The government’s ambitious plans to move to net zero require the widespread adoption of electric cars, electric heating and much else that will need more power to be generated. It will also of course require most if not all of this electricity to be generated from renewables. The current starting position includes around one fifth of our power coming from nuclear power stations. Most of these are scheduled to close for old age this decade. We also often import around 5% of our power from the continent at some cost to ourselves and the balance of payments. We need to regard this as an unreliable source given the problems with continental capacity and their present reliance on Russian gas and some coal. A substantial but variable portion of our present electricity comes from  gas fired stations, depending on how strongly the wind is blowing and how many sunshine hours there are for the renewables.
Germany is becoming more dependent on renewables and has had some outage problems on cold calm days with little sunshine. California has power cuts from her dependence on renewables, despite having a usually favourable climate for wind and sun. As the UK plans its way to net zero it needs to promote getting sufficient electricity capacity higher up the list of priorities.
The UK used to seek guaranteed supply and relatively low cost from its electricity policy. Privatisation in the 1980s drove down costs by replacing old and inefficient coal stations with much more fuel efficient modern gas combined cycle stations. The merit order meant the cheapest power was delivered on base load, only to be topped up by the more marginal dearer power. Environmental requirements were added as a third aim of policy. Privatisation did reduce CO2 output substantially by closing so many coal stations from market forces. Prices of power fell.
As policy has come to be dominated more and more by greenhouse gas considerations, the price of power has gone up and the margin of spare capacity has fallen. Indeed, capacity has become a difficult thing to estimate or measure. The more renewable power on the system the more variable the capacity is, varying from minute to minute depending on weather conditions. The system managers have a more difficult task than before. They are turning to interruptible contracts, to get industry to switch off if the wind stops blowing. They are calling for battery parks to offer stand by capacity, seeking people with stand by diesel generators for difficult times and wanting to flex tariffs to encourage off peak use. All of these methods can help, but they cannot be a substitute for having enough capacity with a decent margin to allow for variability of supply from renewables.
There are some approved renewables or green methods of generating power that are always available or available to a predictable pattern. Biomass or wood burning is as good as coal or gas as reliable power, there when you need it. Certain designs of water power are there on stand by or available for regular times depending on tides, pump systems, and reservoir controls. Reviving water wheels from the past alongside windmills would have given more reliability. The UK has only one main pump storage system. It could do with some more to give the flexibility the system managers will need.
The scale of the task is immense. If the government is serious about ending new diesel and petrol cars from 2030, and serious about the widespread adoption of electric heating, the demand will be greatly magnified from today. Yet today we are close to power cuts every time we have a cold day with little wind or sun. I will ask our latest Business Secretary to do something about our future capacity, as I have asked his predecessors.
February 7, 2021
We are all being told we have to use electric cars and change the way we heat our homes. Even with government grants this will be economically impossible for many people. Some individuals do have diesel generators for back up but how expensive or easy to get hold of the fuel will it become? France as well as Germany have experienced power outages relying on Turkey. Large nuclear facilities will take too long and be too expensive. Industry will not be profitable. We will require a ridiculous amount of wind turbines which will be useless when there is no wind or too much wind and will utterly destroy our bird and bat populations. It’s total madness John and ministers don’t seem to know or want to know the folly of their ways. Something has to be done. Any party whose manifesto turns it’s back on this gets my vote.
February 7, 2021
Indeed the policy is totally insane. It will just export jobs and whole industries and give us expensive intermittent energy. Anyway electric cars, batteries, wind farms and solar all take loads of fossil fuels to manufacture. install, charge and maintain.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Classics & History Trinity College, Cambridge & Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) is far better than the average MP but he does not have any understanding of energy. Listen to his Spectator Podcast on the Saudi Arabia of Wind for full confirmation of this. Put Matt Ridley and Peter Lilley in charge or get them to educate him in the realities of physics and energy engineering.
February 7, 2021
Hate to keep banging on about this, but solar and wind are fast becoming the cheapest form of power generation – and becoming cheaper by the year. Gas and oil cost more and pollute. We have to mine fuel. We get sun and wind for free. It’s a no brainer – especially combined with improved battery technology. I cannot see any good argument for fossil fuels, on economic or environmental grounds.
February 7, 2021
I suggest you look at the real world, not the propaganda you obviously read. I calculate that the renewables supported by the CFD scheme that are currently operational cost an average of ÂŁ143/MWh, which is probably about 5 times what coal fired power would cost if it were allowed to compete in a free market. Solar installations ground to a halt when the government reduced the subsidy support available, partly because solar was causing problems with peak outputs in midsummer at midday threatening grid stability.
Meanwhile gas and coal have remained very competitive, which is why China continues to install more coal fired capacity and increase its gas imports. There has been no big rise in prices. Indeed, it is because gas fired generatio is so much more competitive than was forecast that the budget for pa4youts on CFDs has had to be expanded.
February 7, 2021
> becoming cheaper by the year.
BS, why do my bills keep going up then ?
February 7, 2021
because OFGEM lets them raise prices to be able to make profits which then reward investors/owners via dividends.
The alternative is that you are using more than before which Andy tells us we are not.
February 7, 2021
Ignoramus – I wonder why the fossil fuel companies donât provide an argument? The BBC in an article said â West Cumbria Mining claims it would create 500 jobs and pay into a community fund for 10 years.â. But it didnât give the company the platform to explain who was going to benefit from the coke, where was the market for it, what were they doing to offset the environmental damage that the same article gave space for Friends of the Earth to say âthe refusal to call in the decision was “climate-wrecking”.
Its time we started to demand even space to both sides of each argument.
February 7, 2021
Indeed. We should demand time for non believers!
February 8, 2021
Absolutely Timaction, then more people would get on board if an argument can’t be made. What do you prefer that people who don’t agree are just ignored, media blackout, I’m on the fence on this matter but some people feel very strongly about it and I want to learn more.
February 7, 2021
Well intermittent power is of course worth far less than on demand power per KWH. If the technology can survive without subsidies and market rigging I have no objection to them. The UK needs most power in winter so solar is fairly useless in the UK.
It is government subsidy to roll out premature and uneconomic technology that is mad and I object to. Also, looked at in the round, the renewables and electric cars save little or no CO2 anyway.
February 7, 2021
Considering that battery technology at the required scale doesn’t remotely exist, while the cost of manufacturing and escalating cost of maintenance of the short-lived, eleven thousand intermittent fleet of UK wind turbines, requiring constant 24/7 conventional power back-up, your comments suggest how fitting it is that your nom-de-plume is ‘Ignoramus’
February 7, 2021
People used to say solar power and wind were impractical. They aren’t saying that now. Read the runes my friend.
I have the sense the objections here are ideological because people think the green agenda is for lefties. Sorry, but I just don’t buy it.
And also if coal power stations are so great, why are they barely in operation most of the time? I have one opposite me and it is just sat there like a white elephant, wasting taxpayer money.
February 7, 2021
But still unreliable, inefficient and destructive.
February 7, 2021
Suggest you take a look at the subject of wind costs including others in a embellished study by proper engineers Ignoramus. There’s one today on Not a lot of people know that. You obviously have fallen for the sort of stuff that Boris believes.
February 7, 2021
Intermittent + huge land, sea and seabed coverage.
February 7, 2021
Ignoramus, Bid prices in the auctions held by governments are not a reliable indicator of underlying costs. Papers by Prof Gordon Hughes, and Aldersey-Williams et al, show that bidders underestimate costs in the knowledge they will be bailed out. Prof Hughes said (2019): “low CfD prices are a way of creating positive public relations, and are offered in the expectation that developers can get out of the contracts, because the Government . . . will . . . bail out the industry“.
February 7, 2021
I’m afraid “Wind and Sun” do not come for free – not without some considerable investment in the means to harvest them, otherwise surely our fuel bills would be going down, instead of up.
The other problem is that things like windmills have a finite working life and having taken a great deal of energy and rare earths to build in the first place – will need to be replaced every two to three decades – especially those out at sea (where we much prefer to build them).
February 8, 2021
Ignoramus, please listen to Mark – he knows what he is talking about!
February 7, 2021
Also it only exports the CO2 emissions anyway (or even increases net world CO2 outputs). Though the science rather suggest this is not really a problem anyways and probably is a net benefit.
So to summarise – CO2 is probably not a big problem anyway, the renewable energy sources and electric cars do not really work anyways even in CO2 terms and to reduce CO2 we clearly need word cooperation which is very, very unlikely indeed anyway. Plus expensive intermittent energy will kill people and damage the economy hugely killing even more.
February 7, 2021
World cooperation.
February 7, 2021
As usual LL you are about a decade behind the curve. Electric cars in Europe emit, on average, almost three times less CO2 than equivalent petrol or diesel cars. Thatâs according to a new online tool developed by T&E that allows the public to compare the lifecycle emissions of an EV to fossil-fuelled vehicles. https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/does-electric-vehicle-emit-less-petrol-or-diesel
How much CO2 can electric cars really save compared to diesel and petrol cars? To answer this question we have developed a tool (see below) that compiles all the most up-to-date data on CO2 emissions linked to the use of an electric, diesel or petrol car.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/what-we-do/electric-cars/how-clean-are-electric-cars
Additionally, the total pipeline of battery storage projects in the UK has now reached 13.5GW:
1.3GW ready to build (planning and grid connection approved)
5.7GW with planning permission (but without approved grid connection yet)
6.5GW proposed/in planning system
14 GW of battery storage power is required to mitigate real time system frequency control problems caused by any renewable generation source intermittency. Storage energy capacity requirements in GWh will vary from one to four hours. The UK capacity market players are well aware of what is required.
