The other day, I put the kettle on to make a cup of tea and I wondered, as you do, how the electricity I was using was generated.

Perhaps a wind turbine or nuclear reactor was involved, or maybe coal, gas, wood or waste were being burned, though it might have involved falling water, or even a solar panel on a house in Baildon. It struck me that it might be different in France, so I decided to investigate.

There’s a remarkable website – UK National Grid Status – that shows exactly what is happening in the UK every 15 minutes or so, and it also links to the relevant French site. The electricity picture for Friday, May 9, in the early evening showed very significant differences between two countries which have much in common in terms of population, economic maturity and culture.

France produced almost a third more power than the UK and this is partly because it has a substantial exporting role to other countries while we are a net importer. During this snapshot, we imported six per cent of our electricity from France via the undersea link, and another three per cent from Eire in the same way. This does show that political independence from the EU might not be as helpful as some suppose.

The starkest difference between the two countries, though, is the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels with coal being used for a third of our generation and gas for a quarter. Almost 60 per cent of our electricity production produces carbon dioxide which is released directly to the atmosphere, whereas in France the figure is two per cent, and that is mainly from gas with no coal used at all.

At that time on the Friday evening, 98 per cent of the domestic French electricity came from their nuclear power stations, and in addition there was considerable hydro and wind power being used to produce the export surplus, for us, Italy, Germany and Belgium.

We have certainly missed a trick or two in the past with the consequence that there is now a political push for fracking shale gas to improve our energy security.

However, just last autumn, the French Constitutional Council upheld the ban on fracking for gas in France, and it’s quite clear why. They don’t have a need to burn any more fossil fuels to produce their electricity as they have already almost completely decarbonised their power supply.

Perhaps we should join with them, and the Germans, and develop a Europe-wide power grid based on unlimited solar power from north Africa, hydro from Norway, geothermal from Iceland, tidal from the UK and a new generation of integral fast reactors.