A fair proportion of the readers of this column are rich, and many, if not most, of them will have nephews, who have been put on earth to test the patience of people with money. I mean not just actual children of siblings, but also metaphorical nephews, the sort of people who will be approaching the rich man with ideas for tropical nightclubs, “alternative” magazines, or independent films. Independent of box office success, that is, not independent of you.

In recent years, alongside those business plans for clubs and straight-to-video films are a growing sheaf of proposals for renewable energy projects. While varied in location and technology, the angel-financed renewables proposals often have a couple of elements in common: sponsors with an insufferable sense of moral superiority, and a studied vagueness about technical and economic risks. This is a sort of anti-world of most energy industry planning, which tends to be neutral in tone, technically intense, and based on comparative micro-economics.