February 7, 2021
Yes, you could run blindfold across a motorway and “probably” not be killed.
However, “probably” isn’t good enough, is it, when there remains the real possibility of absolute disaster?
If nothing else, stopping atmospheric CO2 increase is simply the Precautionary Principle in application.
February 7, 2021
Where does the lithium for batteries come from ? The nation that is in control of that supply becomes our new Saudi Arabia.
February 7, 2021
An interesting small article by reuters.com âFactbox: Lithium, where does it come from?â. It is more than ten years old but I do not expect the situation to have changed too much in the meantime.
February 7, 2021
Ian Wragg
Americans getting angry?
They will be incandescent with rage and I think the spectre of a certain D Trump will come back to haunt the administration .
February 7, 2021
F U S
Well said , no more words let’s have some proper research into the whole energy supply and distribution networks and real meaningful action.
February 7, 2021
Who is going to vote for any party wanting to steal our cars, boilers, our industry, our futures, whilst taxing meat and food products. Unproven science. Total madness has infected the legacy parties and MSM. At least Andrew Neil is launching a real non woke/PC news channel. Then they will have to follow or become irrelevant.
Off topic what action is the Government taking with the EU regarding our waters second class for shellfish but still allowing Brtish landed shellfish from EU vessels? Retaliation must be swift to show bullies it doesn’t pay. No more lies and disingenuous comments from your parties leaders, just action and in Northern Ireland.
February 7, 2021
Timeaction, All so very right. The Tory party could barely bring itself to deliver more than BINO, now it threatens to make us all reliant on unreliable electricity produced primarily by windmills. Perhaps we can power the country with Boris Breath – his enormous gale of exhortation must be good for something.
February 7, 2021
“Something has to be done”. Indeed. What, though? Everyone who contributes to this blog, with the odd exception, agrees that these green policies are totally impractical and destructive. But all the main parties support them. The media tends to. The civil service, academia – the whole establishment accepts green policies with enthusiasm. What to do?
February 7, 2021
John C, Even if we “do” nothing, the whole Boris green wheeze will collapse due its inbuilt absurdities. But make sure you have candles and a generator.
Take Boris’s claim of 40GW of Wind (and he should know) by 2030. I have a letter from BEIS which states that this is nameplate capacity. Let’s be kind and assume the Grid relies on the average 16GW power (at 40% capacity factor).
Suppose we have a week of cold still weather over the British isles and the Wind output is near zero. Now Dinorwig can produce 9.1GWHr of energy. For a week of no wind we would need 295 Dinorwigs to make up the shortfall. 295. Two hundred and ninety five! Dinorwig took 10 (ten) years to build!
It gets even worse. Because in the following week Wind would not only have to supply the “normal” 16GW, but an additional 16GW (plus losses) to pump the water back in these 295 Dinorwigs.
Reply I was not suggesting pump storage for baseload! If you have more interruptible you need more short burst power available to stabilise the system as you call up other replacements.
February 8, 2021
JR, Reply to reply: What “other replacements”? I do not know of any that are practical at the scale needed and “green”, other than pumped storage. Do you? Batteries are only good for a few minutes. We’re not talking 5 minutes here and a couple of hours there. The only other practical large scale quick start proposition is CCGT – powered by fossil fuels, so not “green”. Follow the maths.
With his electric cars and homes Boris will double or triple electricity demand. Maybe we will need 100GW (currently about 45GW in winter). It’s not being built. And if it were, it would about double the actual cost of Wind (already excessively high).
February 7, 2021
I suppose that the one good thing about this government is that it is duplicitous and useless.
Thus it is most unlikely to achieve any targets at all.
Meanwhile, despite its 5 year plannery China is under pressure from various internal lobbies to keep building fossil fuel stations. Which no doubt it will do.
Wrecking is the one dubious talent of this government so assuming it does manage to destroy all viable means of heating it will be left feeling even more foolish than usual as the developed world carries on with coal etc.
Oh, I believe the serial U Turner ( aka Head Jailer) supports, ( in this 5 min period), a new coal mine in ( Cumbria?). Bit of protest though so capitulation on cards!
February 7, 2021
It is my view that China’s declaration to go CO2 Zero by 2060, was made to feed the climate change zealotry of Western politicians, like Johnson, and make sure they drive their economies on the rocks , to advance China’s dominance.
February 7, 2021
Iain Moore.
Totally correct
February 7, 2021
Surely not “our friends” in China would’nt do this. Ask the Uygur Muslim’s.
February 7, 2021
That is the plan. To transfer the wealth and industry from the West to the East. This ensure China’s dominance and supports those in the West who have invested heavily in China and want a good return on said investments.
February 7, 2021
Mark B
Exactly.
February 7, 2021
December 2015
Boris Johnson after a chat with his mate Piers Corbyn.
âIt is fantastic news that the world has agreed to cut pollution and help people save money, but I am sure that those global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear â as far as I understand the science â is equally without foundation.
There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong â but they donât include global warming.â
February 7, 2021
One feature of modern life is the explosions of gadgets. Phones, tablets, laptops and all sorts of stuff in the kitchen.
And yet …. year after year we are using LESS electricity. Both as individuals and as a country. How can this be?
Much of this is thanks to EU efficiency rules which require things like fridges, toasters, hairdryers and vacuum cleaners to meet increasingly tough standards. This is the stuff that makes the Daily Mail angry but which over many years makes a big difference.
Take lights. My LED bulbs are brilliant. They create light – not heat. And when I fitted them my electricity consumption went down.
Solar panels work – even when it is not sunny (the work on light, not just Sun) so we will ALWAYS be able to generate electricity. And, with batteries getting much better, the solution for all of us is there. All that is lacking is the political will.
February 7, 2021
Andy, whether electricity supplies are maintained or not might be less relevant for people who cannot afford it anyway.
It’s been announced that our exports to the European Union for the past month were less than ONE THIRD of what they were last January, when they were nearly half of all exports.
I wonder what John thinks of the effects of that upon our trade deficit with them?
This is beyond damaging.
It is existential.
February 7, 2021
Excellent idea Mr Wilson, as to a website, one already exists and has done for years. This site is that run by Mr Anthony Watts. I would be surprised if our host, you and others here did not already know this.
February 7, 2021
Sorry reply in wrong place.
February 7, 2021
Reduced exports may have something to do with lack of economic activity due to a global pandemic? Were EU exports to us reduced?
February 7, 2021
Sorry, I should have brexiter-proofed my comment.
The fall was revealed by survey of those affected as mainly down to brexit-related difficulties.
February 7, 2021
What survey MiC?
February 7, 2021
There’s also the small matter that the covid19 lockdowns while the UK was in transition, and still in the Customs Union and Single Market, did not significantly affect exports to the European Union.
February 8, 2021
That’s strange because the French closed their borders to lorries at the end of the year.
February 7, 2021
LED was a technology invented mainly in Asia, at which time the EU was forcing through a hugely expensive ban on incandescent lightbulbs. £/⏠billions were spent eg on halogen lights by homes and businesses in Europe, including the U.K., to meet the EU regulations, as it turned out completely unnecessarily as the market was about to come up with cheap and abundant LED technology anyway. The example you have cited in fact shows the opposite of what you intend.
It is true devices are becoming more efficient – we may thank innovation and technological development for that not bureaucrats writing rules. Amazingly itâs happening elsewhere in the world not only in the EU. But electricity currently accounts for about 20% of total primary energy use. Almost all the rest is fossil fuels. Even with massive further efficiency gains we will need 3x or so the electricity generating capacity we have now. On present technology the only options – if we donât want coal and oil – are nuclear and natural gas. But I imagine like most righteous leftists you are against nuclear?
We need rigorous analysis with numbers not shouty virtue signalling.
February 7, 2021
Apologies I did not intend this post to be as aggressive as it in fact reads, but I do not think there is enough focus on the facts and the actual, practical options, based on analysis.
February 7, 2021
Richard 1
“LED was a technology invented mainly in Asia”
Not so Richard. Photon emission from semiconductor substrates was pioneered by the US.
February 7, 2021
so there !
February 7, 2021
Well written Sir John, alone among the Great and Good you understand the conflict between needs – increasing dramatically – for more cheap, reliable electricity and the clever dick climate experts who are determined to ban anything like the fracking, coal, gas, oil, even nuclear upon which our electricity depends.(I have family who do fracking regularly in the Gulf.)
Wind turbines do not turn without wind and, no, there is no ambient light which magically works solar panels when the sun goes down in winter and at night. Look on gridwatch and see for yourself.
February 7, 2021
This is largely wrong. When something works well, uses less power and is economic people will choose to buy it without the government forcing them too by rigging the market. LEDâs for example. The EU and government tried to force those dreadful compact fluorescents on to us and now very expensive and rather impractical electric cars.
The reality is that most house now need very little electricity for light, fridge/freezers, TVs, phones and lap tops etc.
This providing you heat your house, water and cook on gas and oil. Heating directly with electric if very expensive in fuel and heat pumps and are very capital expensive (and still cost more than gas heating) and have other practical issues too.
