The energy policies of European nations, and of Britain in particular, are in disarray. Admittedly the ferocious rise in crude oil prices has eased, but how long the present dip will last, with the Russians bombing one of the main oil transit pipelines from the Caspian region through Georgia and the Iranians muttering about closing the Straits of Hormuz (through which a fifth of the world's oil supplies pass each day), is a very open question.

Meanwhile, longer term plans to escape oil dominance by expanding clean nuclear power are going badly wrong. In Britain almost all existing nuclear stations are reaching the end of their working life and will have to be decommissioned before 2020.

Yet the major players on the nuclear scene are refusing to cooperate and carry a new program forward. No decisions have yet been taken on the design of new reactors, on their location, on who will build them or, most important of all, how they will be financed. There is no hope of seeing electricity flow from any new nuclear station in Britain before 2017 at the earliest. The gap will have to be filled by gas-fired generation. But gas is also problematic.