The lights flicker briefly. Then complete darkness. A few seconds later, the drone of back-up generators all across the neighbourhood, the part-muffled roar of our own, and with bleeping electronics, everything’s back on.
Living in Dar es Salaam 20 years ago, we soon got used to the blackouts. It happened so often, it barely made the news. Here in the UK though, even a short interruption is big news and a few days, especially in winter, a state of emergency. That’s perhaps as it should be.
It also shows us how intrinsic energy-at-the-touch-of-a-button is to how we live. I have spent most of my working life developing, financing, building and operating power stations in Africa. There we saw clearly the difference clean, reliable, affordable electricity made to businesses, the economy and the lives of tens of millions of people. It was good work. And today in the UK nearly three quarters of a million people – 2% of the workforce – are doing good work making sure our factories produce, trains run, and kettles boil. Our economic prosperity is built on reliable energy, and our way of life dependent on it.