February 7, 2021
The problem is that the EU didn’t have “efficiency rules” they encouraged the use of lower energy bulbs that didn’t last long, didn’t give good light and were filled with mercury and heavy metals, all of which are now in landfills.
With vacuum cleaners they specified a maximum power not a best efficiency…
February 7, 2021
I love the idea of lower energy hair dryers — you’d just have to use them for double the time. Better still we could ban them all together and force people to stand outside in the wind. Problem solved, planet saved.
JF
February 7, 2021
Julian
Better still just criminalise vanity, and ban make – up which is a form of deception.
February 7, 2021
@Andy; You really do not have a first clue about electrical/electronic efficiency, it is not UN or EU rules that make electronic products more energy efficient, and so what if a Tungsten filament light bulb creates heat, unless you live outdoors in a floodlit field?! As for Solar panels, it is not necessarily how they work but their efficiency in turning (solar radiation, in the form of) ‘light’ into energy, or indeed heat.
The EU, many eco-worriers, and unthinking people like you appear to live in some sort of theoretical utopia, not the real world. Most ‘renewables’ can not be and never will be the alternative to coal, gas or oil fired power generation, hence why some environmentalists have had an about-turn in their support for new nuclear if the UK is to ever embrace the Net Zero concept.
February 7, 2021
On the contrary – renewables not only can but they will be the alternative to coal, gas and nuclear within a few decades.
Fossils fuels are dead. You either get on board or get out of the way. You lost. We have no need to worry about what any of you think any more.
February 7, 2021
‘within a few decades.’
oh – so not by 2030 then? We can all wait for our magic batteries, lecky and heat the house when the sun shines …..brilliant.
February 7, 2021
@Andy; “Fossils fuels are dead.”
So the eco-worriers keep insisting! Except other than telling us fossils (and nuclear power) are dead, because they say so, no one has actually come up with any rational evidence as to why they should abandoned, for example even if ‘carbon’ was a problem, like sulphur before, modern technoligy has found ways to filter and capture such elements far more successfully than then have been at scaling up renewables into real world levels of electricity generation.
“You lost. We have no need to worry about what any of you think any more.”
That’s what you also said about Brexit on the eve of the referendum, you need to stop taking people for fools… Do you honestly believe President Joe Biden is really about to shut down the US nuclear power industry, you need to stop taking your ‘news’ from the radical right-wing!
February 7, 2021
It’s frightening to realise that Boris, other ministers and most of the civil service believe the same sort of ignorant rubbish that Andy spouts. We don’t have four more years to get rid of them while they wreck the economy.
February 7, 2021
Andy
“Solar panels work â even when it is not sunny (they work on light, not just Sun) so we will ALWAYS be able to generate electricity. ”
…..but not much of it.
I have a 1.5 Kw array at the property, I can tell you during dark winter months I still need grid to some extent. A dishwasher or washing machine will pull the batteries down, but it depends what you want to do in the evenings, if you only want the lights then no problem.
I do burn coal now and then, just to stick it to the interfering greens, and people like yourself.
February 7, 2021
If UK could put an enormous maneuverable sun reflecting mirror way up high in the atmosphere to the west- some of us could keep our solar panels working long hours…. the dark is a bit of a bummer.
February 7, 2021
Here is a chart of the history of UK electricity demand by sector since 1995:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fBZ5C/1/
You can see that non domestic demand stalled after Labour came to power as deindustrialisation started, and the decline accelerated after the financial crisis in 2008. In fact the demand decline in non domestic demand has been more than double that in the domestic sector, and much of it has been the result of offshoring of jobs.
February 7, 2021
@Mark; Interesting chart, but how you claim what you do on that data, were is the pre 1996 data? It is quite clear though, demand carried on climbing post 1997, remember that within the Domestic graph there will have been some SOHO & light industrial consumption, what that graph does show is how poorly the economy has fared since the Tory lead govt of 2010… Oops!
February 9, 2021
BP have a demand history back to 1985 in their World Energy Statistics. Otherwise, you may have to ask a library for historic paper volumes of “DUKES” the Digest of UK Energy Statistics.
February 9, 2021
@Mark; What ever, and it is for you to request the extra data… You cited a URL that does not prove the point you attempted to make, without the pre 1996 data all your comment appears to be is a cheap shot across the bows of the 1997-2010 Labour govt, conveniently forgetting previous UK “deindustrialisation” that occurred in the 1980s -and before.
February 9, 2021
Jerry
Please check out the BP data which show steady growth in electricity demand over the 1985-1995 period, partly because privatisation reforms were making it cheaper.
There is no question that deindustrialisation got started under Labour, with manufacturing employment roughly halving. I regard the further decline of industry under the coalition and Conservative governments as more failure. It arises because no major political party will champion anything other than a green wasteland.
February 9, 2021
@Mark; Once again, you make the claim, you cite the correct data, otherwise you’re still using selective (and statistically questionable) data to argue an obvious partisan political point. In the context of deindustrialisation -and the parallel growth of modern globalisation. It’s far from clear that either started in the UK during the period 1997-2010, although both grew and accelerated, like snowballs already heading down hill.
To make an accurate judgement, using energy consumption, we likely need to look at energy data from the 1970s, if not the 1960s, due to the economic turbulence of entire 1970s. Adjustments would also need to be made to the data, off-setting reductions in consumption due to implementing greater building/machine electrical and thermal efficiency. Easier to look taxation data etc.
February 7, 2021
You don’t explain how – in under ten years – ordinary people are going to be able to afford and run cars or heat their homes. It is one thing replacing lightbulbs but a very different thing replacing a car, running a lead to it from a flat or small dwelling without a drive and bringing down the cost of a heat pump by 800% to the cost of a gas boiler.
February 8, 2021
Andy, We use less electricity because we have de-industrialised over the last two decades – we lost 86% of our aluminium smelting capacity between 2002 and 2009. You have had that explained to you before but you are incapable of grasping anything technical. EU rules don’t overcome the laws of physics.
February 7, 2021
I would like to hear the Business Secretary responding to you by saying that the Government has decided to order a fleet of Small Modular Reactors from Rolls Royce, using a similar contract to that made with Oxford University and AstraZeneca, where the government takes the risk and the private sector produces at no profit. Subsequent sales and all export sales would of course be for profit. This would generate the flexible baseload electricity we need, it would create a home grown new manufacturing industry, be good for our balance of payments and secure the future of an important British company.
February 7, 2021
I agree with all of your post except for the ‘no profit’ bit. RR should be allowed to make as much profit from the order as it does from making a nuclear reactor for an Astute SSN. Profits are good for the country.
February 7, 2021
While I would generally agree with you, in this particular case RR is in no fit state to take on board any additional risk so it would mean the state carrying the risk if it wants the project to go ahead. If the state takes the risk then it should take the reward. Of course, subsequent orders would be low risk (that’s the point of modular reactors) so RR could carry it, price at commercial rates and make the profit.
February 7, 2021
Till the end of 2018, the RR. share was around 300p. Even before Covid it had gone down by one third. Right now it is below 100p. By end of 2019, they were seven international companies with actual SMR designs and/or prototypes with RR the only British company.
RRâs plan is for 16 such SMRs to be operational by the end of the 2020âs (2029-2031) at a cost of ÂŁ2.2bn for the first one down to ÂŁ1.8bn for the subsequent ones.
To put things in perspective the present Government has generously provided ÂŁ215m to the project in November and the private sector is supposed to provide ÂŁ300m.
Are you going to invest into it?
February 7, 2021
The government has complete power to make RR’s SMRs a commercial success, merely by deciding to order a large number of these. So why don’t they use that power? They could set up a joint venture with RR, whereby the government puts in ALL the funding, and RR put in the technical expertise. The government then order 30 of these, and take 50% of the profits of not only the construction but also the costs of the power produced. And in addition there would be a huge export market to profit from.
February 7, 2021
We did buy into the RR capital raise. Is there any other way to invest in this project? Are you invested in it Hefner? I have no idea of the content of the government contracts with RR for this but did notice the effect of the one with AZN was certainly to put rocket boosters behind the vaccine project.
February 7, 2021
Are you accounting for their rights issue?
February 7, 2021
They are laying loads of people off I understand, this due to Covid destroying the airline industry, new aircraft orders and engine maintenance.
February 7, 2021
Agreed.
I did not know this until recently but, U.S. nuclear powered submarines are designed that, should anywhere that has a suitable port a small city can receive energy from them. I would imagine that UK submarines can do the same but I am not sure. In short, this is very doable.
February 7, 2021
Uk nuclear subs have a generating capacity of about 2 MW plus 1 mw from emergency diesels.
I doubt very much that American subs have much surplus power for export except for limited applications.
February 7, 2021
We would need about 340 SMRs to power the UK plus other gas stations.
February 7, 2021
That340 SMRs would cost about ÂŁ600B. A bargain in the present circumstances.
February 7, 2021
Probably less than ÂŁ600bn. 34 Hinkleys at today’s cost is over 70bn. US and Canadian designs have been approved or will be soon.
February 7, 2021
Nuclear is the only option. Renewable should be re named intermittent.
Until someone in government can understand the difference between megawatt and megawatt hour, we are doomed.
It’s the same as when we we’re reducing the deficit and ministers kept referring to reducing debt. No idea what they were talking about.
