I’ve seen how Ed Miliband’s net zero dream turns into a nightmare. It will destroy Britain

Our proud nation is being martyred on the altar of green by our energy secretary – it’s only a matter of time until it blows up in his face

Breaking news: a fire at a giant solar farm in East Anglia is raging out of control after a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion. Two nearby villages were evacuated last night as toxic gases, vapours and particulates filled the air. Fire chiefs warned residents who had not been evacuated to stay indoors. There was particular concern today for children at a local primary school and residents of a care home. Two boys, both asthmatic, were hospitalised after parents said they had suffered breathing difficulties.
One of the major hazards of lithium fires is the formation of “smokes” of nanoparticles of lithium oxide and lithium hydroxide, an extremely hazardous lung irritant. Lithium battery fires also emit hazardous pollutants like hydrogen fluoride which causes serious burns. The explosion at the solar farm, which was bitterly opposed by local residents but went ahead after gaining approval from Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is believed to have damaged the integrity of neighbouring containers. This led to an alarming chain reaction known as “thermal runway.” Witnesses reported that trees and vegetation around the solar facility had set alight over a wide area causing a stampede of hundreds of pigs at one of Suffolk’s major pork producers.   
Scientists say there is virtually no way to put out a lithium-battery fire. The advice is to “let it burn” or to try and use huge volumes of water to cool the surrounding modules. Fire officers, who had objected to the 2,500-acre solar farm on safety grounds, indicated that the latter course was extremely problematic because they did not have access to that much water on site. Even if they did, it could pose a major environmental risk as water containing many harmful carcinogenic chemicals would run onto farmland and contaminate protected habitats, a reservoir and springs supplying water for human consumption.
When Mr Miliband rushed through the approval of the solar farm last year, boasting that it took him just three days to approve three of these giant solar farms across the UK, West Suffolk’s Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, said he thought the decision was “quite disgraceful and quite arrogant”. However, Mr Miliband said: “Solar power is crucial to achieving net zero, providing an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy… This is the speed we’re working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kickstart green economic growth.”
One angry local campaigner said yesterday that the dangers of lithium-ion batteries had failed to be communicated to the public. “Building solar farms on actual farms, depriving us of agricultural land to grow food, in the race to net zero is crazy. If you ask me, Ed Miliband is a dangerous nutter.”
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero refused to comment.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and a very cold welcome to Lemming Britain. I expect the sharp-eyed among you deduced that the catastrophic scenario outlined above has not happened. Well, not yet anyway. It may sound as far-fetched as that ludicrous BBC One drama about a runaway sleeper train (the train works perfectly and passengers are not subjected to the three worst words in the English language: Rail Replacement Bus. Er, hello?), but I didn’t make this story up. Peter Edwards, emeritus professor of inorganic chemistry at Oxford University, and other senior scientists who know about this technology, provided me with precise details of what could happen if a lithium-ion battery exploded on a solar farm. Prof Edwards says it’s not a question of if such a disaster occurs in the UK, but when. (A few days ago in Montreal, 15,000 kg of lithium batteries inside a shipping container caught fire sending toxic gas over the city. San Diego is contemplating a temporary pause on applications for new battery energy storage systems – BESS – until more stringent building and safety codes are in place.) 
The British Safety Council recently reported that lithium-ion batteries are “a growing fire risk” with British fire services attending 46 per cent more blazes linked to BESS in the past year.
But this is not about lithium-ion batteries, hazardous though they are. Nor is it about the carpeting of this green and pleasant land with a billion ghastly Chinese baking trays. They are simply two examples of the way Ed Miliband is endangering the UK. The man is a menace, frankly. If it were ever in any doubt, shocking events this week have proved that the job title Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is an oxymoron. Net zero is the enemy of energy security.
Try talking about energy security in Port Talbot, in my part of South Wales, where the Tata Steel works just shut down with the loss of 2,800 jobs. Good jobs that provided a decent wage for breadwinners and kept that proud community alive. With the closure of Port Talbot, we are no longer able to make high-calibre steel, the basic material for our own defence. India, where entirely by coincidence Tata (checks notes), just opened a blast furnace of the type they closed in Wales, and, of course, China (3,092 coal-fired power stations), will be selling us all our steel in future. Because importing steel from thousands of miles away is not environmentally unfriendly in the slightest.   
The Port Talbot plant’s fate was sealed by the soaring cost of UK electricity, the most expensive in the developed world, according to government figures. The price of power for industrial businesses has jumped a staggering 124 per cent in five years, repelling international investors. Thanks to Ed and his sanctimonious, middle-class, knit-your-own-orgasm chums, the country that gave the world its Industrial Revolution due to our coal and steel now no longer produces either.
