Reform Leader Tice Sets Out ‘Wartime’ Response to Energy Crisis: Fracking, Price Controls, Nationalisation

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 05: Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK, speaks during the Say no
Hollie Adams/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The right-populist Reform UK party, formerly the Brexit Party, wants “wartime” measures to stabilise the energy crisis, calling on the government to “take control of UK energy production pricing” in order to bring down prices for consumers.

Richard Tice, the businessman who succeeded Nigel Farage as the head of Reform UK, said that due to failures of successive governments to tap natural resources such as shale gas and oil in the North Sea, while pursuing ineffective energy sources such as wind, the United Kingdom has been left vulnerable to price shocks in the energy market in what he has dubbed a “global energy war”.

The Reform UK leader said that “until normal market conditions return” the government should step in and demand that British energy producers should be mandated by the government to sell to suppliers at the average price of last year — or face the prospect of being nationalised and taken over by the state.

In order to allow suppliers and providers to meet such demands, he called for a scrapping of the windfall tax on energy profits, given that the firms would no longer be reaping such high profits — and therefore need to have the financial flexibility to survive.

In his four-point plan to lower energy costs, Tice went on to call for the price cap on annual energy costs to return to around £1,750 per year, a cap on business energy rates of 35 pence per kilowatt hour, and for the government to provide direct assistance to the most vulnerable, such as pensioners.

While he hopes such measures could provide relief in the near term, the populist leader said that fundamental reforms must be taken to ensure that Britain can become energy independent and immune to international supply chain issues as in the case of the lockdown aftermath or the energy shocks in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine.

Tice therefore called for the government to offer financial incentives to communities in order to begin fracking operations to “level up by drilling down” and unlock the “treasure” that is the shale gas deposits, which Reform UK calculates could provide up to £1 trillion in energy.

Conversely, the plan called for an end to government subsidies for supposedly green energy sources such as wind and solar, which Tice said are “unreliable and expensive”, costing the taxpayer, per their calculations, approximately £10 billion per year, in addition to £5 billion in costs related to connecting such energy sources to the grid.

Tice noted that the cost of renewables has increased by an average of nine per cent per annum despite increased investment and output, while gas prices remained relatively steady until the war in Ukraine. Highlighting the persistent problem of intermittence, he said: “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow? Are we going to get the candles out?”

Furthermore, the populist party called for an increase in gas and oil exploration in the North Sea, the construction of new high-efficiency ‘combined cycle’ gas turbines in order to maximise efficiency, and speeding up the production of small modular nuclear power plants. Tice said that if the government followed this plan, the United Kingdom would begin seeing the benefits within three years, with full self-sufficiency within seven or ten years.

The Reform UK leader said the governing Conservative Party, which was thrown into the chaos of a leadership race following the ousting of Boris Johnson, has not provided the country with a long-term solution to the energy crisis, merely announcing some cash subsidies in the short term to ease the pressure of rising bills.

Similarly, Tice criticised the opposition Labour Party and Liberal Democrats for having short-sighted plans and a foolhardy faith in the ability of green energy to meet the needs of the country.

“We have to become self-reliant once again; we used to be, but the negligence of our senior politicians failed us,” he said.

“This solution is not easy, of course. It’s difficult, it requires determination, it requires courage, but that is what leadership is about in a difficult situation.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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