The Americans are going to get angry when they are paying uk prices for fuel and suffering blackouts.
February 7, 2021
Ian Wragg
Americans getting angry?
They will be incandescent with rage and I think the spectre of a certain D Trump will come back to haunt the administration .
February 7, 2021
When Professor Sir David MacKay wrote his book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, he was acclaimed by the leading scientists and even Green activists as the most helpful author to the, warmist cause. Although he believed that the world would run short of fossil fuel eventually and that curtailing carbon dioxide was necessary, he insisted that if we favoured a plan to do so, then it had to add up. He gave people the means to check the figures.
Before he died before his time, having caused Ed Davy to realise his folly over burning American trees, David admitted that, although he admired wind turbines, we may as well build nuclear and run them all the time. This was because of the intermittent output, cost and the impossible of storage in the UK.
The CCC under Gummer and his renewables enthusiasts and representatives of the gas and wind industries, has reversed MacKay’s conclusion and has persuaded the government to expand wind greatly while neglecting even to replace enough nuclear and rely on carbon on capture, which does not work economically anywhere.
February 7, 2021
‘I will ask our latest Business Secretary to do something about our future capacity, as I have asked his predecessors.’ Good – but may I suggest that you, and other MPs, ask for a detailed briefing of the anticipated energy mix/capacity provision (and anticipated demand) at the 10, 20 and 30-year points. This is seriously long-term stuff and Western politicians, unlike them thar Chinamen, can’t seem to do long-term stuff. One other thing: the projected nuclear plant at Wylfa (hope I spelled that right) was going to meet some 7% of the UK’s electricity demand. That is one huge concentration of resource in one plant. The resilience of our generating capacity must be given greater attention. And China must be kept away from the on/off switch.
February 7, 2021
The CCC, BEIS and National Grid have all produced their versions of “possible” futures (often with the aid of green think tanks) – I have read all their public reports and pored over their spreadsheets. The trouble is that they all depend on extremely optimistic assumptions and often fail to cost them properly, or at all. Not one of them has actually demonstrated that their proposed system could keep going for a complete year without power cuts – only that it could survive an isolated cold day, assuming the storage was full beforehand.
Things that could prove awkward for demand are simply assumed away – there is relatively little seasonality in heating demand in their projections, and the implications are that travel will be severely restricted when you come to analyse their projections for transport sector demand. The reality is a dystopian world of the poor freezing in their homes unable to afford the insulation assumed, unable to commute to a job. There is going to be no supply crunch on lithium and cobalt: batteries are only ever going to get cheaper. Wonderful new technologies are going to be invented that will magically make hydrogen cheap. It’s unicorns all the way down.
The plan appears to be to secure public commitment to net zero without revealing its true cost and implications, and then rely on the “legal” status to try to push it through as the real costs start to bite – a boiled frog policy. There is only the vaguest of understanding as to how the costs rise as emissions targets become more binding. There appears to be no understanding of the economic consequences of making the economy uncompetitive: the end result will be economic collapse, and a failure to afford net zero, unless there is some more rational policy soon.
February 7, 2021
I think you are letting the Business Secretary off far too lightly. He will need to produce a PERT chart which covers each milestone in the project (codename Kamilkaze) so that JR can ask questions concerning the Critical Path at any point. The timescale will need to be far shorter to start with, probably annual, otherwise we will discover slippage when its far too late to recover. This is not simply an issue of dependable power generation, although without that the project is non-violable, but it must also encompass transmission capacity at regional and local level and the need for extra 3-phase supply. Then there is the manufacture and installation of charging points for electric vehicles (millions), the recruitment and training of garage electricians, the supply of domestic water heaters, space heaters and cookers (hobs). Electricians and kitchen fitters etc will be required in large numbers. Householders will need to be given fair notice of when they will need to have installed replacement equipment. Then there’s the industrial and comercial use of gas to be addressed as well. Large subsidies wil be required from the Exchequer. But firstly, the most important task: the replacement of most of the Arts graduates in the Business department with qualified engineers and other numerates to generate and monitor the overall plan and ensure that promises concocted by Arts graduates without recourse to science can be obviated..
February 7, 2021
Also need much more capacity on the National Grid, both trunk and local, to distribute the power to charge all the cars and heat all the houses
February 7, 2021
To charge all the cars? – You mean the ones that most people won’t be able to afford?
And as for heating the houses – will that include the millions more houses for our continuing human tsunami from the rest of the planet?
February 7, 2021
It’s ok, the human tsunami wont drive cars, need housing, education, health, eat meat or in anyway add to our carbon footprint or congestion. The ONS have estimated there are 12 million people in the UK who weren’t born here. Most during the latest Tory Government. Wonder who’s going to vote for more of that?
February 7, 2021
A smart entrepreneur should be negotiating with Chinese bike rental companies to export tens of thousands to UK. We’ll need them all in a few years.
February 7, 2021
Not much to add to your post today JR you have outlined the problem.
I wait to see what the Government is going to do about it, but then we have had the potential problem of future generation supply now for decades, the lead time is now close to ending, I can see outages, cuts or rationing on the horizon.
Inter connectors work , but only when the supply Country has enough spare capacity, or no longer becomes friendly. (witness vaccine supply and fish exports.)
I can see every household that can afford it having a stand by diesel generator, but then where will we get the diesel when all garages are closed due to lack of business/demand as cars with that sort of power are scrapped.
Battery backup ? not with the present technology.
Perhaps we better get in a stock of candles !
February 7, 2021
Alan I can see every household that can afford it having a stand by diesel generator, but then where will we get the diesel when all garages are closed due to lack of business/demand
Diesels can be adapted to use cooking oil.
Having lived in the third world I can confirm that it is commonplace for better off people (such as politicians) to install standby generators. It would also be wise to install a UPS for desktop computers to prevent loss of unsaved work until your generator kicks in.
February 7, 2021
And this government will rightly get the blame for pursuing such infantile ruinous policies.
The first party that promises to rescind all this crap will win a landslide.
February 7, 2021
The word ‘if’ is carrying a lot of weight here Sir John. Of course the government is not serious about ending new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. We know it, the industry knows it and you know it.
Consider, by 2030 our economy will have hardly grown at all, targets will be met without any effort from you. The car industry will still be flogging ‘hybrids’ that nobody plugs in and scarcely any new power stations or electric grid wires will have been installed. No need, demand will still be throttled back.
All fuel prices will have risen dramatically in ÂŁ terms – petrol, gas and diesel. We can look forward to providing long johns and window frost scrapers to poor households. Bed socks and extra eiderdowns will become de rigueur as will the wearing of fleeces indoors. Only hedge fund managers, SPADS and MPs will be living in nice warm homes.
February 7, 2021
what happened to the tidal generation stations that was talked about during the eighties, Great Britain has rivers everywhere that is effected by the gravitational effect of the moon twice every day, and it is constant.
February 7, 2021
They’re absolutely useless, thats w. Even the government recognises it.
February 8, 2021
The might of the German industry in the 1930’s and early 40’s was run from dams
in their rivers, useless?
February 9, 2021
The dams made only a minor contribution to electricity, most of which was coal or lignite fired. This chart shows the sources of generation around the world:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/U4zk8/1/
Hydro is most important in South America. In 2019, it provided just 3.3% of Germany’s generation.
February 7, 2021
+1
February 7, 2021
“Only hedge fund managers, SPADS and MPs will be living in nice warm homes.”
You can add big tech execs to the list. That’s why these people readily fall into line to back the Great
Leap ForwardReset.February 7, 2021
The electricity I buy costs SIX times more than the gas per kw/hr.
If much of the electricity I consume is created in gas fired power stations …
1) clearly the production of electricity by burning gas is very inefficient
2) or, someone is making a fortune from it
3) what difference does it make to our carbon footprint if the gas to heat my home is burnt in a very inefficient, expensive power plant or in my highly efficient combo boiler
On the face of it, phasing out gas boilers in houses makes absolutely no sense unless or until we no longer burn carbon to create electricity.
I am as pro green energy as the next person (well, not on this site, obviously) – burning carbon is a dirty business all round- but this governmentâs approach to the matter is simply stupid.
February 7, 2021
+1
February 7, 2021
Nothing very dirty about burning natural gas. C02 plant food and water are not dirty. Even if a heat pump does give you 2.5 times the heat from each KWH of electricity gas is still cheaper( and even more so give the huge capital costs if systems) With fracking it could even cheaper still. Indeed we could use gas in homes and factories for combined heat and generating electrical power in suitable places.
February 7, 2021
Heat pumps only work for isolated buildings, for example farmhouses.
In suburban areas, taking the heat from the ground or the air lowers the temperature and puts up the heating costs of your neighbours. Not to mention the noise. Anyone who installs one in a suburban area is selfish and anti-social. The building regulations should not permit their installation. Grants should be available for removing them.
February 7, 2021
Heat pumps don’t work very efficiently at low or high temperatures when you actually need them. They don’t heat water above 50 degrees so are pretty useless for central heating plus they are noisy and maintenance intensive.
February 7, 2021
I just got the cheapest electricity deal at 5.5 times the cost of gas. It’s the intermittent wind and solar that’s put the price up at over, ÂŁ150/mWh. Gas is s third of this. Plus smart meters and grid to suit switching to wind and solar.
