ON New Year’s Day 2006, Ukraine was in the headlines for reasons highly pertinent to circumstances we are now contending with. Following a protracted dispute, Russia had cut off the flow of gas.

It had been supplying cut-price gas to a neighbour which, at that juncture, was looking increasingly westwards. On top of that, the Russians believed (correctly as it transpired) that Ukraine was filching gas which was supposed to be in transit to EU countries.

By January 4, a truce was achieved and Ukraine faded from the headlines. Throughout the chancelleries of Europe, however, these events came as a profound shock even if, for the most part, business soon reverted to usual and the gas continued to flow.

I took an interest in, and possibly even a little satisfaction from, this little crisis. As UK energy minister and in other roles, I had heard endlessly on the highest Whitehall authority about Russia’s reliability as an energy supplier. Commercial necessity, they soothed, would always take precedence over politics.

The fact that, albeit for just 72 hours, Russia had used its energy might so politically confounded that complacency. Suddenly, putting so many eggs in the Russian gas basket did not seem such a smart idea – and that went to the heart of UK and EU energy assumptions.

Brian Wilson: The SNP's sustained and brutal assault on local government

There had been no great prescience in my scepticism. It just didn’t seem clever to be consciously moving towards a position of massive dependence on Russian gas which, as envisaged then, was even greater than it turned out to be. I also knew this was being pursued chiefly in order to rationalise the run-down of nuclear power.

If future baseload was not coming from nuclear, it had to come from somewhere and that would be imported gas. The UK was protected to some extent by the North Sea and interconnectors with Norway. When it comes to market prices, as we now see, these were modest safeguards and eventually, everything came back to Russia.

The impetus for this folly came from Germany and the SDP-Green coalition elected in 1998. (Relevant historical footnote – the Greens got 6.7 per cent of votes). Part of the agreement was to phase out nuclear by the 2020s. The Greens cared little about alternatives. Their prime motivation was anti-nuclear rather than pro-environment.

There was no shortage of imitators, including within the Labour government, for whom eliminating the nuclear industry became an end in itself. Just as in Germany, this had significant downsides, including the assumed – though politically unspoken - reliance on imported gas to fill the void. And where would the gas come from …?

In Germany, the illogicality of closing down nuclear was, from an environmental perspective, even greater since the other alternative was coal and a particularly polluting kind of coal at that. To this day, Germany gets a third of its power from coal and this rose by 13 per cent in the past year. A great triumph for Greenery? The figure in the much-maligned UK is two per cent.

Brian Wilson: Now is the time for a root and branch review of our health service

The pretence that renewables would be the replacement for nuclear within any foreseeable timescale has been confirmed for what it always was – a deception based on wishful thinking. In the real world, wholesale gas prices reached the equivalent of $410 per barrel of oil at the flick of a Russian switch and will remain high for at least as long as the Ukraine war continues.

Back in 2006, the Ukraine shock led to a hasty reassessment of policies. The Labour government quietly dropped the de facto ban on nuclear new-build, even if not a lot was done about it. Angela Merkel, on the other hand, doubled down on Russian gas with construction of the Nordstream pipelines. Countries closer to Russia didn’t have much choice other than to continue dependence and hope for the best.

Scotland, needless to say, has been in the front line of energy faddism. Nuclear power, which made us a massive net exporter of electricity and employed thousands of people in quality jobs, is now regarded as a Very Wicked Thing so we will remain spectators (and importers) while new stations are built elsewhere in the UK.

North Sea oil and gas would be destined for the same fate if it was left to the Scottish Government which hopefully it won’t be, for the sake of the huge numbers employed in the industry. If anyone can explain the rationale of being dependent on gas for up to 60 per cent of our daily electricity needs (depending on how the wind is blowing) while refusing licences to produce the stuff, I would be interested to hear it.

Renewables can be a huge part of our energy future but not to the exclusion of all else. The ScotWind licensing programme offers a huge opportunity for manufacturing and jobs – but then so did onshore wind and the chance was blown. Investment in UK offshore windfarms will be on a scale that can hardly fail to produce jobs and opportunities. But how many?

Last April, the Scottish Government banked £800 million for ScotWind licences – a genuine windfall. I argued for it to be ring-fenced for infrastructure required to ensure Scottish ports and industries can secure large slices of the renewables loaf and not just crumbs. Where did that £800 million go? We haven’t a clue.

Brian Wilson: We need a root and branch review of how the SNP spends our money

Instead of destroying jobs in Scotland’s energy industries, there is now an unrepeatable chance to create them on a large scale but are we in any fit state to take it? From everything I hear, the answer is in the negative and it is already assumed we will import the vast majority of what is required to build the ScotWind programme. I would be delighted to be contradicted.

In the meantime, it is not wind, solar or hydro that will keep the lights on, however much we might wish it to be so. It will be imported gas and the remnants of nuclear which even now is providing a critical 20 per cent of our electricity supply. The talk about Scotland being self-sufficient in power is balderdash. We used to be but we aren’t now.