Two futures for Britain
Let's look at two Britains. In number 1 we allow fracking, approve data centres, modular nuclear reactors, reservoirs, and North Sea gas. In 2 we pursue net zero, don't allow fracking, or approve data centres, modular nuclear reactors, reservoirs, or North Sea gas. By 2050 how might the two differ?
By 2050 the two Britains are not slightly different versions of the same country. One has chosen to build and the other has chosen to import, and that choice compounds for 25 years.
Britain 1 has firm, domestic power. A fleet of small modular reactors supplies steady baseload from the late 2030s, with North Sea and shale gas covering the gaps when the wind drops. Britain 2 runs on wind and solar, and it leans on interconnectors, batteries and imported LNG whenever the weather disappoints.
Electricity demand roughly doubles by 2050 as heating and transport electrify. Britain 1 meets that with plants it owns. Britain 2 meets it with plants owned by Norway, France and Qatar. Britain's industrial electricity prices are already among the highest in the developed world. In Britain 2 that gap widens, and steel, chemicals, ceramics and glass leave the country entirely.
AI runs on data centres, and data centres run on cheap, reliable power. Britain 1 hosts them, captures the investment, and keeps sensitive computing on its own soil. Britain 2 writes excellent software that runs in Ireland, Virginia and the Netherlands. It keeps the university spin-outs but loses the scale-ups.
England hasn't opened a major reservoir since 1992, and the Environment Agency projects a shortfall of about five billion litres a day by the mid-2050s. Britain 1 builds reservoirs and can house a growing population. In Britain 2, water scarcity becomes a planning veto. Parts of Sussex are already blocking new homes on ‘water neutrality’ grounds, and Britain 2 extends that to half the South East. The housing crisis there is no longer about land. It's about liquid.
Britain 1 collects North Sea and shale tax revenues, keeps skilled jobs in Aberdeen and Lancashire, and grows a larger taxable base. Britain 2 pays for imports, subsidizes intermittency, and funds the welfare costs of deindustrialization. Over 25 years the difference in GDP could plausibly be several percentage points, enough to change what the country can afford for defence, health and pensions.
Britain 1 can take a gas shock or a hostile petrostate in its stride. Britain 2 has made its lights a matter of foreign policy.
Britain 2 reports lower territorial emissions, but much of that is accounting. Imported LNG carries a heavier carbon footprint than domestic gas. The factories and data centres don't vanish. They reopen in countries with dirtier grids. Britain produces about 1% of global emissions, so the climate barely registers the difference. Britain 1, with its nuclear fleet, might also have a cleaner grid than you'd expect.
Some caveats sharpen the case rather than blunt it. British shale may disappoint geologically, so its main value is optionality and price competition, not a guaranteed bonanza. The North Sea is a mature basin that declines either way. Licensing slows the fall but can't reverse it. SMRs won't deliver at scale before the mid-2030s, so the early years look similar in both Britains.
The divergence is back-loaded, and that's exactly why it gets underestimated.
By 2050 Britain 1 is richer, safer and wetter in the useful sense. Britain 2 has won the moral high ground, and it will need it, because that's the only thing it can still afford to heat.
Madsen Pirie