“It’s the end of the first Industrial Revolution, really,” says engineering manager Nigel Bates. He first stepped on to the Ratcliffe (power station)site more than 40 years ago, as a 16-year-old mechanical apprentice with a handful of O-levels. “Coal started it all, and soon we’re going to end it,” he says.

With coal, we were in the lead. Our manufacturers made pumps and lifting gear. Stephenson and Davy invented safety lamps. We exported coal and consumed it by the ton. I write of this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

Oddly with oil, our manufacturers were also there at the start with Ruston pumps working for Shell in Russia. Rustons also pumped oil for BP in Persia (in both cases I use the current names). Rockefeller and American oil meant that they developed the technology given the vast throughput they had to handle. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of Rustons taking up the challenge with gas turbines. I guess it was inevitable that the American GE would do the same only bigger.

North Sea oil and gas should have been a British manufacturing success. We had shipbuilders for rigs, pumps of course and Weir valves. Our manufacturers fell into foreign ownership and we lost out. The Americans were there in force.

Wind turbines should have been British but the Danish developed them whilst we were burning gas.

The British companies which built the grid and equipped the power stations also fell into foreign ownership. Siemens now owns Rustons, Parsons and many others.

We do have excellent companies such as Wilson Power Solutions and Ryse Energy .

The image is of the SSE Viking Wind Farm on Shetland. I looked and found no UK manufacturing involved, although the construction and project were Scottish.

We have not been well served by governments. Will Great British Energy offer a different story?