Report of a Harkness Centenary Discussion on the challenges in energy policy, which took place on
Tuesday 23rd September 2025.
The new government has pledged to make the UK a “clean energy superpower”, but what does that mean in reality? And will it turn out to be any more successful than previous governments’ pronouncements? And ultimately are we doing enough to address a fundamental energy shortfall or will the lights soon go out in the UK?
Harkness Fellow Anna Dixon led a conversation between Harkness Fellows Dr Robert Barr, Sir Steven Cowley and Michael Liebreich, followed by general discussion with participants.
The meeting heard that companies were already turning their backs on the UK due to energy prices but advances in green technology could soon become a gamechanger.
Sir Steven Cowley, the first of three experts to speak to Fellows, said downward trends in renewable energy costs meant that wind power was already a more cost-effective way to make energy than oil in the famously fossil fuel-centric state of Texas. And that this was important because cheaper energy – rather than moral arguments – would be the biggest driver of tackling climate change in the US. And yet the costs involved in building green architecture meant that there no quick wins just yet. He recently he spoke to an industrialist who was moving their company to Oklahoma because the cost of energy is less than in Lincolnshire and that this was tragedy for the UK, 
“Investment decisions will be made on the cost of energy and where to place manufacturing plants or activity. …… It is critical that we decarbonize our energy system and critical that we make sure energy is affordable.”
The problem, he said, was intermittency of supply – characterised as being a month in the UK when there is little wind and even less sun, December. There were two ways to deal with this – both of which he is involved in through the Faraday Institution. The first is developing short-term batteries that store energy but storage was currently measured in minutes rather than days or months and that something better and cheaper was needed. The second is an energy source that can be turned on and off as required. The UK Government had invested in a small number of Small Modular Reactors which are nuclear systems easily made in factories. This would supercharge Britain to be in the vanguard of green power, he added. However, the real hope was nuclear fusion, with international collaboration. There was a plan to get a pilot plant into the UK as early as the 2030s. It would be the first electricity to be generated from fusion, he said, but added that it was a long way from generating enough to make money from.
Michael Liebreich, who was in New York for Climate Week, joined the conversation. He agreed that fusion was an exciting area but said it remained aspirational.
Michael gave an overview of the world’s energy economy. He said that we were in an era of energy price inflation and that the UK was feeling it more than most because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, self-imposed energy ambitions and what he described as mistakes as to how to get to net zero.
It was clear that the US had decided to be a “petro state” with some aspirational nuclear. It was not interested in climate, wanted energy dominance and abundance and that the answer was fossil fuels. China on the other hand, where there is less natural resource, are electrifying and had been dubbed the first “electro state” with 30 per cent electrification already – compared to 20 per cent in the US and Europe. Europe was described as a “headless chicken state” somewhere in between China and America with “lots of aspiration but no execution”.
The rest of the world therefore was facing a decision. Did it align with America and go mainly fossil while “doing a bit of clean stuff to keep China, the UN and the liberals on board” or buy cheap electric vehicles, solar and wind from China?
He answered his own question saying that he thought that the rest of the world would go down the electrical route because it was inexpensive – but that “they would buy enough liquid gas to keep America happy”. Noting that the UK had decarbonised faster than other countries, even when taking account of deindustrialisation, he added there is too much reliance on the assumption that because wind and solar became cheaper over time, other sources will too. This will not be the case with hydrogen. UK energy policy is weak, for example decisions such as Sizewell C at vast unaccounted for costs, or the lack of an electrification plan regarding the grid.
Dr Robert Barr, chair of a community energy company in Cheshire, was then asked to speak. He had been a councillor and cabinet member for housing in his area and was responsible for building social housing with solar panels to “put money into tenants’ pockets”. The focus of his comments was on local action and reduction in the use of energy as well as better forms of energy generation. When tenants were asked what they wanted, it was energy-efficient houses and expenditure has been focused on solar panels, double glazing and insulation. Bob had also helped set up both an energy reduction company and a community interest company which put solar panels on local schools – saving each an average of £10,000 a year.
It was this community way of doing things that he saw as having an important role in the future. However, this can be a deeply frustrating process. Planning applications had taken five years as a result of regular changes in regulation, although recent changes under the new Government had meant that it was now much easier to get planning permission for green energy production. Funding for energy reduction projects, an energy company obligation, was ceased in 2015, undermining small businesses that had made good progress in the 3-4 years before. “We should be looking at microscale rather than worrying about generating more,” he said. He suggested energy bills might be open to the public so people could compare their usage.
Anna Dixon noted that there is much food for thought in what had been said already, and that some issues such as carbon capture or imports for biomass generators can be controversial. She then opened the discussion up to the floor for comments and questions. The first Fellow questioned whether it was really possible to transition to green energy without any cost – something some politicians appeared to be promising. The next asked for assessment of the politics of anti-climate science while another, raising the commercial aspects and quoting the ‘Experience Curve’ (Growth drives costs down) hoped that the UK wouldn’t fall into the trap of developing something (SMRs) that it fails to recognise could be scaled up globally.
