CHRIS HARRIS

Chris has had a one-to-one with a renewable energy specialist... and it went surprisingly well

“SEAGULLS ARE HORRIBLE, SO IF WIND TURBINES GET A FEW OF THEM, NO ONE WILL CARE”

I had a fascinating interview with a man from National Grid the other week. I’m wary of the more evangelical corners of the electric car brigade because, like all modern keyboard extremists who represent a fundamentally worthy cause – cyclists, environmentalists, anti-Kardashians – they can’t see that in being so angry about people who don’t see the world quite the way they do, they undermine the strength of their own message.

The electric car brigade can be pretty unpleasant online, so when TG asked me to sit with one, I asked some searching background questions about who he was and ensured I was wearing my lentil-proof jacket. That last bit isn’t true, but I have to conform to the stereotype the leccy fundamentalists have created for me, otherwise they get upset.

This meeting began very, very well when Graeme Cooper arrived in a beautiful Series 1 Elise, complete with Pistonheads sticker on the rear window. Unlike every previous confrontation of this type I’ve endured in the past – you can’t call them debates because the other party needs to vaguely listen to what you have to say to meet that definition – National Grid appeared to have sent a normal human being to talk to me.

And, wouldn’t you know it, he made sense. And he wasn’t threatening, or dismissive, or remotely sanctimonious. And he answered the one question we’ve all been asking, namely: how are you going to produce all of the extra electricity to run all these new electric cars that we’re being told we have to buy?

“Through renewables,” he said. And then he told me that the vast offshore wind farms being built would save the day. Seems that being an island nation has saved us from all sorts of tyranny over the millennia, and its latest gift is one of fossil-free energy production. Also, let’s face it, seagulls are horrible things, so if wind turbines get a few of them, no one will care.

So the power capacity is there, and this is excellent news. It also seems like the national grid is mainly staffed by sensible people like Graeme who also want to have a petrol-powered toy for occasional and weekend use – and he doesn’t see why that needs to be impossible. I’d like to share his positivity, but I fear that once the tipping point has been reached, fossil-fuelled machines might be banned forever.

But what about the bit between National Grid and your shiny new electric car? That’s a little less certain because this part of the process isn’t under state control, nor does it appear that the state wants anything to do with it. So, either the vast petro-chemical companies will have to reinvent themselves as plug manufacturers, or some new players will need to emerge. Anyone who has found themselves inventing new swear words in the face of an Ecotricity charge point will understand my fears for the latter.

I suppose, first of all, enough people need to use electric cars to help us understand how we’ll interact with them, because we can be sure of one thing – in terms of charging and even ownership – it won’t be anything like it is now.