The Government’s willingness to reopen the debate on UK shale is encouraging. But it’s unlikely to go anywhere now the anti-fracking narrative is so embedded. Even onshore wind is being held back for fear of a Nimby backlash, even though polling shows it to be hugely popular. 

This is worrying because for every alternative energy source that is dismissed or held back, we risk targets slipping in the few that remain.

UK electricity is supposed to be 95pc low-carbon by 2030, yet it is just 45pc today. Even if breathtakingly ambitious targets on solar and offshore wind are achieved, another 16 gigawatts will be needed to plug the gap. That’s five more Hinkley Cs, or 36 modular nuclear reactors. 

Even if Johnson and Kwarteng hold their nerve on the nuclear front against the inevitable pushback, making the numbers add up is not going to be easy. For example, the Government has set a new 50 gigawatt target for offshore wind by 2030. 

Yet there was already a real risk that the old target of 40 gigawatts was going to be missed, with the industry facing lengthy delays and cost inflation due to Covid. How is the Government going to make sure we hit the new targets? What is the back-up plan if we don’t? It’s not clear.

All this reflects a tendency in British energy policy to skirt inconvenient numbers. Getting to net zero by 2050 is a classic example. When it became law in 2019, official cost estimates averaged £1.8 trillion. 

This is not a comfortable number for politicians to bandy about: it’s equivalent to 83pc of pre-Covid GDP. The last policy commitment of comparable magnitude was probably the Second World War. 

Even now, there is a reluctance to talk through the implications of things like switching to heat pumps. This makes progress all the harder to deliver. If electric vehicle uptake targets for 2030 are achieved, the grid will need an extra 3 gigawatts of capacity. 

So that’s one of the new nuclear plants spoken for. Is that being factored into our wider attempts to keep the lights on? Again, it’s not clear.    

Joined-up thinking has not just been lacking within energy policy; there is also a disconnect with foreign policy. 

Consider the rare earth elements integral to green tech. China controls 35pc of reserves, supplies 90pc of refined rare earths and manufactures 70pc of the rare earths magnets as used in wind turbines. 

Past energy policy has left us overly exposed to countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. Our new strategy risks transferring that exposure to China. 

In fairness, navigating the energy policy trilemma – security, price, carbon – is not easy. But when we fail to face up to the problems, we get the current cost of living crisis, three decades in the making. 

Although disappointing, the energy security strategy at least represents an attempt at long-term strategic thinking. And we need more of this in energy policy, for if policymakers across the political spectrum don’t learn from past mistakes, consumers will be condemned to eye-watering energy bills for years to come. 

Karl Williams is a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank