happening with UK wheat, for example) just magically appear while all the clever people go into finance or the 'knowledge economy'. Fixing this would have to be a whole-of-society generational mission not just a series of embarrassingly small-scale hard-hat photo ops for junior cabinet ministers. It would also require, in part, the rejection of some of the core principles of globalisation and global finance.... capital would need to flow to a bunch of inefficient and (objectively) undeserving recipients - UK will never beat China on cost - to serve a higher national purpose. Not impossible, and if the global order continues to break down under Trump etc potentially unavoidable, but a big stretch either way.
Are desalination plants a factor here? Brine is a side product they have to get rid of. So spending money to make brine on purpose from salt deposits seems like a waste.
A great, but sad story. The quality of these videos is so high that you really make me more and more curious what else Sky News has to offer (I am Norwegian). Also, I know this is non-relevant, but I really like the music used in the background.
and NZ's beautiful canned Golden Queen peaches are no longer profitable to make in the face of cheap inferior imports grown elsewhere. How do we stop the madness..
Timely as Ontario, Canada seems to be having a shortage of salt for our roads. I'm not sure if it's a true shortage or a matter of poor planning. I have coincidently been in a salt mine myself for a job interview that didn't work out.
Thank you for your book. I recently gave a U3A presentation based on Material world, which was well received. I’ll watch the video now.
I find all your topics interesting. You give fundamental insights about the real world that can't be found anywhere else. Thank you!