Last week, the government published a review of the UK’s energy security situation. In a report commissioned by the prime minister, Malcolm Wicks, the former energy minister, pronounced that “there is no crisis”.

His findings were in marked contrast to those of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, which concluded last year that the economy faces a clear and present energy-security threat. The taskforce, a group that includes Virgin, Scottish and Southern Energy, Arup, Stagecoach and Solarcentury, was set up in 2007 on the basis of our shared opinion that peak oil merited serious study as a business risk. Some began with the assumption that the issue was low-risk but high-consequence. Sadly, we are now of the collective view that peak oil is a high-risk, high-consequence issue.