The recent, spectacular increase in the price of gas has created a sense of crisis not seen outside the financial sector since the early 1980s.  In Europe in general and the UK in particular, it has begun to expose the folly of having an economy entirely dependent upon imports; including imports of the energy that powers everything we do.  The conceit, of course, was that because we have gone much further than anyone else in deploying non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) we were somehow less dependent on fossil fuels when events this week show that we are, in fact, more dependent than ever.

The deeper crisis though, is economic because without growing energy we cannot have a growing economy.  This is obscured to some extent by GDP figures which count the movement of bits in bank computers as real economic growth when in reality, they merely add a new mountain of unrepayable debt to an already massive mountain of unrepayable debt.  In the real world where the rest of us live, nothing gets done unless there is sufficient surplus energy to power it.

Setting aside for a moment the environmental imperative to cease polluting the planet, if it were possible to stabilise our fossil fuel consumption at 2019 levels, then we have some 50 years’ worth of accessible (proven reserves) of oil; 53 years of gas; and 115 years of coal.  But flatlining is something that only happens in recessions.  In the economy that we have come to take for granted, year-on-year growth in energy consumption is the precondition for improvements in prosperity:

This suggests that we have far less than 50 years before we run out of oil and gas if we insist on continuing to grow the rate at which we consume it…

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