February 7, 2021
I think 2) wins comfortably.
February 7, 2021
Mr. Redwood – whilst acknowledging the work you do in Parliament, and on this site, to try to get the government to act sensibly – isnât it about time you and like-minded MPs formed a serious âawkward squadâ that openly demanded sensible government action. A group with a high media profile, like the ERG during the great pretence (that we were leaving the EU), that published the facts about climate change and energy on one, simple web site where anyone could refer to them (thus making it easy for interviewees on the BBC to have the facts at their fingertips and repudiate their absurd posturing).
As it is your voice is lost and has no affect.
February 7, 2021
I enjoy reading Sir John ‘s posts as they remind me of a time when reasoned discussion seemed worthwhile. It’s like the authoritarian monoculture didn’t exist, or was just an Orwellian fiction that noone believed would really happen. It feels like being in an era when governments listened to public opinion. You could almost imagine rational arguments like his would carry some weight with those deciding our lives. So deliciously, nostalgically refreshing, I’d love to believe there was some point to it.
February 7, 2021
Sound comment.
February 7, 2021
I can remember when you could stand in an independent shop, having a good natter while buying some one-off item that is no longer made. The owner survived because Amazon didn’t exist, local business rates weren’t a killer. If you dallied too long, even though coffee shops didn’t exist, there were no parking wardens to fine you. A leisurely gentle drive home could be made, without constantly reading puzzling road-signs, or checking you weren’t straying onto cycle-lanes, or avoiding changing up into top gear rather than staying in second or third. Cycles shared the roads instead of ‘owning’ the pavements, which were not regularly decorated with take-away wrappers of cans and bottles. People were pleased to stop and chat without backing away 2 m and squeezing their mask back on their noses. Now we all need hearing-aids – we didn’t then. Ah! nostalgia.
February 7, 2021
@Mike Wilson; Our host will likely have more success acting as he does, no doubt via corridors the public usually hear little of. The sort of public virtue signalling you suggest might make you and others feel better but with an opposition that can be relied upon to vote policy through when ever 40+ backbench Tory MPs won’t (your âawkward squadâ) the PM dosen’t have much to worry about from his own party – of course, if a cross party group could be formed to contest such madness, which is of course why Brexit won through…
February 7, 2021
@Jerry You are quite wrong. Merely asking polite questions and ‘pressing’ the government to do this or that will have ZERO effect. Ministers – and the PM in particular – couldn’t give a rat’s arse for the opinion of their backbenchers, whom they view with amused contempt. Voting against the government is the only thing that will make them sit up and take notice.
You say the opposition will vote with the government and thus make rebelling pointless. Again you are wrong. The opposition will be united in voting against the Finance Bill. A group of 40 Tory MPs that said to the government ‘do so-and-so or we will vote against the Finance Bill’ would have huge power. You’d have thought the ERG might have the backbone to do this in order to force the govenment to scrap the NI Protocol and change the fishing quotas. Unfortunately, they seem as spineless as a dead jelly fish.
February 7, 2021
@London Nick; Except there will not be 40+ Tory MPs voting against the Finance Bill… If they do they are likely signing their own or their colleagues P45s. A govt defeat on a Finance Bill will mean a General Election as a matter of confidence.
The PM could also make the vote on any other substantive Bill and ‘vote of confidence’, back me or sack me, I’ll call a GE. “Softly, softly, catchee monkey” as the proverb goes, on the other hand all your ‘Bull in a China Shop’ will do is wreck the joint!
February 7, 2021
But he is having no success at the moment. The madness continues at full steam ahead.
February 7, 2021
If the green lobbyists (WEF) get their way, and they seem to have many governments on board, Chinese funding, the end goal is for a brave new world.
Unless the voices of dissent are given a hearing and allowed to put forth their views, we will be living in a pre-industrial era with a few elite living the life of old Riley; the rest of us will be poor, unable to travel or heat our homes, and ultimately own nothing. Itâs all on the website.
The green globalists must be restrained now. They already are making too much progress.
February 7, 2021
Indeed Sharon.
February 7, 2021
Sharon
“we will be living in a pre-industrial era with a few elite living the life of old Riley; the rest of us will be poor, unable to travel or heat our homes, and ultimately own nothing”
Is this not what the globalists are aiming for?
February 7, 2021
Mike Wilson
Great idea. Will these like-minded people have enough time I ask myself? I think our host has more than enough going on in his life at present.
February 8, 2021
Mike Wilson, Have you tried the GWPF website?
February 7, 2021
The entire US, if not North American, electrical distribution system is out dated and unfit for purpose, now not helped by their legal system that promotes a Blame culture. California’s problem is not just with renewables, it has now become State policy when there is a high risk of wild fires to take off-grid overhead power distribution lines in those high risk areas.
The entire UK electrical system needs to be regarded as unreliable, not just our interconnects, due to the involvement of foreign companies, some with unhealthy closeness to their own govts. The UK needs to a/. take back direct control of our power generation network, yes a return of the CEGB, & b/. own and build new nuclear generating capacity as quickly as possible (and if that means reviewing planning laws to stop endless NIMBY court action so be. The govt must also stop hiding such investment off balance sheet, after all the tax payer ends up paying what ever, either directly via their taxes or via their utility bills.
February 7, 2021
100% spot on. The problem is we have not had a sensible government Energy policy for many many years. No in government understands energy. Lord Marshall we need you now.
February 7, 2021
Jerry
“….The uK needs to take back control….”
Same with Water and Gas Companies, Control should never be subject to control or influence outside of the UK.
These are the very basics of life.
February 7, 2021
In this brave new world we will all need backup generators to stop the food in our fridges being wasted during power cuts.
New domestic gas fired central heating boilers should be mandated to include electricity generators to avoid unsafe backup installations.
February 7, 2021
Brexit people keep telling us how badly the EU is doing with its vaccine programme. Yet the EU has already vaccinated nearly 5m more people than us – despite starting three weeks later. It has also give a bigger % of its people two doses than we have. We have chosen to ignore Pfizerâs recommendations in terms of how to vaccinate. The wisdom of this is unclear. The EU has also bought significant supplies of Johnson & Johnsonâs single dose vaccine. When that comes on stream in a few months itâll make a massive difference. And, we know, the EU has also paid significantly less for jabs than we have. Half the price in one case.
So I wonder how a programme that has vaccinated more people, fully protected a bigger % of people, has the game changer
single jab coming on stream soon and which cost less is a failure? Odd.
Perhaps success in Brexitland involves only masses more bureaucracy than we have ever had.
February 7, 2021
It’s what you know, Andy, that the continental Europeans are superior in every way to us, and have never been known to make a mistake.
February 8, 2021
5 Million more vaccinated than us eh? As you say the EU are 5 times bigger than us, so why so low as 5 million – surely that should be 60 million to be equal?
February 7, 2021
I would prefer the Rolls Royce option of small localised nuclear plants which Rolls Royce has said that they have experience of making.
February 7, 2021
An ambitious, ridiculous and impossible plan that has been cooked up for very different reasons than those they admit to. This decade has become clown world where absolutely nothing is based on reality, logic or even a modicom of critic thought.
February 7, 2021
Why cannot this country just forget all this nonsense? We are sitting on massive coal and shale gas reserves in the short term just follow China’s lead and use it.
I do believe that even the most dedicated green parishioner to the Church of Renewable Energy will when given the choice of having heating, hot water against having to make the choice of heating and eating when paying a fortune to sit in the dark, might just have an inspirational vision come before them.
Get this country working flat out producing what we need when we want it and by then we will be able to actually afford the infrastructure and distribution of reliable 24/7 power supplies.
February 9, 2021
One of the founders of the IPCC, Dr Indur Goklany has published a report on the impacts of climate change.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/02/Goklany-EmpiricalTrends.pdf?mc_cid=41e10ffe91&mc_eid=87fd580a40
His conclusions (which don’t support the green movement’s ‘climate emergency’ agenda) are:-
More hot days and fewer cold days â Yes
Cyclones/hurricanes more intense or frequent â No
Tornadoes increase and become more intense â No
Floods more frequent and more intense â No
Droughts more frequent and intense â No
Area burned by wildfire increasing â No (area peaked in mid-19th century)
Cereal yields decreasing â No (they have tripled since 1961)
Food supplies per capita decreasing â No (increased 31 per cent since 1961)
Land area and beaches shrinking, coral islands submerged â No. (Marginal expansion)
February 7, 2021
Well played Scotland yesterday,
It would have been much appreciated instead of SP (Scottish Power) Networks on their shirts they had Iberdrola Networks because that is actually the owner of the company.
February 7, 2021
Would you want (in a possible future …) to fly IAG planes because thatâs what âBritishâ Airways actually are?
February 7, 2021
Yes, a Spanish owned energy company.
February 7, 2021
So kwasi Kwarteng, whom I had though quite sound, has allowed discussion of a ludicrous gesture politics proposal to make company directors personally liable for errors in company statements. Can a policy be thought of more likely to discourage innovation, entrepreneurship, investment and location in the U.K.? I assume this must have come from some pen pusher who has never worked a day in the private sector, and not from Kwasi himself. Even so he should have tossed it in the bin at first sight. Will the same apply to ministers when civil servants make errors?
Meanwhile Labourâs Annalise Dodds has urged Rishi Sunak NOT to increase taxes in the budget. In middle life I may have to rethink a lifetime of political affiliation at this rate.
