The 1989 privatisation of water has failed. The government should nationalise or mutualise all the water companies.
However, I would not support nationalising the energy companies. They provide important innovation and customer service benefits that we would lose out on if we nationalised them. The difference is that in the energy market, there is genuine competition - although less so now due to the consumer price cap.
The energy price cap is needed, for now at least, but it’s just a symptom of a broken system. The Conservatives banned onshore wind farms in England while they were in office. They also let the Rough gas storage facility close, leaving us with among the lowest gas storage capacity in Europe, and that’s one reason we face such high prices now.
There are numerous exciting renewable and storage technologies under development, but I think we need to support their R&D with a combination of tax breaks and Buying British.
I would consult economists and AIs on how to reform our wholesale energy markets. Part of this has to be ending the bonkers system of a single “fake” electricity price for the entire country - so that local people can benefit from things like local grid-scale batteries. Ed Miliband was right to suggest that local people should benefit from having renewables and batteries in their local area in the form of lower prices. People who can see wind turbines from the Clacton seafront should see a cut in their bills as a result!
For AI data centres, we are going to need to pull out all the stops and deploy all forms of energy, including renewables and even gas turbines. However, I do not believe that nuclear fission power plants are a good solution to our energy woes - we should wait for nuclear fusion when it comes to nuclear power.
I am totally opposed to fracking.
Large-scale AI data centres, especially for training clusters, should only be allowed if they don't cause unacceptable risks - and if their plans add so much generating capacity that they actually make more electricity available to the grid overall.