Gordon Brown wants oil-rich states to invest in Britain's renewable power projects as a long-term solution to the world fuel price crisis. At the Jeddah eneergy conference in Saudi Arabia this week, the Prime Minster said that it would cost the UK £100bn to meet its 2020 target of having 15% of its power supply from alternative energy sources, and he hoped that some of this investment could come from the Middle East.
I'm not sure this is altogether a good idea. With our gas supplies under threat from Russia and other unsavoury East European regimes, and our oil supplied by countries that are often even more unsavoury and even less democratic, energy security is something to worry about. If Middle East governments are going to be controlling large stakes in the nation's alternative sources, it's out of the frying pan into the fire. I'm surprised that the backbench MPs who are trying to derail the plans to build new UK nuclear power stations don't understand that.
