Dear Prime Minister – I Think We Need To Do Something About These Energy Companies

Hello Prime Minister,

It is I, the Energy Minister. I’m sorry I’ve been incognito for so long, especially when energy prices and companies have featured so heavily in the news in recent weeks. It’s that time of year you see, whee I had to use all my excess leave up. You know how it is, use it or lose it. We’re just blessed with so much annual leave that I don’t know what to do with half the time. I’m not sure how I’m going to use the additional days we might get soon.

Anyway, I thought I’d write to you about my thoughts around these energy companies hiking prices up like they’re all in a race with each other. I’m not too worried now that these companies are vowing to freeze prices at some undisclosed point in the future but I was having a bit of a ponder whilst sitting in my hammock on the beach wondering if there’s anything else we could do and I did a bit of googling.

We could look into renewable energy!

Now bear with me Prime Minister, I know we’re already doing bits of it but our 3 main sources of energy are still coal, gas and nuclear and, to be honest, how long is that really going to last even with all the extra fracking we want to do? (I was going to title this email “What the frack” at first but changed my mind. Hoho).

I did a bit of googling and found that so many countries do it on massive scale out there. Some countries even use renewable energy as their main source. Imagine that!

China is apparently number 1 for it. They have this huge dam called the Three Gorges Dam which is the largest power station in the world for producing energy. That sounds impressive, no? Then it came to me one day. We’re a country that is surrounded by water. Surrounded! Maybe we should look to invest a bit more in the production of Hydro power. What do you think?

Seeing as we’re fast becoming good friends with China what do you think if we spent a bit of time with them and picked up some tips about how we could improve our own renewable sources?

If you don’t fancy flying that far (carbon footprint and all that), then never fear. There are others in the top 10 list of countries with highest volumes of renewable energy.

1. China
2. United States
3. Brazil
4. Canada
5. Russia
6. India
7. Germany
8. Norway
9. Japan
10. Spain

Who knew some of those would be so close by. And I know it’s not in the Top 10 but I’ve read that Iceland produces so much energy from geothermal and hydro power that not only does it make up 100% of their electrical supply but they even export it. To other countries! And this isn’t a new concept. Other countries do it too. Norways another big exporter.

Wow, who’d have thunk it.

I know you’re really busy and always looking to serve the hardworking people so I was wondering whether you could have a bit of word with the Chancellor and agree to invest some money into looking into more renewable energy sources for our little country.

I think one of main concerns is that we don’t seem to be planning for the longer term, for our children’s grandchildren. And let’s face it, we could be a lot greener, right?

Anyhoo, I best get back to taking my annual leave. Look forward to hearing from you soon,

Kind regards,
The Energy Minister

This is fictional. Well, the facts are correct. The energy minister didn’t write this.