February 7, 2021
When you start off with a wrong assumption or base ideas on invalid information, the conclusion can only be incomprehensible or even destructive. To use a computer analogy; Bad data in, bad data out.
Starting with the assumption that all fossil fuels are dangerous in all circumstances to the environment is probably the first invalid piece of information. Modern means of extracting energy from fossil fuels are very clean, but more importantly are able to produce energy whatever the weather.
The climate change scam will ensure the lights really do go out, for it will not be possible to produce or even store enough energy to fulfill requirements, given there will be a much larger demand.
Certainly we cannot rely on windmills or sunshine to keep us powered up, but we lack a real technology in producing effective batteries, never mind that certain elements in batteries are in very short supply.
The following caught my eye as as total nonsense; “The system managers have a more difficult task than before. They are turning to interruptible contracts, to get industry to switch off if the wind stops blowing. They are calling for battery parks to offer stand by capacity, seeking people with stand by diesel generators…”
“interruptible contracts” and “diesel generators” ?????? That smacks of desperation!
We all know that green policies are political by nature, rather than driven by actual science, but if we are going to go with clean energy then the politicians are going to have to ensure that science comes up with the good, instead of making declarations and hoping that science will catch up.
Our governments have failed us many times, in many ways, over the years, but their obsession and their actions relating to alleged man-made climate change does not stand up to real scrutiny.
They are truly leading us back into the dark ages.
February 7, 2021
Renewable energy storage is the way out of the supply problem. We can harvest gigawatts of free energy that will run everything if we could find a way of efficiently storing it.
February 7, 2021
That’s the problem. Storing electricity is expensive and inefficient.
If we could harness fairy dust lifw would be good but we never will.
February 7, 2021
There is always a loss when storing energy. I like the idea of using spare power to liquefy air, which can then be turned back to gas to drive turbines. It’s not very efficient but large amounts of energy can be stored.
February 8, 2021
The energy is not free. You have to spend very large sums on devices to collect it and turn it into electricity, and more large sums on delivering it to customers, and gargantuan sums if you need to store a significant proportion of it to have it when you need it.
February 7, 2021
Around 1990 as a merchant seafarer and rounding the heel of Italy at night I intended to cross the Adriatic to pick up the lights of Albania and Yugoslavia and so to head north. You can imagine my consternation when I crossed to find no lights on in Albania, not one- no lighthouses showing- no lights in houses streets or towns- the only sign of life was a few gorse fires burning high in the mountains- and then over the years I have seen the same in many other regions of the world- to say just in case you think it couldn’t happen here?
February 7, 2021
It has to be a combination of all types of energy . Anyone with any sense of reason can see this . Moving over to renewables with a sense of proportion whilst continuously monitoring use and need is the way forward.
February 7, 2021
Renewables are next to useless, same as crappy electric cars.
February 7, 2021
would they be useless if there wasn’t any other?
February 7, 2021
Quite often, yes.
February 8, 2021
well we have no ‘need’ to switch to electric cars, and even if just choice let us choose petrol, diesel, lpg.
February 7, 2021
In the run up to the Dec 19 election, I thought that if Labour won we would be saddled with policies put forward by zealots/loons which nobody wanted, would be extremely harmful, would cost a Kings ransom, and would in the end be nothing more than pointless virtue signalling. So for the first time I voted Conservative.
What did I get?
Net Zero
February 7, 2021
A line from a Electricity suppliers letter begging to fit a smart meter…..’Smart meters help create a smart grid which will supply energy to our homes more reliably and efficiently , helping to reduce waste’…. To my layman’s understanding there already is a feed back to the Grid in the form of a voltage drop when a lot more people switch on their appliances , this notifies them to add in more supply. So it is already a dynamic supply arrangement.
This begs the question what are smart meters all about? This ‘reliability and efficiency’ seems to me to be about being able curtail demand at source at our homes, just like they have agreements with manufacturing concerns to cease operations when the electricity network is stressed, they want to be able to determine how much electricity we should be able to receive , and cut us off if necessary. It may be reliability of their network, but it is not about reliability of supply to our homes.
The following line in the letter ….Thanks to an in home display you can see how much you are spending in pounds and pence , helping us conserve energy which benefits the environment……..of course we already have a meter. It only becomes necessary to see our pounds and pence disappear because they are intending to make our electricity so eye wateringly expensive.
February 7, 2021
Far fetched? Well not if this article is to be believed.
//The Government is considering giving energy networks the power to switch off a household’s energy supply without warning or compensation for those affected.
A series of ‘modifications’ to the Smart Energy Code have been proposed by officials and look set to pass into law by next spring. //
February 7, 2021
Good morning.
When considering any sort of supply we also have to take into account demand. That demand keeps growing as we increase our population year on year. I know this has been said umpteen time before but it has to be repeated because it is a real factor that no one, certainly in government, seems to be ignoring.
As we are a energy dependent nation we need to guarantee that energy supply will be 100%. If it not then we will not attract investors and trade will suffer. We will become more indebted, both personally and nationally, and will suffer as a result. One is absolutely aghast at the scale of the indeptitude. It isn’t just the policies themselves that are the problem, it is the time scale and the total lack of planning / joined up thinking.
But we get what we voted for and, if this is what people want then so be it.
February 7, 2021
Mark B
“But we get what we voted for”
Not entirely so, Mark. Most people who voted conservative were voting for a government that would protect their way of life, sovereignty and enshrined freedoms.
They were lied to, conned.
February 7, 2021
I would agree, if this is what we voted for but it clearly isn’t. There seems to be no longer a connection between what a party states its priorities are, and what they actually do.
February 8, 2021
was it ever thus?
February 7, 2021
“Most of these [nuclear power stations] are scheduled to close for old age this decade.”
Indeed, but only because of arbitrary EU Regulations that we need no longer follow if we choose. Given the inherent absurdity of a nuclear power station being safe one day and unsafe on the following day, could we not just have a proper objective assessment of the risks of keeping them going, and do so in the absence of compelling reasons to the contrary?
February 7, 2021
“We need to regard this [imports from the continent] as an unreliable source given the problems with continental capacity and their present reliance on Russian gas and some coal. “ – and given the bad attitude of the Evil Empire.
February 7, 2021
Pre-covid U.K.âs Social Progress Index was about 88, North Koreaâs was about 50.
U.K.âs energy use per capita is between 4 and 8 times that of North Korea.
The relationship between social progress index and energy use per capita is monotonically increasing (+ scatter, cross-sectionally by nation).
The U.K. âleadershipâ is trashing human rights, and with it the basic needs, well-being and opportunity that maintain social progress index for the majority. This will allow alignment with much lower energy use per capita. North Korea is now the world leader.
February 7, 2021
The Social Progress Index 2020 you quote has the UK in 20th position at 88.54 behind Norway (92.73), Denmark, Finland, New Zealand (91.64), Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Australia (91.29), Iceland, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Japan (90.14), Luxembourg, Austria (89.50), Belgium, S.Korea, France, Spain (88.71).
This index includes not only GDP (the parameter of choice of people stuck in the â80s) but also Nutrition & Basic Medical Care, Water & Sanitation, Shelter, Personal Safety, Access to Basic Knowledge, Access to Information & Communications, Health & Wellness, Environmental Quality, Personal Rights, Personal Freedom & Choice, Inclusiveness, Access to Advanced Education.
socialprogress.org
February 7, 2021
Caterpillar
“The U.K. âleadershipâ is trashing human rights”
No, they are a bit more selective than that. Try flying the George Cross or speaking your mind, to see this in action.
February 7, 2021
But it is you who dares pro-European Union people to speak their minds in the physical company of people such as yourself, isn’t it?
I assume that you are implying that they would become the victims of violence? Do correct me if I am wrong?
Otherwise I wouldn’t expect any difficulties whatsoever in speaking my mind, so I think that it’s a bit rich of you to go all victim-like over free speech.
As for the George Cross, I don’t see anyone getting arrested for having it tattooed on their heads, so it’s unclear what you mean about that too.
February 8, 2021
Remoaners were never victims of violence. We just allowed ourselves a knowing sympathetic smile, a small shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders.
February 7, 2021
The current assumption that greenhouse gas emissions have to cease is blatant nonsense. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists was not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
Instead of this depressingly negative outlook, to maintain current living standards, now that we have left the EU and regained our sovereignty, we MUST repeal our monumental acts of self harm, beginning with the Climate Change Act and its supporting quangoes. The renewables industry which offers only universal grinding poverty to all, needs to be immediately ditched , and to compete in the real world, we need to build efficient combined Cycle Gas power Stations, and small nuclear reactors until nuclear fusion is acquired.
To keep the lights on we voted for a Conservative government; not a Green one!
February 7, 2021
I strongly agree with your accurate and insightful comment.
Without being smug (I hope), I didn’t vote for the local conservative (who did get in, for the first time in over fifty years). I didn’t trust that the actions would be consistent with the promises. That conclusion has been amply reinforced since then, and to the point of the Conservatives, to my mind, being fully as toxic as any socialist or Green candidate could be.
Sir John, your comments section is an excellent example of the way that reason and good manners can allow the wide and intelligent discussion of important matters, concealing as it does great degrees of apoplexy and even rage.
