I was born in 1950 in Cardiff, South Wales – famously the world’s premier coal exporting port during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. And I remember coal being delivered by cart horse, and the hours spent by my mum filling the fireplace from a coal scuttle to keep the living room warm in winter. On a school trip from Cardiff High, some of us visited a mine in the Rhondda Valley; my first taste of energy production in action.

I visited London, where smogs (a fog intensified by smoke or other atmospheric pollutants), thick ‘pea-soupers’, were a regular occurrence until the mid-1960s. The Great Smog of 1952 killed thousands and led to the 1956 Clean Air Act, which prompted the transition from coal burning in homes and factories. A major smog in 1962 killed 750 people and showed the Act needed further work. Fortunately, by the late 1960s/early 1970s, widespread adoption of central heating, cleaner fuels and stricter legislation (such as the 1968 Act) finally eliminated these winter smogs.

On the heating front, vast reserves of natural gas were discovered in the southern North Sea (in the West Sole field) in 1965, prompting the government to shift away from manufactured coal gas to natural gas. This was just as well, as coal gas was very toxic (it contained 17% carbon monoxide), while natural gas is non-toxic and has double the heat content.