Bernard Ingham: Get a sense of priority and keep Britain's lights burning

"What's up with him?" asked Winter. "Oh, him", replied the driver. "I'm rushing him to hospital."

Binchy was illustrating the unhurried sociable eccentricity of the Irish character. Her tale also holds a lesson for David Cameron. If he wants to help Yorkshire on the energy front, he should concentrate on essentials.

Britain does not have a sustainable energy policy. Nor, unless Cameron concentrates on essentials, shall we acquire one in June. On the scale of blackout probability, the Tories are currently only marginally less lethal than Labour. The Liberal Democrats and Greens are a positive menace.

This is desperately serious because without secure supplies of energy – and especially electricity – neither Yorkshire nor the UK can function as a civilised society. Witness the panic that a huge blackout recently caused in Brazil. Energy is a matter of life and death.

As Greg Clark, the Shadow Energy Secretary, recently said: "A Government that can't keep the lights on doesn't deserve the privilege of power". So what does Cameron need to do to avoid becoming undeserving?"

First, he should eliminate the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We need a Department of Energy full stop. The Environment Department can worry about climate change.

He should then demand an energy policy that concentrates on securing supplies at affordable cost while at the same time minimising carbon emissions – but only in a way that makes economic sense – as insurance against man warming up the planet. He will then discover that Gordon Brown has left him in a very deep hole from which his greenwashed party may not have the resilience to emerge.

As things stand, there is a broad Lab/Con energy consensus. Their energy policies rest on three main pillars – renewables (mainly wind), carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to permit the continued use of fossil fuels that make the Aire Valley one of the nation's power houses and nuclear.

Only one of these pillars – nuclear – is sustainable. It is safe – not a single UK death from a radiation accident in 50 years – secure, economic and clean, emitting next to no carbon dioxide. It is proof against price increases because its fuel – uranium – represents only a small proportion of its costs and it enhances our energy security by minimising the use of fossil fuels. No nation is secure that is on course to import 80-90 per cent of its gas.

Renewables – whether wind, waves, tides or solar – are as grossly overblown as they are expensive. Their intermittency provides no security of supply. It can actually increase carbon emissions because for every 1,000MW of wind turbines built we need to provide 900MW of fossil fuel back up.

On the Government's own figures, we pay up to five times as much for wind power as for nuclear. This is a scandal that drives more and more people into fuel poverty. Gordon Brown would have it cost the consumer another 100bn with thousands more turbines all over Yorkshire and the North Sea. Cameron would do Britain a good turn if he immediately called a halt to the rapacious demands of this subsidised dead end.

As for CCS – crucial to Yorkshire remaining a fossil-fuelled power house – I'm afraid there is no evidence that annually it can lock up hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide under the North Sea. But, if it could, it might double the price of electricity.

In the meantime, all this fuss over biomass (wood) burning at Drax is sheer expensive window dressing that does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. It merely burns something – wood – that is heroically deemed to be carbon neutral. Floating around behind all this are half-hearted approaches to energy saving, daft ideas about localising energy production (micro-generation) that give hard-headed power engineers the willies and a marvellous Tory devotion to so-called smart grids and smart meters. The smartest thing about them might be their ability to cut you off as needs must rather than to enable you to buy the cheapest power.

Cameron will have to pay far more urgent attention to essentials – nuclear, coal, gas and waste elimination – than the Irish

driver if he is to keep Yorkshire lit, warm and economically active on his watch. He will also have to tell Tory environmentalist Zac Goldsmith where to put his "green" advice.

Tomorrow: Family policy and David Cameron's leadership style.