Unfortunately it also seems to show the futility of such reasoned presentation. Where are the personalities and voices echoing the views of your Diary readers? On the Tory benches, on the airwaves, on the TV screens?
February 7, 2021
What Christiana Figueres actually said: âThis is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolutionâ.
A bit later âThis is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human historyâ.
And funnily enough she did not pronounce even once the word âcapitalismâ.
Just a question: what do you think was achieved by those in the 1980s who open up the stock markets, introduce neoliberal principles all over the place, privatise most services and industries, push for the financialisation of increasing sectors of the day-to-day life?
Wasnât it also a âBig Bangâ?
February 7, 2021
Do you remember the old films where the working classes only had a tin bath and cooked on their open fires by candlelight while looking up at ‘the big house’ where the boss lived? It will be like that again. We’ll wave to them in their big cars from our bikes and buses and look through their windows at the warm surroundings with envy.
February 7, 2021
Prior to privatisation the CEGB was very good a planning the power system. They wanted to build combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations but the government of the day wouldn’t allow it. Gas was seen as a premium fuel and it was sold on the open market. The planners in the CEGB were going in the right direction but the bean counters in the government wouldn’t allow CCGTs to be built. Look at the mess we are in now and it’s going to get worse. With a rising population and upwards of 3 million Hong Kong immigrants on the way, a possible resurgence of the economy, dependence on undersea cables with our friends and partners in the EU, I foresee that in five years time the power supply situation will be dire. What will the eco loons say then?
February 7, 2021
Four separate points if I may…
1 Your article makes little reference to nuclear capacity other than we’re closing down the power stations with undue haste and before adequate alternative and reliable capacity is introduced. Why is that? Surely nuclear has to remain in the mix of energy sources for a good many years yet?
2 I don’t know how much North Sea gas is left and we don’t seem settled on the idea of drilling for shale gas, so does that mean we’ll be ever more dependent on liquid gas imports from Qatar and elsewhere?
3 Labour today were calling for the new coal mine in Cumbria not to go ahead. As I understand it, the mine would source coking coal for our steel industry, and replace more expensive coal imports.
Perhaps you or others should push back on Labour trying to kill off what remains of our steel industry.
4 The dash for net zero and the replacement of diesel and petrol cars makes a great headline for campus activists who aren’t yet taxpayers and don’t question the complete absence of a joined-up strategy for electricity generation in the period 2030-2050. But for those of us who are. Those of us who are taxpayers, as are our grown up children, would place more credence in this ‘net zero’ religion if a plausible plan were announced, it’s all smoke, mirrors and over-promising at present.
February 7, 2021
The country is embarking on one of the biggest blunders in its history without any idea of where it will end up. There are three main reasons for this:
1. Neither the public nor politicians understand what Net-Zero will involve or what it will cost. The Energy White Paper and the Treasuryâs Interim Report both dodged giving the cost but Studies by the GWPF put the total cost of Net Zero by 2050 at more than ÂŁ5 trillion (ÂŁ5,000 billion).
2. The Net Zero policy is based on a so-called âClimate Emergencyâ that does not exist.
3. The huge lobbying power of the main NGOs and the subsidy-dependent renewables industry has led to the Met Office, Environment Agency, the BBC and much of the mainstream media being turned into outlets for green propaganda. Those with a different view mostly cannot get on air or in print.
The interests of the ordinary voter have been overlooked by the Green Blob in Westminster and Whitehall and a very wide gap has opened up between members of the general public and the policy makers. There is no popular mandate for the burdens that are going to be placed on âordinary peopleâ and if current policies are implemented as anticipated, there will be a revolt akin to Brexit or even the Poll Tax.
February 7, 2021
Bill, I agree completely. Sadly the Green Blob has been allowed to take over and evade any sensible debate. If its purpose is to destroy life as we knew it than it is succeeding; on all else it fails. Time to apply some common sense.
February 7, 2021
Every BBC wild life or farming programme comes with the obligatory climate change propaganda message. They have become unwatchable.
February 7, 2021
Ian this is just what my husband and myself said tonight when watching Country file.
February 7, 2021
Estimated 43% of London live in Flats/Apartment, an estimated 15% of London live in Homes of Multiple Occupation HMO
So from the start over half of London canât charge their electric cars from home âŠ.this enforcement needs a serious rethink
And thats just London
February 7, 2021
Indeed, and most of these people are likely to be not only living in London but also working within the M25 where overall public transport is much less scarce than outside of it. Which makes charging their electric cars much a less of a priority, donât you think?
February 7, 2021
Plus every on street parking terrace and semi.
February 7, 2021
The electrical grid is an enormous distribution network that holds little or no inventory. If the supply is to be increasingly intermittent then there needs to be a massive increase in energy storage and an increased decoupling from a central grid to more local micro-grids so that critical functions can continue without the central grid.
That can use a variety of potential methods:
Find more places to pump water uphill to be released when needed to drive turbines.
Lift heavy weights up mine shafts.
Make and store hydrogen or ammonia to drive fuel cells.
Compress air.
Use battery storage – lithium batteries or vanadium flow cells.
Pumped thermal energy – heat up a high heat capacity such as gravel or water.
Molten salt – use solar power to heat salt to very high temperatures.
I suggest work is needed on all these options and it would be good if you could ask the minister which ones he plans to support.
February 7, 2021
Ate you offering to negotiate with Sturgeon to flood the Scottish Highlands for pumped storage? I have calculated using 30 years of hourly weather data that in a net zero scenario of reliance on wind and solar we would need many thousands of Dinorwigs to provide the necessary storage to even out supply across seasons and between years.
Battery storage is very expensive, and is only suited to applications where the period of storage is short, and the frequency of charge and discharge is high, to give plenty of throughput on which to earn a margin.
Compressed and liquefied air storage has a low round trip efficiency which makes the economics difficult.
Weights in mines can only store fairly trivial quantities of energy – a few MWh, when the storage required will be well into the 10s of TWh. They are not going to solve the bigger problems.
Hydrogen and ammonia are very expensive to produce as carriers of energy, more particularly if you go the electrolysis route, rather than steam reforming of methane, which produces a CO2 byproduct. Green hydrogen costs about 10 times as much as methane. There are considerable difficulties with handling either of them. Ammonia could not be safely used outside closely controlled industrial or shipping applications. Hydrogen occupies three times as much space as methane for storage purposes. Hydrogen is now davoured by government on the grounds that it might be vaguely feasible, unlike most of the other options, so long as you are prepared to ignore the cost.
February 7, 2021
Youâve identified a few solutions to energy supply and possibly solutions to climate change â however your solutions only carry weight if you believe that there is a problem in the first place
February 7, 2021
JR -“The scale of the task is immense. ”
In fact it isn’t do-able without nuclear power generation.
Of course there is another alternative –
1) Prevent trade with and de-industrailise China, and restrict India’s activities. There’s simply too many of ’em accounting for third of global population, the planet cannot sustain the environmental load. Tough, but that’s the way it is.
2) Expose and shut down those who seem to think we on our island of a mere 60 Million should be having our lives turned upside down to pay for the stink they created by their greed to make vast profits from having everything made in China.
3) Scrap the ban on petrol engines – cars have never been cleaner.
4) Ban wholly electric cars – they are not carbon neutral and never will be.
5) If EV’s are to be given future consideration as an alternative, they should be gas turbine electric hybrids – advantage = can be run on bio fuel or hydrogen, requires a fraction of the storage capacity hence much less lithium, and gives acceptable range.
6) Make everything we need in our own country.
Dumbing down of this country, bending over backwards to please others, outsourcing and unmitigated greed is the root cause of all our problems, electricity generation included.
February 7, 2021
Good points Steve.
February 7, 2021
Please can someone tell me (remember it is a Sunday so try and be polite) why on earth does the UK when it gets sucked into to anything has to always be in the vanguard and follow all the rules while all others just flout them?
We are not a major world power anymore and do these other countries really take notice of what we do in the totally outdated principle of setting an example in everything we foolishly sign upto.
February 7, 2021
A weak government – a government that thinks more of the media than the voter
February 7, 2021
I suspect that our history is one of our problems. We are very much an ex-power, but fail to accept that. As a result, we are keen to be moral leaders, which is all we can afford. And when moral leadership takes us into the world of green absurdity, we cannot even afford that.
February 7, 2021
Sir John,
You mention pumped storage. The Electric Mountain at Dinorwig would cost billions to replicate. It’s total capacity is 9.1 GWh. If it were used to support the Grid at max load — call it 45 GW — that would keep the lights on for 12 minutes. If the Grid then collapsed there would be no way to give it the rapid cold start that Dinorwig was designed for. For much less money we could build a few Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plants which would produce a continuous supply of low CO2, clean electricity.
Current plans to price the old, the poor and the sick out of needed life-saving heating are reckless in the extreme. As a councillor I had to sign that I understood my duty of care to my residents. Do ministers not have such an obligation?
JF
February 7, 2021
Just get more Engineers in Government and replace the CO2 in Parliament with common sense.
You can’t fix real world scientific problems with politics alone. Politics is to keep people happy not provide sound science and engineering solutions.
How much child labour used to dig out the materials for battery’s ?
The focus on CO2 and not pollution is a bandwagon for Politicians to jump on without any investigation into the science and feasibility of any actions taken.
