We could hardly have made a bigger pig’s ear of our domestic energy policy had we tried. The crisis in Ukraine has exposed the flaws, mistakes and downright complacency that has been evident for years to everyone except politicians desperate to burnish their green credentials whatever the cost.

The so-called “net zero” commitment was the last act of Theresa May before she stepped down as prime minister in July 2019 but has been enthusiastically endorsed by her successor in a series of speeches and announcements. Until now, that is. Boris Johnson says there needs to be a new supply strategy in response to the energy crunch caused by Russia’s invasion, and he wants a temporary “climate change pass” to help manage the difficulties it has caused.

Apparently this does not entail changing the 2050 target but rather ramping up oil and gas production in Europe so that countries such as Germany and Italy are less dependent on Russian supplies.

He vouchsafed his new approach in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and the German publication Die Welt last week. “We need a collective European strategy and a Western strategy to diversify away from this dependence,” Johnson reportedly said. “There are other sources … in North America, in Canada, in the Gulf.”

And in the UK, he might have added, but didn’t. Here, in a nutshell, was Britain’s green policy: we can make commitments to decarbonise our own energy supplies while importing the same products from other countries.

It is the antithesis of energy security: a reliance on others to provide fuel for industry, heating and motoring while ignoring the available resources under our own feet. It is telling that on his list of alternatives is the Gulf, hardly the most stable of regions. Britain relies on liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar to supplement pipeline supplies from Norway and the EU. This market-based import strategy follows the deliberate run-down of our own reserves, even though gas accounts for 40 per cent of UK electricity generation and heats the majority of homes. 

It assumes unimpeded supply while anticipating price volatility caused by circumstances. So the recent spike in prices was caused not by Russia but by the recovery of the world economy after the “unforeseen” Covid pandemic. 

This has now been exacerbated by fears of an embargo on Russian gas and oil which has seen market prices soar to unprecedented levels, even though European leaders are determined to resist emulating the import ban announced by President Biden last night.

It is all well and good relying on LNG from Qatar, but if there were tensions in the Gulf between Israel and Iran over nuclear weapons, Tehran could block the Straits of Hormuz, stopping supplies of LNG.

Anyone who says this is an unlikely scenario was presumably offering assurances to all who would listen that Russian would never invade Ukraine. The point is that you never know what might happen, which is why we need to secure our own supplies as much as possible.

Yet it is instructive to look back at the debates in the Commons on the legislation to impose carbon reduction targets. You will find precious little discussion about the likely impact on price or supply. The 2008 Climate Change Act was opposed by precisely five Conservative MPs, denounced as “flat-earthers”, even by their own side, for deigning to ask whether the strategy was sensible.

It committed the UK to reduce emissions by 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050, which was increased from a previous target of 60 per cent with hardly any debate. All that seemed to matter was that Britain was the “first country” in the world to adopt such a target, that this was a “landmark” moment and a “unique” measure. Its ramifications were simply trampled under a stampede of virtue signallers.

The target was increased to 100 per cent by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, a statutory instrument that went through the Commons after a 90-minute debate. This is how matters of great strategic import are handled in this country – and not only here, it must be said. If you think our policy is bad, just look at Germany’s, where the madcap decision to dismantle its entire nuclear power programme is now being reversed.

Mr Johnson’s new supply strategy, to be published “in days”, will give the go-ahead to North Sea oil and gas fields that have been awaiting approval but will only now get it because foreseeable events have come to pass. This strategy should also remove the moratorium on shale gas extraction, or fracking, but almost certainly won’t, denying the country an energy source that Mr Johnson himself once saw as our salvation.

It should include a feasibility study of thorium-based nuclear reactors, using a fuel which is cleaner, cheaper and safer than uranium but which has always been blocked on cost grounds.

It should include proper storage facilities: the decision to close the Rough facility in the North Sea and rely on contracted deliveries or the spot market was a massive mistake. It should include a re-examination of tidal barrage power dismissed in the past as too expensive but which looks cheap compared with the likely long-term costs of oil and gas.

Tides in the UK are higher than almost anywhere in the world and can be harnessed every day under any conditions, unlike solar or wind power. The sea will rise and fall with metronomic precision twice a day until the Earth stops spinning and the Moon drops out of the sky.

As an example of procrastination, the approach to tidal power takes some beating. The Severn Barrage, an engineering project to harness the tidal energy of Britain’s longest river and produce enough electricity to power all of Wales, was originally proposed in 1925, only to be shelved because, at £25 million, it was considered too expensive.

In 1971, it was estimated that a barrage could be built at a cost £500  million. But since North Sea oil and gas was coming on stream there was no incentive to invest in tidal power. Various proposals have been put forward recently, both on the Severn and in Swansea Bay, but the cost is estimated in the billions of pounds and is opposed on environmental grounds. We reap what we sow.