The fuel crisis reminds us how dependent we are on carbon-based energy

Petrol shortages have incentivised switching to electric vehicles but when supplies have stabilised this momentum will dissipate. It’s up to the government to put an end to our reliance on climate-damaging energy

Lord Goldsmith is right that the crisis has reminded us vividly of our reliance on carbon-based energy (AFP via Getty)

The petrol shortage is a “pretty good lesson on the need to unhook ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels”, says environment minister Zac Goldsmith in an interview with The Independent today. He is right that the crisis has reminded us vividly of our reliance on carbon-based energy – and that it might have prompted some people who are considering switching to an electric vehicle to get a move on.

Unfortunately, however, the shortage does little by itself to take us towards our national targets for cutting the output of greenhouse gases. There is plenty of petrol, but it is in the wrong places because of a shortage of lorry drivers to deliver it from refineries to petrol stations. This has been exacerbated by rational consumer behaviour – sometimes misdescribed as “panic buying” – in the expectation of local shortages.

The immediate problem will presumably sort itself out in a matter of days, although the shortage of lorry drivers is likely to continue to cause problems in this as in other industries. So the lessons of the crisis are likely to be short-lived, and in any case are not as clear-cut as Lord Goldsmith might want them to be. It is not as if people are urgently trying to buy petrol because they have no care for climate change and will now learn the error of their ways. As soon as supplies have stabilised, the imperative to switch to electric vehicles will dissipate. It is up to the government to put in place the long-term incentives that will decarbonise transport altogether.

Indeed, the lessons of the petrol shortage are similar to those of the natural gas shortage. That, too, reminds us of our dependence on fossil fuels, but is unlikely of itself to produce a long-term incentive to switch to low-carbon alternatives. The rise in natural gas prices could last for some time, but it does not reflect a shortage of reserves: it is more that the bounceback of the global economy after the coronavirus lockdowns has taken people by surprise. The rise in price is likely to have two incentive effects.

One might be that consumers will switch to electricity for home heating – electricity which is, in theory, capable of being produced using renewable sources. The trouble is that electric heat pumps are nowhere near mass-market viability, and that hydrogen, produced by electricity, is even further away. Meanwhile, the other incentive effect of high gas prices is that producers will increase supply, which will eventually result in lower prices but a higher output of carbon dioxide.

As Lord Goldsmith says in his interview, “This is a massive transition.” He says: “Everything is going to be affected by the need to reconcile our relationship with the natural world.” That means that the government will have to move further and faster to change those long-term incentives, to make it cheap and easy to switch to electric vehicles and low-carbon home heating. Those are not changes that will happen by relying on short-term crises to change behaviour.

And they will require unprecedented cooperation between governments of all nations, which is why the UN summit in Glasgow next month is so important. Lord Goldsmith candidly concedes that there is a “huge chasm between where we are, what we’re doing, and where we know we need to be”, and he says: “We’re not going to close it completely, obviously, by Cop26 – I wish we would, but we’re not going to – but I think we are going to take some really big steps forward.”

The petrol and natural gas shortages illustrate well how dependent modern societies are on carbon-based energy, and how little progress has been made in weaning us off it despite impressive advances in wind power and the decline of coal. Global carbon dioxide emissions are still rising rather than falling: Lord Goldsmith’s friend Boris Johnson needs to rally world leaders behind a plan to put the planet on a different course.