February 7, 2021
As we can’t post direct links I suggest visiting Paul Homewoods “NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat” blog and look for “Norway Proves Our Electrification Strategy Is Doomed To Disaster”. And Pierre Gosselin at “NoTricksZone” has worrying news from Germany: “Winter Storm Threatens Germanyâs Power”
I make no apologies in hoping for a major power outage this winter, either here in Europe. Several days without heat & light in the middle of a freeze is the only way the public will see that “our” politicians are quite simply mad to keep pursuing this “Net Zero” madness…
February 7, 2021
Better now than later. The longer this does on the more damaging the eventual crash will be.
JF
February 7, 2021
“net zero” is wholly impracticable and needs to be binned. Let’s have some publicity for the real science which discredits the whole issue of “global warming” and a return to real engineering principles instead.
February 7, 2021
TT, Well, if you have been on this blog long enough, read the MSM or listened to any politician (whether Cons or Labs) you might have realised that whatever the topics we keep being told we are the best, at the forefront of everything, whether in science, sports, economics, arts, diplomacy, …
Unfortunately anyone curious enough to have even a cursory look at country comparison tables or able to read outside the UK would quickly notice that there is quite a gap between what is advertised within the UK and what appears to be the commonly accepted state of things, at least commonly accepted in international comparisons.
Then there is the âwhile all others flout them rulesâ and the âsetting an example in everythingâ. Who usually says that? This blog, the UK MSM, the UK politicians, the âestablishmentâ, the âeliteâ? Are we really always following the rules? To which degree can one really trust those information providers? Is it true or is it a way to sustain a certain UK type of Dolchstoss/stab-in-the-back legend so praised by all types of nationalists?
Your comment reminds me of Dean Acheson 1962âs comment âBritain has lost an empire but not yet found a roleâ. Is it about to find one?
February 7, 2021
2 ways to keep the lights on, and only 2 ways to consistently maintain that the lights always stay on
1. Nuclear power stations
2. Clean Coal and/or gas power stations
Everything else is just tinkering with energy supply
February 7, 2021
Off topic but important :
Watching the interview with Zahawi on Marr this morning, he foolishly stated, very firmly, that the UK government would not be introducing a vaccine passport.
This is an unsustainable strategy because we are already seeing countries such as Greece saying that they will only accept holidaymakers who have been vaccinated. Similarly, airlines and their passengers are going to demand that fellow travelers have all been vaccinated. But it is a far more wide-ranging problem than this : If I owned a Care Home, had a relative living in one, or was an insurer providing cover for one, I would insist on every employee being vaccinated so it will be essential for there to be a system to verify this.
I appreciate there are arguments over civil liberties and discrimination, but the virus situation is far too serious to allow these to dictate the recovery.
February 8, 2021
ChrisS. Yes, agree with what you say. I want to know that everyone on a flight I might take, a restaurant, a cinema or any other venue with a lot of people gathered are safe and have been vaccinated. Already there are alot of holiday companies saying if you’ve been vaccinated you can travel. Our minister (can never remember his name) is going on about discrimination against those who havne’t been vaccinated. Once the whole country has taken this vaccine then some kind of passport should be issued. We have to show this for other compulsary vaccines when we travel to certain countries now so why not for Covid? If people choose not to take the vaccine then that is their look out. GP’s will not have the time to verify that people have been vaccinated before their travel. Once again our government is out of touch.
February 7, 2021
No mention about tidal generation, the UK has many suitable sites both for barrage and sea turbines.
February 7, 2021
On a different note I am really sorry to see both our exporters in particular but now also our impoters are ahving major document and logistical problems with their goods due to Brexit.
February 8, 2021
No, Bill, it’s due to the EU, not Brexit. Other countries don’t have the same problems.
February 7, 2021
âThe current starting position includes around one fifth of our power coming from nuclear power stations.â
This is the case for electrical power only which represents just 20% of our total energy consumed.
So, to remind those who think we can easily convert all our power to renewably generated electricity, since renewables generated 27% of our electricity last year (National Grid figure), they therefore only provided just over 5% of our total energy needs.
Itâs not going to happenâŠunless of course the real plan is to provide an excuse to severely cut back on our mobility and standard of livingâŠ..
February 7, 2021
Having studied energy transition, the current government plans are cavalier bordering on stupidity. For electric cars we need to vastly increase charging points which will increase electricity demands – but where is the production ?
The sensible option is gas and most experts realize that gas will be needed for many decades to come. The government have shown massive weakness in backing away from fracking based on rumour and untruths put into the media by our green blob.
Boris is now talking about a carbon tax on our meat and cheese – again pushed by vegans using pseudo nonsense about farming created methane.
On a wider point – is this a Conservative government in power, the government of choice ? It seems DECC are way too powerful and need to be brought in line.
February 7, 2021
I despair that even the better educated of this world appear to believe that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide. It just shows how advertising and the MSM can convince people of utter nonsense. Firstly, increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a CONSEQUENCE of global warming not a CAUSE. Next a short quiz: do any of you out there 1. know what photosynthesis is? And 2, do the solubilities of gases, such as carbon dioxide, in liquids, such as water, increase or decrease with increasing temperature? Answers not on a postcard but on facebook please.
February 8, 2021
If as I think your (correct) point is that CO2 is less soluble in warmer water (as temperature being after all a measure of the motion of molecules in a given medium, higher temperatures would allow originally dissolved CO2 molecules to escape the liquid more easily) could you please provide your explanation for the possible warming water.
As for the role of photosynthesis, what is your take on the balance between possible increases in photosynthesis and in CO2 concentration? Would such changes apply whatever the temperature reached by air, ocean temperature?
Thanks in advance.
February 7, 2021
Attempting to combat global warming is a King Canute scam. The climate has always warmed and cooled and is on a warming cycle from the last glacial period which started 22,000 years ago and long before fossil fuels were used for the Industrial Revolution.
Its success is because some see it as a great way to make money and promote their career, others see it as a way to destroy capitalism, wealth and liberty and bring about a new world feudal system of control and government.
Still others believe fuel poverty will be the answer to the world running out of resources and destroying the environment through pollution without having to tackle the real issue of over-population.
The scam is evidenced by the fact that our MSM, led by the BBC, will never put on air a discussion on energy generation by engineers. It seems that only politicians and their own arts educated reporters are allowed a view.
No doubt we will be treated to the unedifying spectacle of tens of thousands of politicians and reporters from all round the world emitting huge quantities of CO2 to attend the Glasgow COP26 conference jolly at the tax-payersâ expense and bringing with them every Covid-19 variant existing.
They will all sign up to âsomethingâ and which the majority will simply ignore.
February 8, 2021
orginial Richard. Yes, they will all sign up to something but I bet the UK signs up to more than any other country. We never do things by half even when it’s stupid.
February 7, 2021
The fundamental problem with anthropogenic CO2 emissions is that there is no fair and binding mechanism between nations to ensure efficient industry.
As long as we export jobs to the third world via the Paris Accord, we perpetuate inefficient industry and increased CO2 emissions into the one atmosphere we all share.
This is a political problem.
The UK is correct to assert that the new Cumbria coal mine is carbon negative in the sense that the alternative scenario is mining of inferior coal overseas to support less efficient steel industry.
February 8, 2021
The question we should be asking is, if our parents generation did this how prosperous would we be today?
I suspect the answer would be significantly less. I am far more concerned about the supplies of fossil fuels then their adverse effects, we are already tapping ultra deep oil reservoirs miles underground and also tight oil rocks that need expensive additional processing, we would not be doing this if there were cheaper sources available. Personally I see market forces doing more good than government dictat here, we can rely on people to reduce their energy use when it is expensive.
I want to see government putting guarantees behind nuclear power and encouraging less needless commuting, we have learned through this pandemic that much travel was pointless.
February 8, 2021
Ignoramus is well-named.
An energy policy based on decarbonisation is suicidal, defying the laws of physics, engineering, grid practicalities and economics.
To conflate decarbonisation (unproven) with good environmentalism (all agreed) is disastrous and harmful.
The Climate Change Act 2008 must be repealed ASAP and MPs must be educated as to the real science behind the climate debate. There may be a political consensus based on hypocrisy, ignorance and stupidity, but there is certainly no scientific consensus about so-called climate change.
Unfortunately we are led by ignorant donkeys.
February 8, 2021
G.B. National Grid Status
See
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Cordially
February 8, 2021
I hope this technology with R&D in Cumbria using nuclear waste residue to create an innovative power source is successful: Search
âBreak-Throughâ moment came when Infinite Power Company ….
February 9, 2021
Increase wind & other renewables.
Do not close existing gas/coal/nuclear plant.Revoke prior plans where safe.
French and foreign states needs to be removed from controlling our nuclear plants. It will be used against us.
Maintain them run them at lower intensity then for forecast demand/supply imbalances. e.g. winter cold,calm, no sun days, happens every year use them. Discontinue when we have resolved the demand/supply imbalance.
Meantime:
Increase storage of electricity by GW days. Via. Hydro,Compressed or Liquid Air storage, Redox flow batteries, ie liquid tanks of chemical. These are scalable. Preferably near to use or connectors. Expand co-operation with Norway, Iceland and Ireland.
Ensure we have plenty gas storage to take advantage summer lower prices.
Not a fan of expensive, dangerous nuclear. Prefer UK owned and controlled plant preferably renewables.