When Donald Trump attacked Iran in February this yr, and Iran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, it despatched shockwaves by the worldwide economic system. Fossil fuels from the Gulf couldn’t be shipped out. Oil and fuel costs shot up.
And now our power payments are rising once more. The primary ripples of the battle have begun washing up on the shores of the UK economic system – whereas we’ve barely recovered from the cost-of-living disaster brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However this isn’t the primary power disaster the UK’s skilled, nor the second nor the third. For the final hundred years, our historical past has been repeatedly punctuated by crises, from the blistering chilly winter of 1947 to the Suez disaster of 1956 and the three-day week of the Seventies.
So, is there a thread connecting these occasions? Why has the UK repeatedly did not construct a resilient power system? And what do we have to do to verify the lights don’t exit in future?
I needed to dig into these questions on Shockwave: a miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks: how have power crises have formed our economic system, and what do we have to do to shockproof our power system for an more and more unstable world?
I’ll be joined by New Economics Basis economists Dr Alex Chapman and Jaya Sood, and author and tutorial Gareth Fearn, to search out the solutions to my questions.
Tune in to the primary episode and subscribe on all good podcast apps, so that you by no means miss an episode. And observe the podcast on Instagram and TikTok at @neweconomicspod.
