Has the world learnt to live with the one hundred dollar barrel of oil? Perhaps it has been anticipated for so long that it has ceased to frighten. Certainly there were no panics or signs of catastrophe when the symbolic price was passed.

Perhaps there should have been.

Cheap power has been the basis of the Industrial Revolution since the days of Boulton and Watt in the 18^th Century.

The problem is that we take it for granted. The electrification programmes and the establishment of grids in the first half of the 20^th Century were marvels of engineering, but perhaps they made it look too easy. We now rely on them totally without thinking about them.

Sometimes a crisis reminds us how totally dependant we are on cheap energy. The rise of OPEC in the 1970s panicked the West, and a few hours of “brownouts” or power cuts in a major city can demonstrate how fragile our civilisation really is.

There was something deeply symbolic about the fact that the 2-3 million people who lost power in their homes in Florida last week included those employed at the Kennedy Space Centre.

Yet the public at large seem unable or unwilling to think about the link between such events and their own energy consumption. I spent a few months in Los Angeles in 2001 at the time of the “brownouts” caused by the breakdown of the California electricity supply – not that one would have known from the bright lights that were never dimmed so long as power remained available.

Entrepreneurs cannot afford to be so short-sighted. We must prepare for the probability that our businesses may not be able to rely on the cheap energy we have always taken for granted. We may also see new opportunities in finding new sources of energy or ways of doing things using less energy.

Either way, the hundred dollar barrel should be appreciated as a useful warning sign for those prepared to heed it.