It’s unbelievable. On Monday, in a “landmark moment for clean energy,” the last coal-fired power station in Britain, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, in Nottinghamshire, closed. (Compare and contrast, if you will, with Germany where the government has just announced that it will not pull forward the country’s coal power phase-out to 2030 from the officially agreed exit date of 2038. Something to do with not being criminally insane or indifferent to their country’s competitiveness, I guess).
The closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station is an historic moment in our energy history.Today we pay tribute to the workers who powered our country, and recognise the critical role they can play in our energy future. pic.twitter.com/NqRP4gRXXd
The Nottinghamshire power station had been held in reserve in recent years in case of “generational challenges,” such as a cold winter. Never fear! Mad Miliband has banished cold winters through a simple expedient. A vast bonfire will be created of clothes donated to senior Labour figures by Lord Waheed Alli. Any pensioners who freeze to death because they lost their winter fuel allowance will be thrown on the national bonfire, an environmentally friendly way to dispose of pesky Conservative voters. 
But what about the emissions, I hear you cry. Good question! Ed will be able to deal with those through a Carbon Offsetting Scheme specially designed for green multi-millionaires and climate hypocrites who currently enjoy hefty bungs from the unsuspecting British taxpayer in order to make renewables look viable.
Closing our last coal-fired power station was just ideological posturing. It enables Miliband to boast at international summits that we are taking a “global lead on climate action” and “winning the race to net zero.” Hmmm. Can you actually be described as winning a race which no other country is stupid enough to enter? 
I bet you’re as relieved as I am that we turned off our ability to make our own electricity with coal and we can now pay extortionate prices for gas to generate electricity. Particularly in the light of the Labour Government’s pledge to block new licences to explore oil and gas fields in the North Sea. Offshore firms and the GMB trade union said this week that this risks North Sea job losses on “a scale similar to closing the Grangemouth oil refinery nearly every week for five years”. The oil and gas sector, which, not incidentally, generates a huge slice of our tax revenue, is “facing a cliff-edge” for investment, production and jobs.
Oh, yes, it’s all going brilliantly in Milibandland. Our energy security is now totally dependent on imported gas, our construction industry is entirely dependent on imported steel. Now, take an educated guess at who has the solar panel, wind turbine and electric vehicle market stitched up? The best bit, I think, is that, were we ever to go to war with China, most of the kit we need to fight China will have to be provided by – oh, dear – China. (Perhaps South Wales manufacturing world-class steel was not such a bad idea after all).
It’s a joke alright, but it’s not funny. Thanks to the net zero obsession of Ed and an elite green class who are creaming off vast fortunes (an investigation published this week by the website Unherd even suggested that David Miliband was profiting from green energy policies introduced by his brother) as a nation we are now uniquely vulnerable to turbulent international conditions. And at the mercy of our neighbours to keep the lights on. (Yesterday, 13 per cent of our electricity came from Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands – so much for energy security).
One consolation in Lemming Britain is that Mad Miliband’s green revolution promises to drive down energy bills for families. Which is quite surprising when they leapt up by £149 today after the new price cap from Ofgem came into force. (A typical home will now pay £1,717 on energy bills a year, up from £1,568). 
Wasn’t there something Sir Keir Starmer and Ed said during the general election campaign about cutting £300 off our energy bills? While other countries reduce theirs ours go up and up as we try to hit the net zero target as fast as possible.
In this epic farce, the greatest absurdity of all is that, even if we got to net zero, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the atmosphere. In The Periodic Table, Primo Levi called CO2 “the aerial form of carbon”. It simply doesn’t respect national boundaries.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a strong sense of déjà vu. As figures like Sir Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson begin cautiously to admit to doubts about the wisdom of lockdowns, net zero looks a lot like the Covid fiasco. Ignorant politicians push blatant scientific absurdities onto a population scared witless by hyped-up propaganda without paying any heed to the long-term cost to the country.
In his immensely readable memoir, Unleashed, Boris rather gives the game away. “Contrary to the belief of many of my Tory friends,” he writes, “there just aren’t enough votes in being anti-net zero. Look at the polls!”
Well, I reckon the polls could change drastically if the British people were only allowed to wake up to the fact that their country is being martyred on the altar of net zero. What an ignoble, impoverished fate awaits us. We are well on the way to ending up as Theme Park Britain. All our heavy industry gone, our proud history of manufacturing gone, our steel, our coal, our skilled workers sold out, our prosperity castrated, the stuff we buy made and brought in from overseas. The one thing we are left shipping abroad is our CO2 emissions.
This is one of the most disastrous mistakes in our history. I mean that. 
If the Government continues to follow Mad Ed down this reckless, destructive path it will serve them right when net zero blows up like lithium batteries in Labour’s face.