April 21, 2017
Imagining a Non-Nuclear World
I found myself laughing rather too enthusiastically at a couple of jokes on last week’s Now Show (on Radio 4) about Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Laughing in the face of the…
April 11, 2017
The Terminal State of the US Nuclear Industry
It’s quite something to find myself in a country where nuclear power is even more of a basket case than it is in the UK – and that of course is the United States of America. Not…
March 9, 2017
Nuclear Weapons, Donald Trump and ‘Playing with Fire’
There are so many reasons to be apprehensive about the Trump Presidency that it’s hard to know which ones really matter, and which are just part of his unremitting campaign to…
February 20, 2017
Decommissioning in the North Sea: Rigs, Reefs, but not much Realism
We hear a lot these days about how the oil and gas industry is winding down in the North Sea – and so it is. Which means that huge numbers of rigs, pipelines and other offshore…
January 31, 2017
The Future Lies not in our Stars, but in our Sun (part 2)
I can’t help but think of the World Future Energy Summit as a great big oily bubble: despite the fact that the work of companies of every conceivable variety is on display in the…
January 31, 2017
The Future Lies not in our Stars, but in our Sun (part 3)
It’s precisely this combination of factors that has made my involvement in the amazing Zayed Future Energy Prize (as a member of its Selection Committee from its inception) so…
January 30, 2017
The Future Lies not in our Stars, but in our Sun (part 1)
For me, the annual World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi is the best possible place for trying to get my head around the global energy sector. And a strange and surprising place…
December 18, 2016
UK Government Off to Flying Start in Post-Paris Era!
You’ve got to hand it to this lot: when it comes to brazen, carbon-intensive balls, they’ve got ‘em! First out of the blocks was the heavily-whipped decision in Parliament on…
December 6, 2016
The Hinkley Horror Story: Don’t Mention the Waste!
I haven’t been able to bring myself to write anything about Hinkley Point since the UK Government gave the go-ahead on 15th September. I suppose I’ve lived for so long with the…
August 4, 2016
Hinkley Point, Greg Clark and the Fate of the Nation
On Friday last week, within a few hours of Greg Clark (Secretary of State at the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) announcing that the UK Government…