The December question was raised again and someone asked whether there was a danger of the UK getting to net zero but its manufacturing sector dying in the process. A focus on the concerns of young people about climate change was proposed.
Steven was the first to comment. He said that if the small modular reactors were tested satisfactorily and the costs came down they would be exportable to the world and deployable.
On the December question he said that this worried him and that there wasn’t a good solution yet but that even if we ended up covering 95 per cent of energy need with green power and had to use gas turbines occasionally, we would have made a lot of progress. And he said that a green economy could have major benefits for all. It will cost, but “If you spend [money] building windmills in Bradford that’s different from spending your money in Saudi Arabia on a shipload of oil,” he said.
“A properly managed energy transition can be very stimulating for the economy.”
Anna tackled the political question. She said the political right in the UK were not so much climate sceptics as net zero sceptics as they thought it might make everyone poorer. This is why progressive politicians such as herself talked about a just or fair transition to net zero. On anti-science rhetoric, she said that it was the reality that this was in the background and that we must keep making the scientific arguments to reduce carbon emissions.
Michael said part of the political problem was that the difference between cost and investment was not recognised. The Climate Change Committee work has time limits which preclude recognition that green energy costs dropped significantly after the infrastructure had been made. And while he agreed with Steven that we needed to address the December issue with gas, he cautioned against seeing small modular reactors as a solution worldwide as wind and solar were already much more ahead.
Robert said that he believed that there was a big role for communities and with the right governmental policies, the better off in society would contribute on a personal basis. There is enthusiasm to invest in local projects, but he added that the people he worried about “…..are those choosing between heating and eating…. They are going to need help.” Social tariffs had been mentioned, but another idea is to have tariffs that rise with usage.More comments came from the floor about the role of carbon capture, whether the legal process in the form of judicial review would slow down climate change progress and if existing pylons could handle an inevitable increase in electricity transmission caused by housing need.
One fellow asked whether it might be helpful to try to take the politics out of the energy transition debate, such was its importance to the country, to reduce the impact of short political time horizons. Another highlighted that most of the debate is on generation, when transmission and distribution were the key issue, with housing developments delayed by lack of access to the grid. Robert suggested a need of microgeneration over wide areas, rather than concentrated generation in few areas.
Michael emphasised the importance of gas usage being flexible; small facilities that can be used as gas is needed for the December problem, not massive expensive systems that have to be kept on once started. The UK is not sitting on endless supplies of gas. Carbon capture could be used in small industrial settings but is not a quick fix.
Looking to the future, Steven said China was pioneering advanced manufacturing in the electric car market, making vehicles at half the price of a Tesla. If these principles could be applied to manufacturing or building of large infrastructure projects the energy transition could be “hugely smoothed” he said. “We are starting to see robot bricklayers, robot concrete pourers – the mechanisation of the construction industry – and if we can bring down the costs of installing wind turbines, building electric trains, all these kind of things, then our future would be more secure.”
Speaker biographies
Moderator Anna Dixon (HF 2005-6) is the MP for Shipley. She has worked at a national level on the NHS and social care over the past 20 years, influenced national plans and secured changes to policy on housing, employment support and industrial strategy. She chaired an independent commission on reimagining care set up by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and has held senior roles at Helpforce, The King’s Fund, the Department of Health, and Centre for Ageing Better.
Dr Robert Barr OBE (HF 1992-3) is an urban and social geographer specialising in geographic information. His Harkness Fellowship was based at the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis University of California Santa Barbara 1992-1993. Robert was awarded an OBE for services to Geography in 2008 and is a visiting professor at Liverpool University. He is currently chair of Lymm Community Energy and previously chaired Caribou, an affordable warmth company founded by two major housing associations.
He spent 18 years as a councillor on Warrington Borough Council, including a period as Cabinet Member responsible for housing, that saw a substantial proportion of Warrington’s housing fitted with solar panels and other energy saving measures.
Sir Steven Cowley, (HF 1981-3) a theoretical physicist and international authority on fusion energy, became the seventh Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and a Princeton professor of astrophysical sciences in 2018. Steven was previously president of Corpus Christi College and professor of physics at the University of Oxford, chief executive officer of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and head of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. He earned his doctorate at Princeton University in astrophysical sciences in 1985 and was a staff scientist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1987 to 1993. From 2011 to 2017 he was a member of the UK prime-minister’s Council on Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and was knighted in June 2018.
Michael Liebreich (HF 1988-9) is managing partner of EcoPragma Capital and CEO of Liebreich Associates. He is an honorary fellow of the Energy Institute and visiting professor at Imperial College London. Former roles include member of the UK’s Taskforce on Energy Efficiency, chairing the subgroup on industry, an advisor to the UK Board of Trade, an advisor to the UN on Sustainable Energy for All, a member of the board of Transport for London and founder of BloombergNEF. Michael is a sought-after keynote speaker and panelist on all matters relating to the net zero transition. During the pandemic of 2020 where travel was restricted, Michael started a podcast and YouTube channel called Cleaning Up, where he hosts in-depth conversations with leaders and experts in climate change and its potential solutions. Michael serves on too many advisory boards to list, is a prolific speaker and writer, and is known to make