WELCOME TO MATT RIDLEY'S BLOG

Electricity is magical stuff. From a couple of tiny holes in a wall comes an apparently endless supply of invisible, weightless, silent ether that turns instantly into light, heat, motion or information at your command. It is a metaphor for the modern economy: we use pure energy to create useful outcomes in the real world. […]

Green shift is already leaving our energy system hugely vulnerable ‘If Ed Miliband has a plan to deal with the volatility and intermittency of renewable energy, he is yet to reveal it’ Heathcliff O’Malley Energy is already ludicrously expensive. Making it more unreliable will only compound our misery. In November 2021, Storm Arwen gave me a […]

Politicians should stop endorsing an energy source that isn’t particularly clean or secure, and won’t bring down prices. The MPs who have forced Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on onshore wind power love to repeat the favourite slogan of the wind industry: “wind is cheap”. “Cheap, clean, secure,” says Sir Alok Sharma. “Cheap,” cheeps Ed Miliband. […]

If I waved a magic wand and gave the world unlimited clean and cheap energy tomorrow, I expect many climate scientists would be horrified Patrick Brown, the co-director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute in California, has blown the whistle on an open secret about climate science: it’s biased in favour of alarmism. He published […]

They despoil our glorious countryside, add £6 billion a year to our household bills and are arguably the most inefficient solution to our energy crisis. So why is the Government planning to make it even easier to build them? My article for The Daily Mail: Take a wild guess at how much of the UK’s […]

My article for The Sun: When Lorraine Allanson spoke up in favour of drilling for shale gas in her part of North Yorkshire, activists cut off her internet, called her a “whore” and linked her to a fake crime number. “Shouting, abuse, public defecation, intimidation, hijacking lorries to stop deliveries, blocking the village street, this […]

It’s madness not to frack My article for The Sun: The price of gas is through the roof thanks to Vladimir Putin, who has Europe’s energy market by the throat. Britain is on track to spend a staggering £2BILLION on imported liquefied natural gas from Russia this year as war rages in Ukraine. Household bills […]

My article for Spiked: Global warming is real. It is also – so far – mostly beneficial. This startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency. The goal of Net Zero emissions […]

The green zealots are far more interested in lecturing others than improving lives and the planet through technology My article for The Telegraph: Fusion energy is coming. Last week’s announcement of a significant energy yield from the Joint European Torus in Oxfordshire is just a milestone on the path but all the signs are that […]

Storm Arwen showed the value of gas stoves and diesel, and the folly of our national forestry policy My article for the Telegraph: The one thing that cheered us Northumbrians up as we waited for power to come back on after Storm Arwen (some wit points out that naming these daughters of Boreas only seems […]