ON MONDAY, the government announced that it will build a new power line to connect Britain to the Netherlands. 

The gigantic network of electricity cables, dubbed the LionLink, will link wind farms in the North Sea to both countries, allowing 1.8GW of electricity to be moved between them at any one time.

Putting wind farms in the North Sea is an attractive prospect: it is windy, the sea is shallow and, unlike onshore wind farms, there are no residents who may object to them. 

The total capacity of British offshore wind farms is about 14GW, with an expansion to 50GW planned by 2030, far exceeding current UK national demand, which last year was 30GW. 

It should be stressed that this is a theoretical capacity. The capacity factor measures how much of that peak theoretical capacity is actually realised. In 2022, that was about 40 per cent for offshore wind.

The proportion of British electricity supplied from wind power has increased from 1.5 per cent in 2008 to about 25 per cent last year. That’s an impressive increase. 

But one of the problems is that the electricity is not always produced when we need it. There is no necessary correlation between the strength of the wind and the demand for electricity. 

It is very difficult to store electricity, so excess supply cannot easily be “banked” for future use. There are exceptions, such as using excess electricity from wind to pump water uphill and store it in a dam; when electricity is needed at a critical moment later, that water can be unleashed, flowing downhill and turning turbines to produce electricity that joins the network at its hour of need. But in general, large-scale battery storage is one of the key technological challenges for energy transition to renewables.

This isn’t just a theoretical problem. In July last year the electricity supply in London was unable to match demand. The National Grid blamed the combined effects of a heatwave, a fire in east London near to power lines, and planned maintenance. 

That meant that blackouts in London would have happened unless electricity was purchased from other countries with a surplus at that exact moment in time. 

So, National Grid bought electricity from Belgian suppliers. The average price for a megawatt-hour of electricity that year had been £178. In that moment of crisis, the Grid reportedly paid nearly £10,000 — about 50 times more than usual.

That moment was highlighted by analysts to show how “insecure” our energy supply is. Normally talked about in terms of Europe’s concerning dependence on Russian gas, it also means that in the European market for electricity those with more supply can charge sky-high rates in emergency scenarios: at that moment, Belgian capital held British power suppliers over a barrel.

So, with the new North Sea cable network LionLink, who owns the wind farms themselves? That’s something that is missing from the British government’s press release — because the answer is that although it’s a cross-national agreement, both the wind farms and the convertor station that manage the current are Netherlands-owned.

In fact, that’s not unusual for “our” offshore wind capacity. Analysis published last year by Common Wealth shows that around half of it is owned by state-owned foreign entities. 

In terms of countries with ownership of British offshore wind power, Britain itself comes twelfth: not only behind Denmark and Norway, but also the UAE, Ireland and Malaysia. Of the half that is owned by private business, only a third are headquartered in Britain.  

The electricity industry in Britain was privatised in 1990 following the 1989 Electricity Act. “National Grid” as a company was listed on the stock exchange in 1995 — it is now National Grid Plc and a part of the FTSE 100 (as “NG”). 

In the globalised world we live in, the company that arose from the privatisation of something owned by the public now also operates transmission networks in the US.

Energy policy is complex. It requires building massive pieces of infrastructure that take huge amounts of investment and time. 

Take LionLink. The government announced it on Monday. Except, of course, if you look closely at the small print of the announcement it only launched the development phase. 

A final investment decision isn’t expected until 2026 with LionLink becoming operational in 2030 or 2031.

The scale of investment and planning that national and international energy networks require is very poorly suited to the short-termism of most politics. 

Governments set targets and ambitions that go beyond their terms of office. But the pay off of building huge projects is vast. 

More than that, the purpose of the infrastructure is fundamentally suited to state funding and management. The investment of national resources in projects of nation-scale energy production is vital to their success.

This isn’t just about jingoistic energy security, but about making sure that renewable energy is owned by the public who use it. LionLink seems like a good idea, but it’s telling that it’s far from an equal partnership. 

The British government seems allergic to the investment and ownership itself, preferring to encourage investment rather than make it. That is simply too slow a process for the dramatic energy transitions required over the coming decades. 

The fact that state-owned enterprises seem like a radical socialist idea within British politics today is a depressing reality, even though ideas about nationalisation are consistently popular with voters who get to enjoy the results of privatisation and none of the profits. 

A key priority of a Labour government should be to copy our European neighbours and learn from their energy policy, rather than piggybacking on it.