In the global scramble for power, Europe is having to rethink its entire approach towards energy security. Many countries – like the UK – have imposed strict net zero targets while the superpowers – China and the United States – dash for energy dominance, whether it be through the flooding of renewables supply chains or the call to ‘drill, baby, drill’. But economic growth and technological innovation everywhere will require massive amounts of power to support electrification, data centres, re-industrialisation, and new infrastructure. Energy has long been a critical part of geopolitical competition. It has allowed the stratospheric improvements in global living standards since the 19th century.
Britain stands out as a remarkable example in this story. It has experienced rapid de-industrialisation that owes much more to post-2000s decarbonisation than the free market reforms of the 1980s. There is a growing consensus that Europe needs to rebuild its productive capacity if it is going to keep up with China and the US, but Britain is starting from a disturbingly low base. This is astonishing for the country that once led the world in industrialisation. The truth is that the industrial revolution and Britain’s 18th-century geopolitical rise could not have happened without energy abundance.
In the popular imagination of many on the British right, the industrial revolution was the product of laissez-faire liberalism and free trade, reaching its zenith in the mid-Victorian afterglow of Palmerston and Gladstone. But industrialisation occurred in a country that was economically nationalist, using the Navigation Acts to protect British trade, stimulating credit through a large National Debt and the Bank of England, and raising significant revenue through the Excise to help fund public infrastructure. This framework, the ‘fiscal-military state’ as historian John Brewer called it, was designed to give Britain the necessary stamina to support the heavy costs of waging almost constant war against France, while having certain side benefits for nascent British industry.
