The Joy of Industrial Planning
It’s possible that there could be a bestseller here. An illustrated version for the nightstand of budding socialists everywhere. And here’s the sort of joy of planning that could be included:
…Teesworks, a 4,500-acre development on a site that was once the beating heart of the northeast steelmaking sector. These days it is one of Europe’s biggest brownfield sites — but one that could soon be playing host to a £100 billion scheme designed to be Britain’s answer to Silicon Valley.
So, a massive AI data centre. Or:
Standing in the way of this technological transformation is an unlikely coalition between energy secretary Ed Miliband and oil giant BP. And given the sums involved, this is not a local issue. It has sparked a big rift within the cabinet — one that left Miliband perilously close to being sacked.
BP wants to build a large-scale blue hydrogen production facility called H2Teesside.
Some hydrogen production.
As an aside - a bit of foreplay about planning perhaps - BP has been trying to do this for decades. Split natural gas into H2 and CO2 and inject the CO2 into old oil wells. This will pump up the last of the oil which aids in paying for the scheme. Gordon Brown killed one attempt at this by insisting that those last drops of oil squeezed out must pay full tax - a demand which made the entire scheme uneconomic and so it hasn’t happened as yet. So this, err, foreplay has been going on for decades already. Longer than most marriages in fact.
But back to today.
The entirety of this planning decision is a political fight between politicians. Absolutely no attention is being paid to which will work, only to which achieves a particular political vision. Which is why planning is bad, of course. Because no attention is paid to anything like viability, good sense or economics but to whatever sugar plums are dancing in the Minister’s head.
There is also this:
At the heart of this was transforming the former steelworks — by then, a toxic wasteland the size of Gibraltar
Gib is 6.8 km2. The UK is 209,331 km2. We are therefore 30, 784 minus change Gibraltars. But we have a “planning system” so stupid that apparently this is the only site either, both or none of these schemes can be put upon. Why not just stand back, leave both to be built wherever and let the capitalists make or lose money as the market determines?
That joy of industrial planning, eh? Lots of talk about it and nothing ever happens - reminds of certain teenage years as does the socialist delusion about planning of course. So an entire book of economicus interruptus with no actual conclusion. A bestseller, surely?
Tim Worstall