Look to space to fix the energy crisis

Solar energy from space and a type of helium on the Moon look promising.

An untethered astronaut in space rear view
(Image credit: Getty Images/NASA)

Wind isn’t working. Or so it seems. New developments are on hold both in the UK and in the US (where one of the world’s biggest companies, Ørsted, has just abandoned two big projects); the UK’s offshore auction earlier this year attracted not a single bid. The problem here, says Barry Norris of Argonaut, is that wind is just “too expensive to be commercially viable, even with inflation-adjusted price guarantees which protect suppliers against intermittency and supply chain problems”.

This is partly about the rapidly rising cost of initial production: “cheap” wind was to some extent a function of low interest rates, low labour costs and low commodity prices. But it is also a question of ongoing costs – offshore turbines may last more like ten years than 25 – and about the cost of intermittency (the backup energy required when the wind isn’t blowing). The UK has poured a lot of energy and effort into making wind the answer to the energy transition. But, says Norris, that renewable energy is both more expensive and less useful than most people think. As a result, fossil fuels, like it or not, aren’t going anywhere.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.