Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Keeping warm during the ‘Beast from the East’? Thank energy investors
Keeping warm during the ‘Beast from the East’? Thank energy investors
Apr 4, 2025 5:20 PM

As the UK beds down for the night, it is blanketed with government alerts that traveling out into the snow-covered landscape might prove deadly – as it already has for 10 people ranging in age from seven to 75. The snowfall may total more than 19 inches, as Storm Emma collides with the “Beast from the East.” Subzero temperatures also strained energy supplies on Thursday, triggering the largest spike in consumer demand in eight years.

While far from perfect, the UK’s more free market-oriented policies have provided stable and reliable energy supplies to keep families warm and safe indoors.

Natural gas is at the heart of the system – fueled by private energy investors.

Amber Rudd explained the sector’s success in a 2015 speech, when she was secretary for energy and climate change:

In some areas the [energy] system works well.

The gas used to heat our homes is amongst the cheapest and most secure in Europe.

And this is despite the decline in our domestic gas production from the North Sea.

How has this been achieved?

Investors, driven by a desire to make a profit, have built new LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminals and pipelines that have improved diversity of supply.

In this case, energy security has been best served by government staying out of the way and allowing markets to find an answer.

Private investment – often derided as “energy speculation” – assured a stable energy supply during this week’s crisis.

Private investments notwithstanding, the National Grid issued a “gas deficit warning” Thursday after supply fell 16.5 million cubic meters shy of demand. The shortfall – which caused wholesale gas prices to spike 74 percent – will have little direct impact on home heating prices. Those costs fall heaviest on large energy consumers, such as industrial users, who may in turn raise prices.

Rudd warned about supply issues two years ago, as well:

Of course we can’t placent. We currently import around half of our gas needs, but by 2030 that could be as high as 75%.

That’s why we’re encouraging investment in our shale gas exploration so we can add new sources of home-grown supply to our real diversity of imports.

There are also economic benefits in building a new industry for the country and munities.

Our North Sea history means the UK is a home to world class oil and gas expertise, in Aberdeen and around the UK – we should build on that base so that our shale potential can be exploited safely.

“Shale gas exploration,” otherwise known as fracking, enabled the U.S. to increase its natural gas production to nearly record-breaking levels and, perhaps this year, e a net exporter of LNG.

The UK could easily follow suit. Its shale deposits of natural gas are estimated at 1,300 trillion cubic feet (tcf), according to the British Geological Survey.

Despite the abundant supply and evident demand, fracking has hardly begun in the 28 months since Rudd’s speech, thanks to government regulations. Scotland banned the practice outright last year over environmental concerns, which evidence suggests are misplaced.

More abundant energy resources drive down prices, giving the world’s most vulnerable populations access to simple electricity and home heating or cooling. “Material impoverishment undermines the conditions that allow humans to flourish,” according to the Acton Institute’s core principles. Adequate energy supplies are an indispensable building block of human development.

With enough energy, “doctors can conduct surgeries after dark. Children can read into the night,” explained Chris Horst in a Christianity Today article on fracking. “Pastors in remote areas can access top-shelf theological training.”

But it also benefits those in developed nations during their times of greatest need – like Thursday.

The UK’s megastorm should give Christians an appreciation for the benefits of private investment and the potential harms of misguided government regulation.

This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Interview: Ismael Hernandez
HernandezOn , Ismael Hernandez talks about his journey from anti-American activist to his disillusionment with socialism and eventually the founding of the Freedom & Virtue Institute. Hernandez, a frequent lecturer at Acton conferences, was asked by interviewer Jamie Glazov to recall the estrangement from family and friends that resulted when his “passion for socialism” faded away. For the first time in my life, I began to weakly contemplate the possibility that things were not as I had been told. There...
Rev. Robert Sirico: Tea Party Must Define Ideas
A new Detroit News column by Acton Institute President and co-founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico: Tea party must define ideas By Father Robert Sirico If the recent analysis by the New York Times on the success of the tea party movement is correct, the influence of this movement favoring limited government and low levels of taxation may have a decided impact in the ing elections, particularly in holding the Republican leadership’s feet to the fire on a variety of related...
Meaningful Work and the Economics Nobel
This week’s Acton Commentary. Sign up for our free, weekly email newsletter here. While you’re at it, pick up a copy of Victor Claar’s new monograph, Fair Trade: It’s Prospects as a Poverty Solution, in the Acton Bookshoppe. +++++++++ Searching for Meaningful Work: Reflections on the 2010 Economics Nobel By Victor V. Claar This year’s Nobel economics prize was awarded to two Americans and a British-Cypriot for developing a theory that helps to explain why unemployment can persist even when...
Culture and Poverty
Here is an interesting article by Patricia Cohen in the New York Times about the role of culture in poverty: ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback While it is obvious to most observers that culture plays an important role in shaping norms and habits, and thus would have impact on poverty–discussions of culture have not been within the domain of polite conversation for the last several decades within many academic circles. As Patricia Cohen writes: The reticence was a legacy...
Were Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms Kindred Spirits?
Estelle Snyder makes an excellent case that Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms had similar humble backgrounds and beliefs that helped form a deep bond between the two men, despite being separated by language, culture, geography, and an Iron Curtain. In a paper published by the North Carolina History Project titled “Champions of Freedom: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms,” Snyder argues that their relationship was an important one in terms of confronting the evils of Communism with a more aggressive posture,...
Acton and Cape Town 2010
This year’s Lausanne Congress, Cape Town 2010, is underway and all reports are of a massive event, with substantial buildup and coordination of efforts of and implications of various kinds across the globe. (Dr. Anthony Bradley, a research fellow at the Acton Institute, participated in one of the conversation gatherings last month leading up to the Cape Town event.) In my book published earlier this summer, Ecumenical Babel, I mentioned Cape Town 2010 as one of the major ecumenical events...
How Do You Say ‘Crony Capitalism’ in Hebrew?
It turns out there’s a phrase for the reality of ‘crony capitalism’ in Hebrew: hon v’shilton, which is “literally translated as capital and government, an expression Israelis use to describe the rich’s influence on government.” Check out Bloomberg Businessweek for an overview of current controversy on Israel’s “business elite.” Of course business need not corrupt government. But the temptation for those with a concentration of economic power to turn that into political advantage in order to retain economic dominance is...
Community, Culture, and Confession
Inspired by Art Prize, I wrote a blog about culture, technology, and the universal desire munity. This appeared on Ethika Politika‘s blog today and an excerpt can be found below: Last week as I was wandering through Grand Rapids’ Art Prize (the world’s largest petition), I came across the very simple interactive piece that is pictured below. Confess is a large board where people can anonymously write their confessions. Everything from the dark, to deeply personal, to lighthearted, to witty...
Rev. Robert Sirico: The Tea Party Movement and Catholic Social Teaching
Rev. Robert Sirico talked about the Tea Party movement and Catholic Social Teaching yesterday with Al Kresta on Ave Maria Radio. Click on the link below to listen: [audio: From Kresta in the Afternoon: The Tea Party Movement: How Does it Gel With Catholic Social Teaching? Since their not-so-quiet arrival on the U.S. political scene, the tea party has garnered a great deal of attention and found growing support among disgruntled Americans, many of whom are Catholics. A missioned earlier...
Removing Faith from Public Life, Again
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, at a meeting with German President Christian Wulff in Moscow today: “I am deeply convinced that modern civilization is making the same mistake as the Soviet Union. It doesn’t matter very much why you are removing faith from pubic life. The final result, as engineers say, is the same: you get dismantling of religious consciousness,” the Patriarch said. The Russian Church has lived for decades in a country where the official ideology was the ideology of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved