The Business Secretary seeks to reassure us that the UK will have plenty of cheaper green energy in due course. That will be very welcome. It will need to work with or without the wind blowing and the sun shining. He also needs to check we have enough energy for the next decade whilst we await completion of these investments. Presumably they will need battery and or hydrogen and or water power storage of wind power. Recent experience has shown electricity capacity is tight when the wind does not blow. Current gyrations in a world gas market temporarily starved of enough gas is causing real problems for UK users and for some electricity generators.
The truth is if you wish to have a steel, chemical, food, glass, cement, and other main process industries today you still need plenty of good value base energy from gas or some similar primary fuel. That is why Germany is busy negotiating to buy yet more quantities of Russian gas to keep her factories turning when she has little gas or oil of her own. It is also why she persists in mining yet more coal and burning much of it despite the general advanced country agreement to phase it out quickly. That is how she maintains her status as Europe’s leading industrial economy.
The UK should be better placed. The UK has access to more gas and oil under its own geographical jurisdiction. The government now proudly tells us we produce half our own gas, but the figure needs to be higher. It is, after all, much greener to use our own gas down a relatively short pipe than to haul LNG half way round the world with all the extra fuel that takes to transform the gas and power the ship.
Last month with little wind the UK had to restart three coal fired power stations. Thank goodness those had not been dismantled and knocked down as the others had, as they helped keep the lights on. The government needs to ensure we have enough reserve power to run. Maybe it needs to convert more to biomass which can provide stable power whatever the weather.
In due course we may have large scale battery or hydro or hydrogen storage of excess power generated by renewables on sunny or windy days. We may have more reliable hydro systems. What we cannot rely on is imports in an energy short world. We should not expect others to mine coal, burn gas and make things for us. The UK has to help find the acceptable energy and generate the necessary power, as we always used to. For many years we produced our own energy as an island of coal in a sea of oil and gas, with plenty of electricity capacity of a wide range of kinds.
The government for this decade needs to factor into the figures the progressive closure of most of our nuclear power stations which today generate around 17% of our electricity. In due course there may well be ways of making steel, glass and cement that do not need so much gas, and ways of heating our homes without the gas boiler. In the meantime we need to make sure we can cover our needs.
October 8, 2021
We actually need plenty of “on demand” energy that can be stored and is ready for use. Gas mainly, nuclear and piles of coal as a back up (importing wood to burn is clearly idiotic). But the government response so far is to pretend the the problems show the need for more wind and photovoltaics while wittering on about the Saudi Arabia of wind.
Get a sensible person who understands reality to advise please. Lords Matt Ridley or Peter Lilley are sound on this topic but not many people. CO2 is not a serious problem anyway, but even if it were the UK reducing its output marginally while exporting energy demanding industries abroad does nothing of significance anyway.
Time to grow up Boris, to ignore the green xxxx Carrie and get real.
October 8, 2021
Wind and solar are largely irrelevant to home heating as most home heating is gas or oil (+ some coal & wood and a little (very expensive) electric heating + the odd heat pump). Solar PV gives most energy in the middle of the day and in summer (when heating is largely not needed) and the electricity cannot really be stored cost effectively or very efficiently. Wind is largely reliant on gas for back up and on diesel ships and fossil fuels maintain, construct & manufacture the large turbines too. Expensive and intermittent energy is not really what is needed.
Fusion and better nuclear are surely the only long term solutions – they will fortunately arrive well before we run out of gas and coal.
October 8, 2021
No investor in their right mind would put money into gas or coal at present. Investment by all the big energy firms is decreasing year on year – which indeed has lead to the problem we now face.
Yes, renewables have their drawbacks, but they are the future – like it or not.
Nuclear is way more viable as providing a baseload.
Money talks my friend, and would you bet your shirt on fossil fuels?
October 9, 2021
Nonsense.Exxon just last week committed to a $5bn consortium investment to extend the life of gas production on the island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East.
Trafigura has taken a 10% stake in the forthcoming huge oil development in the Russian Arctic.
October 8, 2021
@Lifelogic +1, They, the Governments inner clique, have a different agenda and it does not involve supporting the UK ahead of their own personal ego’s. They have created a race, to be first to ‘green the world , go further and faster so as the UK’s 1% of the problem can balance out the rest of the World. This is not working in unison and in step with World aims but forcing destruction of the economy, for ones ‘ego’ to feel good.
You have to ask why are such a small handful of ‘eco terrorists’ able to get away with punishing the UK that way?
October 8, 2021
+1 it does not even save CO2 just exports it with the jobs and often increases it.
October 8, 2021
LL,
I like the way JR deflects blame rather than accept his party and govt. caused this mess and hardship by deliberate action. Reliant on govt.s declared enemies for energy! Does Johnson understand national security?
Like a magician he and his party want you to look at his left hand to deflect blame onto anyone or anything while his right hand is causing the mess and increasingly putting us all into poverty ie bringing everyone down not levelling up!
Socialists always do, whether it be the rotten education system currently under attack by the Fake Tories, or the fake degrees as you highlight LL. what is unbelievable it is a a party under the deception and guise of a label calling them conservative. They are most definitely not. Johnson wants and implements higher taxes while claiming the opposite, same for all his cultural Marxist policies including build back better- it is nothing of the sort. A phrase hijacked like BLM.
I hope everyone remembers a Johnson and fake party are attacking savers, strivers, pensioners and the prudent. They are attacking workers and employers at the same time with tax hikes. 2012 Johnson’s. Is ion was set out in the Telegraph, his new vision based on his current squeeze!
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
I recall the mad economics of the Major era where we all had to suffer while his elite chums were okay.
I look at young married couples trying to do the right thing (JAM, May called them), buy a house, support a young family against Fake Tory govt trying to impoverish them.
In contrast Johnson virtual signalling at their expense giving away billions of taxes to foreigners who paid nothing into the UK tax pot or contributed towards our society and will not have to worry about heating, clothing, eating or cost of living in their four star hotels provided by the workers and strivers. All public services for free for them: the young married couple getting hammered with additional NIC taxes to pay for them to provide a free world health service in dire need of radical change and should be able to manage well under its current budget.
Meanwhile Johnson jokes about Kermit for his wife and his ennobled unelected environment minister- who also has no cost of living worries.
Socialist Johnson needs to be ousted, alas JR made clear he has the full support of the parliamentary party. Time to clear the lot out.
October 9, 2021
So you can explain why the USA continues using Russian RD-180 rocket engines for space launches of NASA and Space Force flights….
Perhaps things are not really so black and white as your rhetoric suggests.
October 8, 2021
A friend of mine says his green “renewable” energy only electricity supply is increasing hugely in price. Has God put up the price of wind, rain and sunshine? I must have missed that news.
Or perhaps it was not really green, renewable energy at all and it was all a con?
October 8, 2021
Heating oil has shot up, why? Normally it fluctuates irrespective of gas price.
Fake Tories do not want the gas under the North Sea or shale gas or coal, Johnson prefers imported Russian coal and gas which, by their rationale, harms the planet far more than if it was produced here!
October 8, 2021
RIP James Brokenshire MP.
I may not have agreed with all of his politics, but he seemed a decent man who died far too young.
October 8, 2021
Is biomass sustainable? Doubtful. It is much easier and quicker to burn biomass than regrow it. And as LG says importing it is nuts. And wood with the most density takes longer to grow.
A mon avis.
October 8, 2021
I’d like to know what will happen to the grid and all the wind power if Scotland becomes independent? Will they be like France threatening to cut us off if they don’t get their own way over things? It’s English bill payers that have put the most money into the wind farm business but I expect we will get problems in the long term.
October 9, 2021
‘It’s English bill payers …’
Do not worry, the consumers will pay their bills but it is the shareholders in the wind, solar and other renewable businesses that have already put most of the money in those companies, and who will get their dividends in due time.
If interested, what about investing in MCE: IBE (that’s Iberdrola on the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange), or NASDAQ: TSLA (Tesla does not make only EVs), CPH:VWS (Vestas Wind Systems on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange) or MCE:SGRE, CPH:ORSTED, NYSE:NEE, NYSE:JKS, or …
You might want to know what these things are: Iberdrola is Scottish Power, Vestas is behind the Sandy Knowe onshore project in Scotland, Orsted together with Siemens (SGRE) are behind the wind developments in the Humber region, …
To think that the British bill payer has been putting the most money into the wind farm business is simply a delusion.
On the LondonStock Exchange there are at least 13 investment trusts (ITs) specialised in Renewable Energy Infrastructure with about £6bn of assets, plus a number of private equity ITs with interests in all sorts of Renewable Energy-related companies.
So maybe your pension funds have invested in these companies and indirectly you are part of these financial endeavours.
If not, either you inform yourself, or you will continue to write rather amusing but meaningless posts.
Reply This site does not offer investment advice
October 11, 2021
@Reply I don’t think Hefner was giving investment advice, rather suggesting people “follow the money” to see who actually invests and will benefit from renewable infrastructure.
If people paid more attention to who actually owns businesses, where the control resides and where the money flows then perhaps so much of our industry wouldn’t have been exported leaving us to import everything, including energy.
Perhaps you should give similar warnings about buying advice whenever LifeLogic and crew demand cheap products and energy with low taxes and zero investment.
October 8, 2021
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The answer to a problem is not more problem. More energy is more problem.
Our problem is that we use too much energy. The solution is that we have to use less.
This is one area where the EU has had some staggering successes. In the 1970s – the grim period Brexitists seem to want to return to – we used MORE electricity per household than we do now. This is despite the fact that modern homes are packed full of electrical gizmos and gadgets in the way they weren’t 50 years ago.
Your lightbulbs, your hairdryers, your vacuum cleaners, your fridges, your TVs are all much better products today than they were then AND they use much less energy too.
Thanks to EU law we have succeeded in massively reducing the amount of energy used by products in our homes whilst improving those products too. Many of you sneer at a more efficient kettle or a better toaster. But there are hundreds of millions of these better products across Europe – and this has made a huge difference.
Thanks to the repeated failures of Tory governments we have failed to replicate this success on our homes themselves.
The short term solution – while we build additional renewable capacity – is to insulate. Insulate, insulate, insulate. A properly insulated home uses less energy in the first place. It is a win, win.
Why are we not doing it? Why are Tory MPs – who all stood on a net zero manifesto in 2019 – now all talking about more gas and coal? Talk about more insulation instead and then maybe your party can actually keep a manifesto promise. It’d make a change.
October 8, 2021
Why don’t you start up the …um…”Cave and Candle” political party?
October 8, 2021
@EH; “[the] ”Cave and Candle” political party
Haha, but would new caves get planning approval, a NIMBY is sure to object, and were is the tallow coming from to make candles if we all give up eating meat?
October 8, 2021
Beeswax?
October 8, 2021
I certainly would not pass the building control tests for heat losses, insulation standard, damp, natural light and similar.
October 8, 2021
Cave, Candle, sheep skin clothing and shared bodily warmth perhaps?
Energy is the great solution and one of if not the main drivers civilisation and of better healthier lives – not the at all problem mate – in 1880 a minute’s work would buy you, on average, four minutes of artificial light. Today more like 300 hours with an LED lamp. Fresh clean tap water, sewers, food production, light, washing machines, transport, distribution, mobile phones, buildings – all these need cheap on demand energy and lots of it.
October 8, 2021
+many
October 8, 2021
Well said, Lifelogic, could you put some of that together to drive a bit of intelligence into the political party
October 8, 2021
What a silly comment.
A LED bulb uses only about 7% of the energy for the same light as does a tungsten bulb.
A condensing boiler wastes only about a fifth of the heat of a 1970s one, and an insulated house reduces the need for heat at all to a small fraction of an uninsulated one.
Andy is rightly celebrating progress, and the continuation of it.
October 8, 2021
@NlH; “A LED bulb uses only about 7% of the energy for the same light as does a tungsten bulb.”
Your point being what, after all with the small exceptions of outside lighting, the heat given off by TF bulbs is not wasted, also they are simpler & cheaper to make, nor need energy expensive “recycling” processes to depose of correctly/safely (LEDs being electronic waste, never mind those awful, dangerous if smashed, CFL bulbs the EU originally inflicted upon us). You also forget there would be no shortage of electrical energy, even if we had to reopen the UK coal fields, was it not for your love for the Green religion and so called renewables.
October 8, 2021
Agree
October 8, 2021
Nottingham Lad Himself: “LED bulbs only use 7% of the energy for the same light as a tungsten bulb”.
The question is when do you use lights the most? I suggest it is autumn, winter and spring, during the times of year when you have the heating on. So what replaces the heat not being created by tungsten light bulbs? I suggest the energy saved by LED lights is largely illusionary.
The only advantage of LED lights is when we have to use batteries for lighting during the forthcoming, entirely avoidable, power cuts!
October 8, 2021
Very true- but if you heat with gas (and it costs far less than electricity as it usually does) perhaps 1/3 of the cost so you save 2/3rd of the cost of that waste electrical/heat energy. As the gas boiler now provides the heat no longer provided by electric lighting.
October 8, 2021
The extra cost of electricity over gas is the main reason that heat pump system rarely make any sense in economic terms or practical. Even though you do get more heat out than the energy you put – in the very high capital cost is just not worth it. They make little sense in environment terms either in general.
October 8, 2021
Not EU law but technological innovation. The EU made many huge errors. Pushing diesel cars and those appalling compact florescent (mercury filled) lightbulbs (when LEDs were far superior and just round the corner). When things work better and are cost effective people will buy them they do not need to be forced too by usually misguided governments.
Good R&D is sensible but roll out of duff and premature technology using tax payer subsidies or forced on to people by regulation usually (almost always) does far more harm than good. The thermal cladding on tall buildings for example all now being ripped off.
As usual the EU and misguided government are to blame. Often driven by vested interests not the publics – see Dyson’s experience over energy rules (and the testing rules) on Vacuum Cleaners.
October 8, 2021
I agree that fluorescent bulbs are awful.
However, no one knew that LED bulbs were round the corner.
If you really did engineering, then you’d know that for a long time many people wrongly believed that a blue LED – on which white light depends – was impossible.
October 8, 2021
Blue LEDs discovered in 1993 – so we knew they were coming for 27 + years and well before they forced those vile compact fluorescents on to us.
I read Maths & Physics later Solid State Physics & Electronics – though it was about 40 years back when we had only green & red and (combined) yellow LEDs.
October 8, 2021
@LL +1, Although forcing out jobs to boost imports by decree. It is also a way of redistributing wealth(weaponizing trade), by forcing purchases of goods produced in other domains. You could also see the hand of big business, ‘you must force your people to buy our goods from safe tax domain for us’
October 8, 2021
Lifelogic :
“Not EU law but technological innovation.”
I agree completely.
Technological innovation has always been the only driver of higher living standards and requires a society which allows freedom of thought, speech and action and hence the reason why a drift to the left where idealogy trumps common sense will eventually kill off any improvements in our quality of life.
October 8, 2021
Quite so.
October 8, 2021
I think you just described the problem with our current (but not for long I hope) government trashing the country.
October 8, 2021
People seem to have forgotten that Mrs Merkel foolishly shut down Germany’s nuclear power industry after the disaster in Japan. Instead it relies on brown coal and imported French electricity mostly generated by their excellent nuclear power set up.
Time we got those Rolls Royce SMRs going and put money into using thorium as a nuclear fuel.
October 8, 2021
Perhaps she feared a major German earthquake!
October 8, 2021
A political one was the threat. Now they will find out what they have voted for.
October 8, 2021
It does not require an earthquake to cause a nuclear disaster.
There were none at Chernobyl, at Windscales, nor at Three Mile Island.
October 8, 2021
She feared a tidal wave coming up the Rhine. The earthquake would not have signified because the Japanese reactor immediately shut down automatically.
October 8, 2021
NHL
What were the total killed by all the disasters you quote?
October 8, 2021
Yes Mockbeggar. Let’s get those Rolls Royce SMR’s going. That sounds like one British manufacturer that has NOT been stolen by the EU.
October 9, 2021
The EU did not steal any UK company. They were privatised under both Labour and Conservative governments, after a while bought by some other (more often than not, foreign) companies, and now possibly appear on some stock exchanges other than the London Stock Exchange.
RR. is still officially on the LSE: it don’t mean a thing (if it ain’t got that swing [oops]) about who the actual holders of its two million shares are.
October 8, 2021
EU rules stops innovation and invention
October 8, 2021
As well as insulation, we can reduce energy usage by stopping immigration. Less people means less energy demand. This will also reduce demand for housing land, releasing it to be used for farming. Less people also means fresh water can be supplied without resorting to expensive desalination.
With more opportunities for women, unlike other countries where they are forced into marriage and childbirth, they can choose careers if they wish and not have so many children. The UK population will decline naturally. A demographic problem for those that remain, but we’ll all have to get used to the idea of having to work longer.
October 8, 2021
@Dave Andrews; “As well as insulation, we can reduce energy usage by stopping immigration. Less people means less energy demand.
Tell me, how much does it cost to heat one room, to 20 degs C, with 1 British national in, how much will it cost to heat the same room with that 1 British national in plus 9 immigrants?…
October 8, 2021
It’s 5 people to the kilowatt. However, you have to feed them so they can produce energy. That is not a very efficient way of doing so.
October 8, 2021
You renting out a room then?
October 8, 2021
@EH; No, but some agricultural sector employers for example might well be offering accommodation along with the job that needs (read, must) be done if there are not to be shortages in the shops, it’ll makes no difference to them if they employ willing and able British nationals or willing and able economic migrants.
October 8, 2021
It was interesting today to read that spending on state school kids has dropped per person over the last 10 years. This of course is because the government never acknowledged the half million kids from free movement. We were always told immigration didn’t impact on our health, education and wages. We’re seeing something different now.
October 8, 2021
IMMIGRATION is certainly yet another policy area where B.J.’s government has disastrously failed.
October 9, 2021
@Pauline Baxter; Are you offering to do the work these migrants workers come to do?…
If your rant was intended to be directed at illegal migrants, well of course the current govt is failing, just like all the previous 100 have before (the only different in the last 30 odd years is the easy at which some landings can be reported), it’s a down side of being an island, unlike those countries that are land-locked it is very difficult to erect hard boarders without putting much of the foreshore out of bounds to our own people, as happened during WW2. Heck even Mr Trumps “Wall” would have failed, illegals would have simply taken to boats in the Gulf of Mexico or Pacific Ocean.
October 8, 2021
@Andy; Why is the EU given any credit for lowering world wide energy use, surely in has been the electronics industry, their commercial silicon chips with their vastly lower energy consumption (over the solid state transistor and vacuum values that went before) which has brought about such a cut in world wide energy consumption. On the other hand the EU with all their office blocks are prime examples of unnecessary energy consumption!
October 8, 2021
Germany’s “staggering success” involves not shutting down coal burning power stations until 2038 and building a massive new pipeline to get gas from Russia. I agree we should learn from this success and follow it.
October 8, 2021
And 3 more to be completed.
October 8, 2021
Andy
All the insulation in the world will not be enough to offset the production of cement, steel and other essential commodities.
The building stock is still very largely badly insulated and it was 1981 when the building regulations really started to take notice on thermal efficiency on new build. The steady state heat losses in properties came down thankfully year on year,but the is only on new build. Today one of the problems the medical people are linking high efficiency properties with medical conditions due to lack of ventilation. 1950s housing stock all had air bricks in every room to generate healthy air change rates albeit there was hardly any heating as such. Open flued appliances and coal fires created big air change rates within the property but not good fot the air outside.
The biggest heat loss today in the majority of new build properties is the air factor and it is a constant it never changes. So the steady state heat loss how the construction material and method of installation is low but you still have the heating of the air plus the bigger heating demand to provide hot water which is yet another constant.
Good house design short hot water drawoffs equals smaller dead legs less waste where hot water has gone cold even massive insulation within will not stop natural heat losses. If, and we won’t, adopted warm air as a heating as the main heating system which you can bolt on heat recovery, electronic inlet air filtration, air conditioning, even lower heat losses due to smaller air charge rates, the Canadians have always done it for decades and they I suggest have much more severe winters than we do.
If for one nano second you take all the previous as true from a central heating design engineer you will perhaps see that for new build new ideas and products can and will be used but for older housing stock even those built in the 80s it is and always will be very disruptive and expensive and too many of my clients love all the ideas, not the cost but the wives hate all the thought of the upheaval, mess and what they are going to do with the kids while it is all going on. The easy way of course is to make it law that people have to do all this before they sell their house , but can they afford to live in a hotel (if they can find one with any capacity) put all their belongings in store until the work is done, the new price recoups the investments and they in turn find another state of the art insulated property? The pitfalls of course will be finding tradesman, materials and the biggest problem if the wind ain’t blowing nothing is going to work anyway. Have not started on all the social housing stock. Some things in life are a constant, change being one of them invariably it comes at a price. Moral, human or financial.
Let’s go back to unheated properties , bath once a week,and you can dramatically reduce your energy foootprint, just if you ban all motor vehicles and all ride bicycles and all go on walking holidays
October 9, 2021
Indeed, and the simplest method of all is to insulate yourself and wear a jumper, turn the thermostat down a fraction, as it is only human beings which feel the cold, the carpets and furniture do not feel a thing.
Aware it’s not the done thing nowadays to be seen wearing a jumper, people like to just wear a shirt or blouse when indoors, but then you pay the price for that with higher heating bills.
You pays your money, you takes your choice.
In years gone by families only heated the room they were using and closed the door, now with central heating we heat all the rooms, even those not used, and many leave all internal doors in the house open, yes the whole house is certainly more comfortable, but it comes at a cost.
October 8, 2021
As explained by lifelogic above it is mainly technological innovation and entrepreneurship we have to thank. I’ve been using a diesel car these last 20 years because the EU and Gordon brown said it was green. Turns out it’s a terrible idea. The fiasco over low energy light bulbs mandated by the EU all the while LED technology was being developed in Asia cost countless billions and probably a great deal of ill health.
But let’s do some numbers – you always avoid that. It’s true U.K. electricity generation is down about 40% from its peak 15 or so years ago. But we want to electrify the whole economy – homes industry and transport. At the moment electricity accounts for about 20% of total energy consumption. So even with continued greater efficiencies we are likely to need 3x or more electricity than now. Where is that to come from – what fuel source? (in 2020, despite all the subsidies and regulations, wind and solar provided just 14% of electricity generation). New homes are already insulated by law. For older homes it is very often either expensive or impossible to provide modern levels of insulation.
October 8, 2021
@Richard1; “New homes are already insulated by law.”
Yes, sometimes too well, same with older homes, which can cause health problems, sometimes the solution has been to punch holes through both inner and outer wall to fits air vents!
October 8, 2021
Using a diesel car is a good idea. They offer good fuel economy, longevity (reducing the claim on resources for building new vehicles), and with modern engine designs, very low levels of pollution. Demonisation of diesel based on utterly bogus misuse of medical statistical modelling is the really bad idea.
October 8, 2021
correct
October 9, 2021
@Mark; Remember DERV has been in use long before most car manufactures started offering ‘diesel engines’ as an option, lorries, buses and rail transport have used the fuel for getting on for a 100 years now. There wasn’t any need to model the effect of diesel fumes on those exposed to high levels, just consult the health records of transport workers. 🙁 I can’t help thinking that Rudolf Diesel gave a most appropriate name to the engine, DIEsel. Horrid fuel, both it fumes and as an unburnt liquid.
But heck, it allows you to save money, what’s there not not to like…
October 9, 2021
We have long had controls over VOC emissions in the transport sector, and they work. Likewise with particulate and NOx emissions, where filters and Adblue systems work. A modern diesel engine is a low pollution item. Medical studies in countries where such regulations apply, e.g. the Netherlands, have found no attributable health effects to the small amounts of remaining emissions.
October 8, 2021
We have reduced our power requirements by following EU diktat which has shutdown our aluminium smelters and various industries whilst Germany has continued to subsidies industrial power to keep on producing.
We are in a sorry state precisely because we followed EU rulings when other countries ignored them.
That’s the government for you. Britain last.
October 8, 2021
Ian, I like reading your comments but wish to correct you. Tory govt for you Ian.
October 8, 2021
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
“ The short term solution – while we build additional renewable capacity – is to insulate. Insulate, insulate, insulate. A properly insulated home uses less energy in the first place. It is a win, win.”
Over insulating your home is not good , as buildings need to breathe. Insulation causes condensation, damp and is very unhealthy! People are especially bad at not opening windows enough to change the air…. Never mind blocking all air movements with insulation. Loft insulation…yes! Better to wear warmer clothing, far too many people walk around in tee shirts in winter.
October 8, 2021
Insulation installed properly will improve the comfort in the vast majority of buildings, the problem has always been with poor quality installation, wrong products being specified/used, and blanket regulations which do not take account of the huge variety of buildings, and their design and use.
The above is why so many Government polices are just simply wrong and have not worked as planned, it’s regulation by tick box, with one policy that suits just a few.
The fact that insulation products are taxed, further adds to the insult.
October 8, 2021
Sharon
If I remember correctly wasn’t Sir John advocating opening windows as an anti-virus measure?
October 8, 2021
Indeed – also insulating homes (especially retrofit ones) uses a lot of energy, often more than it will ever save in heating over its useful life.
October 8, 2021
We’ve been insulating, and providing home improvement grants to insulate since the 1970s….we must have insulated home twice over by now
October 8, 2021
We’re told to leave the windows open to defeat covid
More joined up thinking by government.
October 8, 2021
To aĺl those that believe we are on the right track to being totally competitive.
.https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels
October 8, 2021
‘In the 1970s – ……. – we used MORE electricity per household than we do now’
Rubbish….I don’t think you were even born in 1970.
Houses were MUCH colder than now, house are BIGGER than then with conservatories too. Heating was often coal fires or a gas fire in 1 or 2 rooms. Fridges were small – now your generation often have 2 fridge/freezer monsters in a warm kitchen -using electricity. Kitchen lighting was mostly a strip light, not vast arrays of recessed lights and under- unit lights we have now. People have constant hot water now, women use hairdryers and curler/straighteners MUCH more than then. Indoor lighting is left on dawn to dusk, in fact I’m amazed by the use of outdoor lighting left running, with pond pumps, water features going 365/24. People don’t just have baths once ot twice they use power showers often twice a day. More women are out working, and they use cleaner services- who have those hoovers going for hours…Washing machines, tumble dryers and combined ones are going all day – nobody under 60 use washing lines – the consumption/cost must be horrendous. Some braggarts plug in cars – that didn’t exist in 1970. Gardening was labour intensive, now there are power tools for everything.
I’m afraid your every home is less power hungry is just nonsense.
October 8, 2021
Yet again. No acknowledgement or thanks to ‘Brexitists’ *spits* having already embraced recycling, energy efficient appliances etc.
Who does Andy think helped achieve targets so far ?
It is complete and utter insanity to rush headlong into Green poverty whilst outsourcing our mucky work to coal powered China and reimporting it all back in the shape of Christmas tat.
October 8, 2021
I see the well publicised problems with maritime containers and the blockage in the Suez Canal have not prevented enormous amounts of Halloween tat from filling the shelves of UK retailers.
October 8, 2021
Andy, what a contradiction you say we use less energy than we did in 1970 yet do not welcome the adjustments and progress that have been made.
Homes failure? Since 1983 all new homes built with a cavity have been insulated in the walls and loft, lots of people have also added extra cover doubling up, most also have double glazing. New builds have much smaller, ugly little windows now to comply. 95% of older houses with cavity walls have already been retrofitted. 90% of those older houses have loft insulation. Surveyors have confirmed this. However, around 8m Victorian terraced homes and stone-built rural homes have no cavities to put insulation in what do you think should be done with them? Do you know how energy efficient they already are?
Now Kia and a couple of others have started to bring to market lower-cost battery cars that people can afford you will see more people that can recharge at home switching.
My Dyson vac and hairdryer are very efficient take a fraction of the time old machines used to take. My washing machine is very highly energy efficient and uses less water, all technological progress that is welcomed by all.
October 8, 2021
Have you got a mobile phone? Do you use Amazon? Do you drive a car?
I trust you have given up such little luxuries.
October 8, 2021
EU law?
I seem to remember Dyson fighting many battles with the EU to prove that his vacuum design was more efficient (used LESS electricity on average) than the (mainly German) bagged kind because the EU standards were designed assuming the bag was empty – skewed like so many EU regulations to stifle innovation. This is one of the reasons that growth in the EU has fallen behind other areas in the world since the 70s.
However I do agree that we need to use less energy. But we need also to look at full life cost, Sir John is focussing on manufacturing which is non domestic use.
October 8, 2021
I cannot think of one area in which the EU has enjoyed “staggering success”, except, perhaps, in extending its power far beyond the wishes of the people it purports to represent. That is hardly an achievement that is praiseworthy, is it ?
October 8, 2021
I dilate, insulate, insulate? I would suggest most properties built in the last 100 years have cavity walls and that most of them have had cavity wall insulation retro fitted. The insulation blown into cavity walls is largely useless. Even when I was in the building industry 50 years ago, cavity batts were being put in cavity walls. Modern houses have much thicker cavity walls, much better insulation and more thermally efficient blocks. Even 50 years ago cavity walls had to meet 0.45.
Most houses have loft insulation. It is relatively cheap – like many people I have a foot of it in my loft. It doesn’t make much difference. It still takes a lot of energy to heat my 50 year old property.
I’m afraid your call for ‘insulation, insulation, insulation’ is impractical. To really make a difference you need triple glazing and 100mm of ‘celotex’ type PIR insulation. Apart from being expensive, the only practical place (on many properties) to install it is on the inside of the external walls – which is very expensive and makes the tiny rooms many houses have even smaller. Modifications to wiring and plumbing may also be required.
Putting insulation on the outside of external walls is also often impractical as it requires some form of cladding and planners don’t like it if you want to change the appearance of your house.
Your call for ‘insulation, insulation, insulation’ is pointless and impractical.
The only serious way to tackle the (alleged) ‘crisis’ is for us to simply replace our (heated by gas fired boiler) radiators with the latest generation of electric convector heaters combined with some storage heating.
This will require massive amounts of electricity. We need to be building at least 10 nuclear power stations now with the price per kw/hr for the electricity produced capped for consumers at the same price as we currently pay for gas heating.
October 8, 2021
Andy, all you ever do is restate the goal. Of course it would be a great idea to insulate houses, but that’s a goal, not a policy.
A policy is a plan to get there, and that means coming up with a way to give home-owners an incentive to insulate, and maybe some financial help to do it.
Another policy might be to encourage the growth of the insulation industry.
It really is no help to stand around saying “Solve the problem!” That’s all the idiots at XR are doing.
October 10, 2021
The easy insulation has already been done. Cavity wall, loft and double glazing, the majority now have these things.
The next stage is more contentious and expensive: CLADDING. Who in their right mind is going to volunteer for this?
October 8, 2021
When Watt rediscovered the power of steam he didn’t go out and slaughter all the horses.
Nobody demolished windmills as soon as the potential of electricity was realised.
No they didn’t because they weren’t mad criminals!
October 8, 2021
Good point.
People adopted new technologies when they became cheaper, more reliable and better than previous technologies. From vinyl to cassette, from cassette to CD and then DVD and now the cloud, private invention has created the world we live in, and State bureaucracy seeks to regulate, tax and control it.
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
Most pleasingly, the Business Secretary has also reassured us that the UK will not suffer power outages this winter – so we can expect his resignation in disgrace in due time. Perhaps his successor will understand why the vacancy arose.
October 8, 2021
Kwasi Kwarteng (Business Energy and Industrial Strategy) seems to be one of the brighter ministers but he is a historian (not an engineer or scientist) and clearly understands almost nothing about energy, energy economics or energy engineering. He is perhaps taken in by the priests of the deluded, group think renewable religion climate alarmists in his department. He displays his ignorance of energy in many of the various interviews he has given with the spectator and elsewhere for all to see. Usually wittering on about the Saudi Arabia of wind or some other lunacy.
We need cheap, on demand, energy (not expensive intermittent energy) and not having this will be a disaster politically too – as the fool Ted Heath discovered with his three day weeks. At least we now have efficient LED torches to replace the candles of the seventies.
October 8, 2021
@LL; Perhaps I’m being cynical again but are politicians “taken in”, or do they simply see things through the prism of job security/promotion now. There seems to have been a few politicos who have questioned the green religion over the last 20 odd years, they all to often either end up without a constituency at the nest election in the case of Labour and the LDs or seem to return to the back benches in the case of the Conservative party.
October 8, 2021
Hw has a wind speed chart provided by the heavens
I would buy a generator if I was you.
October 8, 2021
Exercise bike for the wife and children with a dynamo and battery attached perhaps. Or a horse/dog mill generator.
October 10, 2021
and hamsters will run in their wheel all night !
October 8, 2021
@formula57; Indeed, or when the first pensioner is discovered frozen to their armchair, its not just the availability of power but its cost…
October 8, 2021
Yesterday the new Business Secretary commented that energy from renewables should be cheaper than today’s sky high gas spot prices; that is a statement of the obvious. But he must take us all for fools if he thinks we can be conned into thinking that renewables are the answer. The UK electorate and politicians are about to learn the hard way that a modern economy needs reliable, low cost energy to function efficiently. A winter of discontent beckons. It is all the fault of misguided legislation (the Climate Change Act) and the myriad of regulations it has spawned. It is all the responsibility of the governing elite, no one else.
October 8, 2021
The climate change act that all but a tiny handful of MPs supported (not JR though) and without any cost benefit analysis being done.
What a damning statement on the quality of MPs we suffer under. Rather the same with Net Zero and the recent vast NI tax grab – only 14 against the disaster of the Afghan war too.
October 8, 2021
Absolutely right! But then, common sense is no longer respected in this crazy world run by effing idiot politicians with no discernable ability.
October 8, 2021
@ Hugh Clark – but then we have effing idiot voters with no discernible discriminatory powers.
October 8, 2021
+1, just so!
October 8, 2021
What you say is only too true. But CO2 reduction has become a religion, so your point will fall on the deaf ears of the ‘faithful’. We read in the history books about times when religious fanaticism was all the hysterical rage., now we know what is was like to live in those times.
October 8, 2021
+many
The history books also mention Germany in the late 1930s and Russia in the early 1900s and the sparrow cull in China and on and on……..
Our duplicitous politicians are running amok and answer to new masters.
They also appear intent on repeating history?
October 8, 2021
Alas people don’t know the reasons for going green apart from the BBC blue planet programmes
October 8, 2021
@Oldtimer +1 Then in political speak he failed to indicate which century he was talking about, or that by then with his aim of importing ‘ALL’ of his dream equipment with no economy how could the UK afford it.
October 8, 2021
I have been saying this everytime this subject comes up. You would think that our kind host, and others in the political theatre, would have cottoned on by now.
October 8, 2021
Good morning.
A weak statement if ever there was. ‘Seeks’ ? ‘Due course’ ? And as for, cheaper green energy’, yeah, it will be cheaper as fossil fuels will be made prohibitivly more and more expensive.
What I want to know is :
1) will our energy be cheaper than our main international competitors ?
2) will our energy be both reliable and secure ?
3) will we have a competitive market, with a diverse range of means to supply our energy needs for a minimum of 20 years ? I say 20 years because we need to be able to plan a head.
Others might want to ask other questions that solicit a better reply than that which our kind host was given.
October 8, 2021
@Mark B; There is not need for a “competitive market” to deliver cheap, affordable, energy to the end user, in fact by definition the “market” is not going to be cheaper than ‘NfP’ suppliers, nor (as we are seeing) can a myriad of small energy companies source their raw supplies at best possible price, for that we probably need a highly regulated single entity buying in mega-bulk.
October 8, 2021
We have the highly regulated entity OFGEM ensuring that we buy the most expensive energy first. Renewables get grid priority. Even when they produce too much, it’s the cheaper ones that get curtailed and paid for not producing while we must pay for the expensive ones to carry on. Coal is consistently cheaper than renewables and gas, and yet it is the last resort for power generation. Nuclear has been neglected for 2 decades.
I do not trust central regulation to deliver cheap energy: their sole concern is green interest, not consumer interest. The market managed it before the central regulators started interfering.
October 8, 2021
@Mark; “We have the highly regulated entity OFGEM ensuring that we buy the most expensive energy first. Renewables get grid priority.”
That was my point, the current regulation needs to be change radically, as you say their current sole concern, at the behest of successive govts, appears to be the protection of the uneconomic green sector, not consumer interest any more. Also do not forget that single entity buying in mega-bulk I suggested will not only be buying for the consumer but also the needs of all but perhaps the very largest of industry.
“I do not trust central regulation to deliver cheap energy:”
Well not the current regulator, but nor do I trust the commercial market either, after all why was it felt necessary to set up OFFER and Ofgas (predecessors to Ofgem) in the first place, just three years after privatisation that was meant to bring both cheaper end user prices along via greater choice of suppler?
October 9, 2021
OFFER and OFGAS were established to ensure that consumers were protected from any abuse from the largest energy companies, and to establish ground rules that helped to promote competition. Market rules for access to transmission grids, standards for metering, etc. need some oversight.
The formation of OFGEM resulted in changes to the rules that laid the ground for reducing competition and forcing renewables onto the grid. Ed Miliband’s 2010 Energy Act formalised the obligation on OFGEM to put green interests ahead of consumer interests.
October 9, 2021
@Mark; “OFFER and OFGAS were established to ensure that consumers were protected from any abuse from the largest energy companies”
In other words the Market had FAILED.
“The formation of OFGEM resulted in changes to the rules that laid the ground for reducing competition”
Untrue, Ofgem was created in 2000, in 2004 all remaining price controls being fully removed, that increased competition, as anyone can see from the number of companies who entered the market since.
“Ed Miliband [putting] green interests ahead of consumer interests.”
Many might suggest that occurred way back in the 1980s when the Thatcher govt started phasing out coal fired power stations, “to combat acid rain”, thus ensuring the green blob were well and truly set and put in charge.
October 9, 2021
No the market had not failed. Government wanted a comfort blanket.
October 10, 2021
@Mark; You have started to contradict yourself! Given both OFFER and Ofgas were created by a Conservative government not many years after privatisation, a govt who had expected the free market to solves problems, why then the need for that “comfort blanket” as you call it, a regulative comfort blanket not for the govt but for the Market.
October 9, 2021
It is not at all a definition that not for profit supply is cheaper than market competition. Without profit, investment is inadequate, locking in high cost. There is no incentive to do things better and cheaper. This is exactly what privatisation proved.
October 9, 2021
@Mark; You really do not have a first clue what a Not for Profit company is!
October 9, 2021
Are prices cheaper at Aldi or the Co-op?
October 8, 2021
@Mark B +1, On present form it will not only be foreign owned, but owned by outfits controlled by foreign Governments and subjected to the political will in those countries.
October 8, 2021
Johnson has deceived the public and nation to think he got back fishing to our control, but the opposite is true. The plundering of our seas continues. Theoretical at best. Fishing linked to electric with France!
October 8, 2021
@Hope; How many times do EEZs need to be explained to ex UKIP supporters, for the UK much of our EEZs are indeed “theoretical at best”, there being due, even three countries claiming parts of the the same EEZ area.
It is just a pity that the Conservative party chose to pick and run with the UKIP lie(s), they could yet still destroy them as it destroyed UKIP in the end.
October 8, 2021
Wise word, Sir John. But the government must abandon its plan to phase out those last three coal-fired ‘reserve’ power stations in 2025. And their coal-yards must be kept full.
October 8, 2021
We can start mining coal in Cumbria that would cur our reliance on Russia and help our balance of payments.
October 8, 2021
I live within 6 miles of Whitehaven where this mine is located and I have no issues with it. This is nothing more than a NIMBY attack from people, who don’t even live in Cumbria, never mind the UK! But it also needs Gove to stop being entranced by foreign juveniles, who didn’t even complete their basic school education.
October 8, 2021
I’m fully in favour of this country meeting its international obligations re CO2 emission reductions.
However, I think that you are quite right to argue for the retention of emergency facilities as you describe to cover brief periods of unusual demand owing to failures, to accidents, and to other unforeseens. In fact it would be reckless to do otherwise.
October 8, 2021
So we have to spend billion on care and maintenance if coal and gas fired stations whilst we use heavily subsided windmills.
ThT will help keep us competitive. Not.
October 8, 2021
If we outsource it to the private sector then probably, yes.
October 8, 2021
What international obligations do we have? We met our Kyoto obligation to reduce our 1990 emissions by 12.5% by 2012. There are no other international obligations that have legal force, with the ones that applied under the EU Withdrawal Agreement having expired at the end of 2020. Paris only dealt in aspirations that are not legally binding. We only have our own self-imposed targets.
October 8, 2021
Surely we’re not obliged to adopt the UN IPCC report but merely follow its principles…I vote to leave the UN and all its institutions
October 8, 2021
Coal Fired Power Stations
Kilroot – County Antrim (Convert fully to gas)
Ratcliffe – Nottinghamshire (Plans to close 2025)
West Burton A – Nottinghamshire (Plans to close September 2022)
Nuclear Fired Power Stations
Heysham A 2, Heysham B 1, Heysham B 2, Hinkley Point B 1, Hinkley Point B 2, Hunterston B 1, Hunterston B 2, Sizewell B, Torness 1, Torness 2
The first of the UK’s seven advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) units – Dungeness B – has already been retired. Five AGRs will have been retired by March 2024 and all seven by 2030. The pressurised water reactor at Sizewell B will be the only plant of the UK’s existing nuclear fleet still operating in the next decade
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is currently managing 17 sites across the UK at different stages of decommissioning
…and ‘that’s all she wrote’
October 8, 2021
Plus still 2 coal units at Drax.
October 8, 2021
Coal units at Drax Power Station taken offline March 2021
The last remaining coal unit at Drax was taken offline, leaving only biomass fired units in operation
Source – https://www.powerstations.uk/coal-countdown/
Reply fired up again when wind dropped
October 8, 2021
Wind and solar are not reliable. Hydro more so., Tidal power is predictable. Green energy and storage routes are not the full solution at this time though.
This makes for an interesting read in this context:
https://moneyweek.com/investments/commodities/energy/603949/invest-in-small-nuclear-reactors-renewable-energy
October 8, 2021
Hydro generation is not as reliable as you may think. Norwegian production was 141.8TWh in 2000 (highest ever was 142.4TWh in 2016) but only 105.5TWh in 2003, and 125.1TWh in 2019. It depends on snowfall/melt. It’s looking like a low production year coming up, with reservoirs close to minimum recorded levels for the time of year when they are supposed to be at their fullest at the end of the snowmelt season. It’s a reason why they have limited exports on the new NSL interconnector to half capacity (700MW) for the time being.
October 8, 2021
Tidal power is predictable yes but not remotely “on demand” as you have to use it between each high and low tide and varies hugely between spring and neap tides. Also very expensive to build and maintain.
October 8, 2021
Solar is perfectly reliable. It works on light, not Sun. And it gets light in this country every single day.
October 8, 2021
Well in the daytime andy.
October 9, 2021
Rubbish – light levels (and thus the quantity of electricity produced) varies hugely depending on the time of day, the cloud cover, the angle of the sun and visibility levels – so not at all “reliable” or very predictable.
October 10, 2021
To make daft statements like this, clearly you don’t actually have any solar panels, do you, Andy ?
If so, I wonder why are you haven’t put your money where your mouth is?
We have the maximum 4kW array on Gordon Brown’s generous original feed-in tariff and in winter months, when power is needed most, they generate less than 50% of the output available in summer.
To rely on solar through the winter, it is therefore necessary to have at least three times the number of panels you need in summer, AND you still won’t get any power for at least 12 out of every 24 hours when its dark !
Nuclear is just as green but is so much more efficient as it doesn’t require at least as much generating capacity sitting expensively idling all day. Ditto wind turbines.
October 8, 2021
Do far-left-leaning-over-backwards Tories realise that socialists have always hated coal? Mainly because capitalism was built on coal and THAT is their main target. They pretend to love windmills but ONLY because they are seen as an alternative to coal and oil. AND they know that “alternatives” will destroy capitalism.
Does the government really believe that permaculture works? That windmills will keep us warm? Good grief..it was a wonder they could even ( sometimes) keep us in flour!
Why was Johnson wittering on about “wilding”? Is that what they did on the family pig farm? Did they make much money from the starving, disease-ridden pigs? Or get much meat off them?
What on earth are you all playing at??
.
October 8, 2021
As someone who lives in the Brighton & Hove area, I feel “qualified” to comment on the Greens’ obsession with “wilding”! Apparently, it’s about not dictating what a particular space and its wildlife should look like, aka, let nature take over. In this area, it translates to the council never using pesticides, allowing the extensive growth of weeds in public areas, which lift pavements, block drains and creates trip/slip hazards for pedestrians…..not to worry, a few ants have been saved. Adding to the lush weed growth are the mountains of rubbish now adorning our streets, due to striking binmen (again), inviting nature’s very own scavengers, seagulls and rats, to the feast. Ah, the joys of the Green idyll!
October 8, 2021
+1
Yes, I see. So if there were knotweed and rats…well…just let them proliferate?
A very good way of undermining civilised society. ( I think they’ve stopped using weed killer here too).
And Brighton was such a truly lovely place. So sorry.
The whole country is being trashed by lunatics.
On the subject of strikes…I just read that the DVLA has been on strike ( for a while?). If true could that be something to do with the HGV driver shortage?
October 8, 2021
“Do far-left-leaning-over-backwards Tories realise that socialists have always hated coal?”
We had the coal strike, which the left supported, to prevent the losing of mines, because Socialists hated coal? That’s an interesting interpretation of history, to say the least.
October 8, 2021
Indeed, Jon.
October 8, 2021
The unions were infiltrated by Marxists.
Marxists want/wanted to destroy the West whose success lay with capitalism.
Coal=Industry=capitalism
The Marxist infiltrators wanted our heavy industries to implode. (This also suited the EU).
They did implode and so did the mighty unions.
In all revolutions there are elite leaders who stand to benefit and useful idiots who are the first to be dispensed with.
October 9, 2021
Certainly,the Bolsheviks soon dispensed with their trade union “allies” in the soviets!
October 8, 2021
Whilst I don’t share the hysteria over CO2 levels, I acknowledge the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource and alternatives need to be found. We live on a raft of coal, but is it fair to inflict acid rain on Norway?
The rocks below are hot, and this can be tapped for energy, which will always be available, unlike wind and sun. As to energy storage and recovery, I rather like the technology of liquefying air. Not very efficient I know, but that is the case with all forms of energy storage. It’s just there to supply a peak demand.
October 8, 2021
As Iceland has found to its enormous benefit.
October 8, 2021
Flue gas desuphurisation has eliminated the acid rain problem.
October 9, 2021
+1 and it was not a very big problem anyway.
October 8, 2021
And right on cue, an electrical link from Norway is being tested this very week. Our end is at Cambois in Northumberland. The cable is 730 km (450 miles) long,[2] and has a capacity of 1,400 MW. The estimated cost of the project was €2 billion (data from the wiki).
I assume that took quite a bit of planning and effort, so I am not quite sure about all the bleating about the Government doing “nothing”.
October 8, 2021
Why, SJR, are you assuming that it is any part of the government’s policy to give the country enough energy needed for our current way of life? Surely two years of the Johnson and Carrie show have made it quite clear that it has very different priorities:- The public should get around in their cars less, buy less, not use heating at home but put an extra pullover on, etc. etc. That’s the message in your local globalist-green rag Wokingham Today in Gregor Murray’s Climate Change column, near the page you sometimes contribute to – more interestingly than he does, I must say. The Net Zero agenda ensures there won’t be enough energy, and it’s the one the government is following, to anyone who’s got eyes to see.
October 8, 2021
The oft misinterpreted Orwell quotation “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” actually means that some animals ( the elite) will always have oil and coal and meat to eat and transport of all sorts. It is the rest of the animals ( us) that will be equal in their poverty and hardship. That’s why the left, whether useful idiot or canny manipulators, are pushing and pushing towards greencr*p. THEY will not be doing without. Look at every other Revolution
October 8, 2021
+10
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
Your Gov. is in thrall to ‘climate change’ and St Greta. Yet has no clue how to get to ‘net zero’ whilst keeping the lights on, factories working and humans alive.
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
St. Carrie perhaps?
October 8, 2021
We are in a ridiculous position in the UK whereby we have a situation where other countries can control us through cutting our energy supplies. The French are threatening to cut off Jersey if they don’t get their way over fishing (friends?) while over fishing and reducing stocks. The Russians also have us over a barrel. We have the ability to be self sufficient but instead import it all and now we have a situation where many necessary heavy industries could fold with the loss of jobs in areas where Boris wants to level up. What a bloody farce. Meanwhile, Germany , part of Andys beloved EU, is burning brown coal like it’s going out of fashion and getting into bed with Russia because they need the gas. Idiot and incompetent doesn’t begin to describe the actions of successive governments over this green energy garbage starting with the Labour party who signed us up for this without thinking it through in the first place.
On a different topic. Farage pointed out last night that 95% of French fishing boats have been given a licence to fish in our waters. And before the EU loving Andy says they are not our waters the French claim their waters too just as all other countrues do. The French dont pay to fish here but OUR fishermen can only use a boat that is under 33 meters long and are then charged £70k for a licence to fish in UK waters. If anyone shoukd block the ports in a childish tantrum and use threats against another nation I think our fishermen have every reason to. Can you urge your stupid government to start standing up for jobs and security of our nation now please John before we become a complete bsket case?
October 9, 2021
Germany is being pulled into Russia’s orbit for a number of reasons,not just energy.
October 8, 2021
Government policy is to discourage use of carbon-based fuel via penal pricing. However when this policy is actually put into effect it seems they don’t like it. Odd.
October 8, 2021
Hopeless Ministers failed to foresee the problems that we now have ignoring lessons from its own 2017 energy review. So Liberty Steel our third biggest producer is not restarting production because energy costs make them unproductive (plus their financing issues but more margin would help these)
We now read that the petrol crisis was to a large extent caused by the Government forcing greener fuel on us.
And finally having been in the Basque Country for ten days there are zero petrol shortages and the supermarkets shelves are full.
More sloping shoulders and ‘lies’ from Ministers that driver shortage etc is a pan Europe problem.
As a supporter of Brexit tell me once again Sir JR all the benefits flooding through to our personal lives.
October 8, 2021
That’s easy.
None. There are precisely no benefits of Brexit.
Actually, that’s not true. There is one benefit.
That benefit is that I get to laugh at all of you as you whinge about how bad Brexit is!
October 8, 2021
There are only two people on here who moan about Brexit.
October 9, 2021
not just 2, or two in reality?
October 8, 2021
I think the idea that E10 caused the crisis is more a case of casting around for excuses. The changeover happened at the start of September and was complete by the time we had panic buying which got going on the 24th on the back of media inspired action. Whilst it is true that E10 will lead to lower mpg, and therefore more consumption, if it’s 5% more petrol that would only be less than 2.5% more delivery because we use more diesel than petrol these days.
Having said that, the move to E10 seems to be designed to shorten the life of petrol engined devices, including garden tools, and is a malign government act. Now we aren’t in the EU we need not have imposed it.
October 8, 2021
Mark : “Having said that, the move to E10 seems to be designed to shorten the life of petrol engined devices, including garden tools, and is a malign government act.”
There are YouTube videos showing how to safely remove ethanol from petrol for the small quantities required for garden tools. Basically it involves shaking up the fuel with water so the ethanol moves from the fuel to the water and then siphoning off the ethanol free petrol.
October 9, 2021
only for older designed petrol engines, I wonder if authorities will try to introduce E20? ie..kill off even more.
October 8, 2021
Afraid we are now all starting to pay the price for a succession of Governments that took power supply for granted, and failed to plan ahead seriously.
I quite honestly still do not know if the penny has actually dropped yet, as most of the Politicians comments on all sides are simply farcical and completely miss the point, given the seriousness of the situation.
Our host gets it, but few others do !
October 8, 2021
Interconnectors ! That was the game – Interconnectors ! We would, instead of building, at great expense, power stations, we would just buy other peoples spare. Troubles is, for one reason or another, this cheapskate approach sooner or later always bites you in the ass.
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
Someone needs to ask questions of the energy supply industry, or put the already answers questions clearly into the public domain;
1/. How much money is being syphoned off from the hydrocarbon energy sector to subsidise the creation of a non nuclear renewables sector, including money spent maintaining otherwise virtually mothballed hydrocarbon infrastructure as backup for when renewables fail the nations requirements.
2/. How much lower could end user tariffs be if the renewable sector had to find investment via the usual capitalist markets.
3/. How much is being paid in share dividends each year, what proportion of share holders are institutional investors, rather than “Sid the investor”.
4/. How much lower, on average, are the end user tariffs of the ‘Not-for-Profit’ energy providers.
5/. One for the open minded scientist; Is it technically feasible for ‘clean’ Coal Gas be made, ideally from the UK’s own coal reserves.
6/. If the State, via the taxpayer, is again having to subsidise the private energy company(ies) why should the State not own said company(ies).
October 11, 2021
1/. What of past subsidies to the hydrocarbon sectors? Were our lads in two Gulf wars purely for Blair’s sun tan? Different times, different siphons, different beneficiaries
2/. Many renewables projects are not state subsidised but considering the current problem wow would renewables be the cause of not enough gas and inconsiderate people panicking at the pumps?
3/. Do you class private pension funds as institutional investors? They look after “Sid” as well.
4/. Which NfP providers are you considering? These are more properly Not-for-Dividends as profits are re-invested but I am not aware if any of the NfP’s are generators as opposed to energy resellers.
5/. define “Clean”.
6/. State ownership would solve nothing but actually make things less transparent and more of a mess – it is state policies that have got us where we are today
October 11, 2021
I agree harsh and urgent questions need to be asked.
I would like to know what service level commitments have been placed on energy providers (generators and resellers) to incentivise them to maintain supplies. For example in many countries a telecoms provider gets heavily fined against profits for loss of services. The same should certainly be true for strategic services here as part of any subsidy or patronage package.
I disagree that the state should be a monopoly supplier – there would be no incentives to maintain supplies and they would simply hide screw ups and cost over-runs from the public gaze.
October 8, 2021
There will be more energy. But unlike the fairy dust solution of pumping more oil and gas that you propose, we need much more renewable energy. The tremendous price rises for energy that are being imposed upon us by the fossil fuel industries make our investment in the disruptive green, clean and cheap renewable energy industry all the more valuable. Put more gas/oil into the mix and the problem becomes worse.
At the conclusion of the fouth (2019) government renewable energy auction, 5.5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind projects were secured at record low CfD prices ~ £39.65 per megawatt-hour (MWh). If the CfD price for wholesale electricty (yesterday it was £150/MWh) rises above this, the exchequer pockets the difference. The money could be used to reduce the nation’s energy bills.
The UK Government has recently revealed the criteria for the upcoming fifth CfD auction round for wind energy. This will be the largest ever renewable energy auction in the world and could see more than 12 GW of new renewable capacity added. It will cement the UK’s position as global leader in offshore wind. Notably it will also enable the return of UK onshore wind – and gauge the market uptake of floating wind.
There is a great deal of international interest in this auction, with a large number of companies expected to bid. As a result we can expect the most competitive CfD prices to be struck. This is important as they will determine which of the current grid scale energy storage projects are likely commercially viable
Apologies for the a long post, but UK energy is a complex subject
October 9, 2021
If the market price is above CFD prices then this does not go to the exchequer. It is paid out by EMR Settlement to energy retailers in line with market share in just the same way as they must pay EMR settlement when market prices are below CFD prices.
For so long as the government fail to secure additional dispatchable capacity we will risk frequent supply shortages. Adding another 12GW of wind will likely see up to 40% of the output of the marginal windfarm being curtailed or sold at negative value, which means the cost becomes 100/60 times as much as if it had a consistent market for its output. Meantime it remains to be seen whether companies that made aggressive CFD bids actually trigger the start of CFD payments, and also what the real costs of these wind farms are. The data so far suggest that low CFD prices are a fantasy in terms of the real world, and these wind farms will need much higher prices to be viable.
October 11, 2021
@SG So what is your solution to provide consistent, reliable, cost effective energy on demand?
October 8, 2021
Just received in writing from my present electricity supplier, the suggested new tariff for the next two years from 1st January 2022 on a fixed micro business contract.
The price for electricity supply will increase by more than 60% !
This company claims to be green, using renewable energy “from their own wind farms” according to the loop message left on their telephone system, although clearly they use other sources to keep the supply going when the wind is not blowing..
This is one of the Big six suppliers, not a bedroom start up business.
The present rate taken out nearly two years ago, was competitive.
Me thinks I need to start searching around to see if this higher rate will now be the new normal ?
October 8, 2021
Present rate
Quarterly charge £24.38
Unit charge £14.473 p/kWh
New rate
Quarterly charge £49.18
Unit Charge £24.437p/kWh
Both of the above exclude VAT and Climate Change Levy.
October 8, 2021
The government should, of course, suspend VAT and CCL until prices return to something like normality.
October 8, 2021
or not buy from the internation energy futures market and buy from UK internal market (but we can only do that if we’re self sufficient in energy)
October 8, 2021
They won’t even consider doing that until after COP26 !
October 8, 2021
How are your huge Brexit price hikes working out of you?
October 8, 2021
Price hikes are a minor issue. They are nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with governments that could not organise a drinks party in a brewery.
October 8, 2021
Have you seen the electricity prices in Germany?
October 8, 2021
Present rates:
Electricity charges 34.9125 p/day (£31.80 quarterly)
23.961 p/kWh
Gas charges 30.0825 p/day (£27.40 quarterly)
6.594 p/kWh
New rates (from 05/11/2021):
Both electricity and gas charges remain the same.
Electricity rate becomes 34.02 p/kWh (a 42% increase)
Gas rate becomes 8.001 p/kWh (a 21.3% increase)
All the above include VAT at 5%.
And I am told it is likely that another increase might be applied after 6 April 2022.
October 8, 2021
I would be cautious about committing to a two year fix at a time when retailers are stuck with trying to charge as much as possible to non-OFGEM cap regulated customers. At the least you would want to know what the exit charge would be if other deals become much cheaper later.
October 8, 2021
Mark. Octopus energy don’t charge an exit fee.
October 8, 2021
In the present market conditions that policy may change for new contracts, or any they have the right to amend. Giving customers a free put option in a very volatile market is not hedging properly, and could lead them into financial difficulties.
October 8, 2021
@alan jutson – “from their own wind farms” that’s the clever bit, how do they know that is what gets delivered to you! They are making assumptions. All energy gets fed into the same grid, what and where it comes out is not in the control of your billing company itself.
Don’t forget as Sir John has alluded to ‘The Business Secretary’ has said “will have plenty of cheaper green energy in due course” if you believe that a new long contract wouldn’t be advisable.
Alan, you have inadvertently let your email address loose … !
October 8, 2021
Nota
Yes listening to the promotion of green and own wind farms on the telephone loop, was rather sickening at the time, whilst holding on their freephone number, to try and speak to someone in person.
Thus eventually sent an e mail.
I have written to ask for a more detailed breakdown as to why the Quarterly charge is up by 100% and since the cost of wind has not actually increased at all (it is still free) why such a massive increase in the unit cost.
October 11, 2021
My new flexible rate charges kick in on October 14th;
Electricity;
standing charge goes from 22.2p to 24.1p per day (+8%)
unit rate goes from 17.58p to 20.1p per KWh (+14%)
Gas is the biggest change;
standing charge goes from 19.63p to 23.84p per day (+21%)
unit rate goes from 3.03p to 3.94p per KWh (+30%)
These include VAT and according to the provider the electricity is “100% backed by renewable generation”.
October 8, 2021
From the Telegraph today:
‘Government’s switch to greener fuel was ‘major factor’ behind petrol crisis. Petrol retailers were ‘emptying their tanks’ for the switchover to E10 fuel when garages were swiftly drained by panic buying’
And there was me telling people ‘don’t blame the government’! I should have guessed.
October 8, 2021
Indeed and there was/is no sensible logic for forcing people on to E10 anyway. It will achieve nothing, reduce MPG thus increasing tax take, cost more and damage many older cars too. Another idiotic plan by government but doubtless some vested interests or political donors will benefit?
October 8, 2021
My petrol 998cc mini consumption was 55mpg. First tank of E20 – 39mpg.
October 8, 2021
Oops. E10.
October 9, 2021
I did wonder if you shredded a load of veg and dropped it into your petrol tank.
October 10, 2021
did you check the engine will accept E10? Sounds like it doesn’t.
October 8, 2021
E10 is another huge, back door, tax increase in effect.
October 8, 2021
It will mean less farmland used for food and an increase in imports of both more fuel and food.
October 8, 2021
Lifelogic : “Another idiotic plan by government [introduction of E10 fuel] but doubtless some vested interests or political donors will benefit?”
Another nudge towards EVs by reducing the energy content of fossil fuels in the short term and in the long term destroying ICEs more quickly?
October 8, 2021
Thanks to the completely illogical green lunatics who infest Whitehall and Westminster, we currently pay the Americans to cut down trees; turn them into wood pellets; ship them across the Atlantic and transport them in the UK to burn in our power station/s.
And this is supposed to be “green energy” compared to producing our own coal from the ground under our feet.
I am sick to death of the bullying green lunatics, including the recently converted one in No.10, who think it is morally acceptable to force up the cost of energy in the UK, ramping up bills for consumers, threatening removal of their gas central heating and petrol driven cars, and destroying our own manufacturing base so they can virtue-signal and posture on the world stage.
And I certainly won’t be voting for it.
October 8, 2021
If you voted Conservative in December 2019 you literally voted for it.
It was in the manifesto.
Reply 2050, not 2025
October 8, 2021
What alternative was there to voting Tory? A Labour dog wagged by the SNP – no thanks. No one votes for everything in a manifesto, it was just less offensive than the alternative.
October 8, 2021
L/L. Just what I said to a friend today. She agreed. Neither of us agreed with everything in the Conservative manifesto but the thought of Labour/SNP was just too dire to contemplate.
October 8, 2021
Reply to reply. Yes. And no acknowledgement from Andy that I actually voted for Green policies – as well as make efforts recycling and saving energy.
October 8, 2021
+10
October 8, 2021
+1 it is insanity they claim it saves CO2 it does the reverse!
October 8, 2021
And the best bits are :
Coal was once trees ! And. We closed down Didcot Power Station and gave the Germans all the plant and machinery so they could build, yes you guessed it, a coal fired power station.
October 8, 2021
Trees regrow themselves and coal is a hideously dirty fuel to burn.
October 8, 2021
All very good points but the Government is either unaware of the basic needs you mention or has it head in the sand. Bunch of thickos
October 8, 2021
Assurances from this government do little except confirm that there will be blackouts and horrendously expensive energy. The best thing they could do is admit that they intend to de industrialise Britain and that we’re on our own. It would be the first honest words from them this decade.
October 8, 2021
Ministers shouldn’t make promises around energy, especially given their history and their skewed thinking on everything green.
I’d like to ask him to prove that, because we don’t believe it… BUT, what about NOW, this coming very chilly winter? How many factories will fall silent – how many lights will go out, and how many people will die of the cold?
We can’t rely on French energy – a fire has already disrupted that supply, and the new link with Norway will at maximum provide only one eight of the electricity England needs.
Our useless windmills will freeze up when the real chill comes – Who does this minister think he is kidding?
October 8, 2021
Off topic
I’ve just had an email from the conservative membership office thanking me for renewing my membership , I usually receive a letter informing me that it’s time to renew my membership , I didn’t receive a letter this year but they took the payment and I’ve demanded a refund
I’ve contacted First Direct and blocked any future payments
I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than provide any support for Boris Johnson!
Perhaps they were worried that I wouldn’t renew my membership, I can’t think why?
October 8, 2021
That’s interesting.
At what point did you give the authorisation for this method to be used?
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
Goodness me! You were actually PAYING the PRETEND Conservative party?
Also it was rather careless of you not to cancel the direct debit when you stated to see through them.
I strongly advise you to look into who or what else you pay with D.D.’s.
October 8, 2021
We have had our warning in a warm windless and cloudy early autumn, now the government needs to get real. Stop ‘seeking’ and start implementing and not in ‘due course’, get on with it NOW.
We are in a good position as you rightly say, Sir John, so we need to break out of the old EU mind set and start to use the resources that surround these islands. It is about time we told our civil servants what to do rather than ask them.
Increasingly over the last 40 years or so we have relied or anticipated some EU official telling us what to do and they had only one aim which was to cripple this country. We are free of them now and must make the UK truly independent and strive towards self sufficiency.
October 8, 2021
+1
October 8, 2021
Very true and sensible George Brooks.
Our host is a brexiteer so he ought to agree.
October 8, 2021
According to National Grid, GB “Installed Generation Capacity Aggregated (B1410)” = 107 GW. The UK’s casino Electricity market is second only to the UK’s casino Banking market.
S&P Global Platts Analytics:- “System sell prices in the balancing market hit a record GBP4,037.80/MWh on Sept. 9 as several plants priced themselves at GBP4,000 /MWh [400 p/kWh] amid low wind, outages and reduced interconnector availability.”
Also; “UK gas prices have soared since the start of 2021, with the month-ahead price on the UK NBP hub assessed by S&P Global Platts on Sept. 10 at just under 146 pence/therm [295 p/therm: 4th Oct] . That compares with a month-ahead assessment of just 28 p/therm a year ago, representing a 420% increase year on year.”
October 8, 2021
Have you ever realised that the UK is a net exporter of gas to the EU. The UK imports gas from its own gas fields in the UK continental shelf and Norway. It then sells it into Holland and Belgium via the gas import pipes that have been upgraded to interconnectors (gas can flow both ways). The gas flows to where the market prices are higher. This is a basic neoliberal market economy at work. The prices that UK households end up paying for there gas is of no consequence to the owners of this profit seeking market.
October 8, 2021
Your first paragraph appears to be a polite politicians way of saying, I do not believe a word you are saying, you are just not credible.
If we are to have those desirable strategic though energy consuming industries, we need power. We have abundant coal for steel but we can’t talk about that. We have abundant gas west of Shetland and beneath the Trough of Bowland, but we can’t talk about that. Longer term we could get behind modular nuclear electricity generation, but that is not open for discussion. Instead we are entertained with the Boris Palladium show which manages to say nothing about nowt.
Frankly I get more sense out of GB News than ever I do out of this sham of a government that ducks every problem as it arises. Here is the rub, as soon as those bills start falling through the letter box, food, heating, lighting , much of them directly down to lack of planning for long known deficiencies, the Boris act will get the deserved response of rotten fruit hurled by the electorate. Particularly as it has been sauced with a large tax increase, the NI Protocol and illegal immigration as compulsory side dishes.
It is time you and your 50 or so colleagues started to spell it out in single syllable phrases so that our so called government get the message.
October 8, 2021
+1 Agricola.
Particularly the bit about ‘polite politicians way of saying’.
He is rather prone to that, isn’t he.
October 8, 2021
Well stated, Agricola.
October 8, 2021
“cheaper green energy in due course” to make that type of comment is to show this Government has lost its way.
Lets not forget the Governments ‘Greening the World’ agenda has cut us of from reliable cheap energy. It is Government that has gone the route of closure before a proper alternative exists in the real World.
At the moment the future is based on equipment manufactured in the nastiest places in the World (on the Greening sense) . So the UK is creating a bigger World problem on foreign shores – just to say look at me!
If we had an economy we could afford to build in the UK instead of assemble import from others. That in effect is not only exporting jobs but sending UK Wealth abroad to fund others – meaning at the end of the day we wont even have the money to buy in. As it stands this Government is exporting jobs quicker than it can muster a new catch phrase
October 8, 2021
Whatever.
A country standing upon vast amounts of shale and coal has become a hostage to Putin.
This was EU (German) policy that we followed btw. All happening whilst poking the Russian Bear with a sharp stick.
It’s good to see it actually. Many more people will soon awaken to the fact that unilateral greenism leads to nothing but our impoverishment and the world will continue to burn anyway.
And any claims by Remainers that we must “lead by example” simply does not square with their claims that we have become irrelevant since leaving the EU. I wish they’d make their minds up.
October 8, 2021
A rather blunt,ineffectual stick as it turns out! Wasn’t Russia supposed to have been brought to it’s knees by the sanctions post Crimea?
It’s Vladimir Vladimirovich’s 69th birthday today-he thanks you for all the presents he has received!
October 8, 2021
And isn’t Putin looking good on it, Mitchel !
The key to ageing well is inexpensive and available to all of average health. If they sold a pill that did the same people would pay thousands for it but it is done cheaply through simple dietary changes and regular, moderate compound exercise… too much effort for most, including those who purport to be keen on saving the NHS.
“I’ll eat as much cake and biscuits as I want. The NHS will give me medicine to cure me of any ill effects. It is a bounteous resource.”
On energy we are reaping what we have sown. A very obvious and reckless mistake by our leaders… destroying our energy base and goading Russia whilst making ourselves ever more dependent on their gas. Clearly Vlad is a wiser leader than most.
October 10, 2021
and invites the oligarchs to share 50/50 of their ‘gains’ with him. Interestingly they nearly all agree, those that don’t… well we don’t hear much about them any more!
October 8, 2021
He decided the Russian state pension scheme did not meet his needs, so he chose to continue working on…and on…
October 8, 2021
Inflation has been out of the news for some time that most folk don’t relate to but it will be the next election main topic when energy bills hit the streets.
Engineers with proven track records should be driving the energy policy not politicians and eco loons playing useless idiots to Russia and China..
October 8, 2021
OT; Sorry to go off-topic but the Conservative party HQ are a disgrace in how they have treated the ordinary voter with utter contempt regarding this years CPC, yes I know such events are private business but most Govt. Ministerial speeches appear to have been totally inaccessible too, govt policy is public business. Yet the party expected us to vote for them in 2019 and no doubt want our votes again -why should we when we do not know what many Govt Ministers currently stand for!
The Con-party [tm?] has a YouTube channel, yet only four key-note speeches were either streamed live or have since been uploaded, by comparison both Labour and the LibDems live-streamed their entire main hall sessions -looking at the timestamps, on average Labour streamed 7 hours each day for the four main days, true we might not like what we heard but at least we could/can listen.
Will SoS Dorries, at DCMS, tackle the BBC on the apparent refusal to carry out their PSB remit this year, preferring instead to promote commercial pop music and Feature film brands on their “red button” service (BBC-P quite correctly broadcasting the still sitting devolved parliaments), or was it, as I now suspect, the BBC’s inability to gain full non-stage managed access to all party conferences that prevented the broadcaster from televising any?…
October 8, 2021
Should the devocrats have been sitting during the party conference season?
October 8, 2021
@rose; The Conference season recess is not set in stone, it is a business matter for each parliament as I understand it.
PS, someone at CPHQ needs to change their YouTube channels page banner, or is that the only place the truth is still being said – “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives”.
October 8, 2021
John, what happens on very windy days does the energy generated get used as a priority and all the other gas and other fuel stores not used until they are required? Or do we waste it?
Reply On very windy days they switch off the windmills. On fairly windy days they take priority over gas fired.
October 8, 2021
a-tracy :
This is the problem with wind.
Its intermittency means that we either have to continue with fossil fuel backup or find a commercially viable way of storing electricity, which currently does not exist.
Perhaps flow batteries can provide the answer.
But to quote the price of wind energy as “cheap renewable energy” and without taking into account the costs to store electricity when the wind is not blowing is not giving the true costs.
October 8, 2021
H2O2. Can be stored safely in a highly concentrated form and when passed through a catalyst (eg Silver), it releases a large amount of energy and turns to steam.
October 8, 2021
Reply-Reply
I also understand that when they switch off the windmills they continue to be paid, so that they do not lose income.
Has anyone done any analysis on the percentage of time they are paid not to produce electricity, and how much this adds to the overall cost.
October 8, 2021
More questions than answers
Who funded & paid for the manufacture of windmills
Who funded & paid for the land/lease they sit on
Who owns the windmills
Who funded & paid for the on-going maintenance
Who pays when windmills aren’t generating
Who takes the profit
Who pays for the decommission
I’ve research but can’t find any answers
October 9, 2021
Costs: taxpayer
Profits: others
Hope this helps
October 8, 2021
We are just at the start of the curve on curtailment. Current capacity is enough to cause a surplus when it’s windy and demand is low overnight. Add more capacity, and not only will those surpluses become bigger, but you will start to see surpluses appear at slightly higher levels of demand. Add yet more and you eventually reach a point that when it is windy enough there will be surpluses at any level of demand. But equally, when it isn’t windy, you will need essentially 100% backup. This chart gives an idea of the effect of adding wind capacity, based on a demand level of about 300TWh a year
https://image.vuukle.com/9ffc6604-feed-474e-a82d-c2de2f561502-c1c5a404-a655-47ca-bf9c-5f148390112c
You will see that the useful output from adding extra wind farms declines rapidly (the marginal curtailment % curve), while the amount of curtailed energy rises quadratically. Since the wind farm must earn its keep from its saleable output, it means that the cost of generation must rise to cover the ever diminishing useful output. Also note that you are not going to get to 100% low carbon energy while you need gas for backup (at least not without enormous increases in cost for green gas).
October 8, 2021
As a Conservative I believe the Government should involve itself in our live as little as possible. But the cost of providing nuclear power is so immense that nobody else can do it.
To eliminate the means of us keeping ourselves warm in winter is criminal. We all know that the Prime Minister is weak and his desires governed by his gonads, but he needs to ensure we can access all the energy we need when we need it. Green is not the way to go. If he pursues this fantasy, he won’t be PM in a few years.
October 8, 2021
Sadly messrs Sharma, Kwarteng and Johnson do not understand what they are talking about when it comes to energy. However, at last we are seeing some discussion of alternatives in the mainstream media, although falling short of well qualified opponents of current policy being given airtime on the BBC, Sky or ITV. Thank you for your continuing efforts to influence government Mr Redwood.
October 8, 2021
I believe they take advise from so called experts and pressure groups. Plus some Gandees.
October 8, 2021
SirJ you’re trying to fix issues that don’t exist
All our current energy problems have been self induced by closing down power stations and not using our natural god given resources of coal, shale gas and oil
There aren’t any half measures, you either believe that man made carbon emissions will lead to the modelling 1.5 degree global temperature rise and the end of the world ….you either believe that fossils fuels emissions are just a pollutant and not a manipulator of climate
You are either happy to use fossil fuel or you’re completely against
Our government and political parties sit on the fence and appease with suggestions of energy mix, insulation, carbon trading, renewable and green revolutions
October 8, 2021
Sir John,
It is interesting that you feel the provision of electricity (energy in general) is a central government responsibility. The provision of electricity originally was a commercial endeavour. Government should be there to regulate and enable innovation – not hold up and block developments.
I read with interest that the US tech giants are currently in talks with RR to develop SMRs for powering power hungry data centres (aka “the cloud”) so that they can be independent of state controlled “grids”.
The government should be looking at ways of speeding up the use of SMRs for use on land. There are loads of these small reactors in the seas at the moment so the technology is well proven and safe.
Reply Government regulation and control dominates the industry sop government needs to generate a better answer
October 8, 2021
Agree SMRs look a sound and quick to implement solution – see my earlier post that included an interesting link.
October 8, 2021
wiseinternal.org 07/03/2019 ‘SMR cost estimates, and costs of SMRs under construction’
world-nuclear.org (09/2021) ‘Small Nuclear Power Reactors’.
These two documents are worth reading as they show different points of view on the potential cost of SMRs.
October 8, 2021
Off topic
Nearly all new arrivals, now – – no quarantine – all those hotel rooms free. Will those rooms now be filled with more foreigm freeloaders from Calais? PROBABLY. Definiteley won’t be stoppimg them coming !!!!!
October 8, 2021
Priti Useless has FAILED to stop the cross-Channel invasion and FAILED to stop the road-blocking protesters. Yes, it’s true, in both cases a change in the law was required, but two separate one-paragraph Bills would have sufficed and could have been rushed through parliament in a week. Basically, she has proved a complete waste of space. Just like the rest of the Cabinet.
October 8, 2021
“two separate one-paragraph Bills would have sufficed and could have been rushed through parliament in a week. ”
To dispense with:
ECHR?
Geneva Convention on Refugees?
International Maritime Law?
Really?
October 8, 2021
It will be heavy going just amending the Human Rights Act – if you remember how they behaved over the Internal Market Bill.
October 8, 2021
Yes, it IS simple, because you don’t actually have to repeal or amend any other Act. The only legal wording you need is to start the Bill off by saying “Notwithstanding all other Acts or Provisions, ……..”. The Bill then supersedes any existing restrictions, without having to enumerate these or amend them individually. The Bill would also end by saying “The provisions and implementation of this Bill are not subject to any legal review”. That’s why I say – and I know thereof I speak – that a couple of short, one (or maximum two) paragraph Bills would do the trick.
October 8, 2021
+9
October 8, 2021
bigneil
You are surely not expecting any change soon to a well established set up are you, seems like Government can introduce emergency powers for all sorts of things in days and hours, apart from illegal entry.
Lots of talk, little action.
October 8, 2021
“Dinghies have been *stopped* in the Channel today.”
I wonder what the Government means by “stopped”.
October 8, 2021
NLA. Stopped and those on board given safe haven into the UK for a free long term holiday courtesy of your money.
October 8, 2021
“In due course we may have large scale battery or hydro or hydrogen storage”
There is NO WAY sufficient storage will ever be able to cover for weeks of low wind & solar. We have been trying to tell the idiots “In Charge” about this for years, but they are clearly incapable of basic maths, let alone an understanding of electrical & physics theory. As a result, many of us already have our own small scale backups because the situation is going to become very messy before common sense (and a change of administration) takes over….
October 8, 2021
Absolutely correct. We have a few tens of GWh of pumped storage. We would need quite some tens of TWh of storage for a renewables dominated grid just at present demand levels. That’s a factor of a thousand or more. Add in heating demand, which is highly seasonal, and the need increases sharply. And the storage would have to be fairly full so as not to get caught out by a low wind year like this one. You can reduce the need for storage somewhat by building a large surplus of renewables, but although that is a cheaper route than building the storage it can never solve the problem entirely – and it raises the cost of the system because the marginal use of the extra output is low. More renewables becomes more expensive renewables.
I’ve never seen proper analysis of this in any of the papers produced by the consultants for CCC and BEIS. I did finally see an admission by consultants Aurora that essentially you need 100% backup from dispatchable capacity. If you have that, it is much cheaper than storage of electricity.
October 8, 2021
If ‘Blackout’ Boris continues on his current eco-loon trajectory, I expect him to declare himself the first XR Prime Minister soon.
I am going to buy shares in companies that build diesel generators.
October 8, 2021
Sir John, now you’ve had your meeting with Kwarteng is he going to change his disastrous policies and (i) increase gas storage capacity, (ii) fast-track RR SMRs, (iii) increase UK gas production, (iv) make energy self-sufficiency a declared government priority and (v) ensure that we have sufficient production capacity even when the wind doesn’t blow? Or has he given you no promises and decided to completely ignore all your sesnsible advice? I for one would like to know, although given this government’s track record I have no hope whatsoever that they will do the right thing!
Reply He did not immediately sign up to my recommendations, nor did he reject them outright. Watch this space.
October 8, 2021
Reply to reply: I will. I shall follow you avidly! Good luck trying to influence the government with your wisdom and patriotism, but I admit I have no faith in Boris Johnson. But we shall see!
October 8, 2021
“Levelling up” – do any of the govt have ANY thought on that?
Me – family been here many many +++++++++ years – speak English, law abiding, worked 4o+ yrs etc, want anything? – work and pay for it.
Another group – arrive illegally, can’t speak English, no skills, no work, no intention of it, WANT – free life – – and the govt gives it them – – – FOR NOTHING !!!!!!!!
Are we – the English – set to be wiped out ??? YES
Some even come as career criminals – – arrive, get free life – cost us a fortune, cause VERY expensive problems for us – – AND ARE ALLOWED YO STAY – ESPECIALLY if they murder an innocent person here. Their homeland refuses to have them back – and WE get the problem and cost till they drop. Everyone else laughs – except us.
I used to be proud – AND HAPPY – of being from this country – now it is a foreign freeloaders heaven. WE – are now here to see our taxes used to provide free lives for those who want one – i.e. – a LARGE amount of the planet.
England – the planets largest and best “refugee” camp – arrive, sit down, do nothing and let others pay for it. Thank god i’m old – the young have no idea what hell they have coming.
October 8, 2021
Like most issues reported in the press, the situation over our existing Nuclear stations has been brushed over with nothing more than superficial detail appearing in print.
Is there any reason why their service life cannot be extended until their output can be replaced by the first few of Rolls Royce’s SMRs ?
What would that involve and at what cost ? Indeed, we should be told the cost/benefit of extending their lives by even longer, if that is possible.
October 8, 2021
I just found this from the International Atomic Energy Agency :
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuclear-power-plant-life-extensions-enable-clean-energy-transition
It seems that the IAEA recommend that extending the life of existing Nuclear plants by at least a decade is one of the most cost effective methods of generating more low-carbon electricity. Why is this not being discussed in respect of UK Nuclear stations ?
Reply The UK has already done that.
October 8, 2021
Reply to Reply
But we have only extended the lives of some of our existing Nuclear stations for a short period : nothing like the timescale necessary to bridge the gap until new nuclear stations can come online.
From the EDF website :
“Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear power stations will be extended by five years to 2024, and Heysham 2 and Torness will be extended by seven years to 2030”.
Currenty we have 13 operating nuclear reactors generating electricity. Most are scheduled for decomissioning in the next decade but it will be at least 20-30 years before sufficient new nuclear capacity can be brought on line, even if new stations were given the go ahead in 2021.
Unless, of course, they are made up of Rolls Royce’s SMRs, in which case we could be talking of 12-15 years.
October 8, 2021
As I understand it, the AGR is the safest for siting near cities so should not be dispensed with in favour of PWRs.
October 8, 2021
We could generate a lot more of our own green energy by producing green methane through the anaerobic digestion of grass. A by-product of the process also produces green fertiliser.
0.75 acres of grass can provide the gas to heat the average home and we have the land and the climate to grow large quantities of grass. A trial plant is being built in Reading running on grass and designed to provide gas to 4000 local homes.
In addition, food, human and animal wastes can also be used to provide green methane and fertiliser through anaerobic digestion, a better solution to either burning or sending to landfill.
The enormous advantage of green methane is that we already have the gas distribution infrastructure and gas boilers and do not need to spend £300bn converting to heat pumps and upgrading the National Grid.
Also, importantly, it is a reliable and storable source of energy unlike wind.
Green methane can also be used to power existing cars and trucks with net zero CO2 emissions and with far less particulate/NOx emissions than petrol or diesel.
October 8, 2021
Amen to all of that.
How come we’ve had so many politicians who have failed to underatand that? Their obsession with emissions rather than security of supply has led to this. “Security of supply” doesn’t just mean “you have some gas to brun”, it also has to be at an affordable price – and without the possibility of geopolitical blackmail being built-in.
October 8, 2021
We learn today that the government have made the decision to halt further natural gas development in the North Sea.
Where is the logic in this – What insane dogma is driving this?
It seems clear that the absurd net-zero concept is far more important than our lives.
October 8, 2021
FYI
thegwpf.com/government-refusal-of-north-sea-natural-gas-field-is-irrational/
October 8, 2021
+10
October 8, 2021
‘Boris’ the servant of his green spouse is behind this. We will collapse as a country and people will be impoverished and hungry because of his fanaticism and refusal to be sensible.
We have an energy crisis – he just says let’s have more windmills which are a environmental and visible offense but he loves ’em. He likes piffle and piffles on us all.
October 8, 2021
OK for people to die of hypothermia but not of Covid.
October 8, 2021
Brian
If this is actual fact and Government policy, it is utter madness and will lead to economic self destruction.
Where is there any logic for such policies when it is already available and within easy reach at a sensible cost, why leave it under the sea, whilst we still import the expensive stuff from abroad.
October 8, 2021
Slightly off topic, but will those working from home now come to their senses and see the benefits of some free communal heating at the office?
October 8, 2021
Good point.
October 8, 2021
If a family is at home and a family member working at an office there are no savings to be had.
October 8, 2021
I wish they’d quit moaning about their heating bills st home. They’ve already saved money on transport getting to the office.
October 8, 2021
Perhaps it would be a good idea to remind the Business Secretary about what happened to the last Conservative Government to deliver a Three Day Working Week and Rota Power Cuts!
October 8, 2021
Please pass on my sympathies to the MP who sees his £80k+ salary “really grim” hope someone shows him what real life is like !!!!! hope someone starts a crowd funding website for him !!!- –
October 8, 2021
but look on the bright side- when losing his seat he gets 5 days to pack and leave Westminster premises.
They’re given a sum of money called the Winding Up budget. It helps former MPs pay for expenses once their salaries have stopped and covers costs for 2 more months. If they’ve been an MP for two years or more, they are also entitled to a Loss of Office Payment – which is twice the amount of money they get when they’re made redundant – depending on their age and length of service. Provision “one
calendar month’s salary (at the rate payable to MPs immediately before polling day) for each completed year of service subject to a maximum payment equal to six months’ salary”. The staff of any MP who’ve lost their seat will be made redundant.
October 8, 2021
He says he himself is OK as he has some other means.
October 8, 2021
Very tactless of him to raise this now.
October 8, 2021
Nothing but gov and media propaganda, fear is there weapon of choice to get you to do what they want.
October 8, 2021
Average gas selling price in Russia (EUR/1,000m3)
2016 – 51.6, 2017 – 57.7, 2018 – 53.7, 2019 – 56.9, 2020 – 50.4
Average gas selling price beyond Russia
2016 – 159.0, 2017 – 176.8, 2018 – 209.1, 2019 – 188.2, 2020 – 124.9
source – https://www.gazprom.com
It certainly pays to drill for gas, providing cheap domestic energy for your own citizens while obtaining huge revenues on international markets
We import 12,000 metric tonnes of gas from Russia – https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/
October 8, 2021
Or long term contracts with Russia.Serbian President,Aleksandr Vucic, earlier this week:-
“Energy crisis in Europe was triggered by countries’ failure to sign long term gas contracts with Russia in time….decision to build Balkan Stream was very smart.We are buying gas at $270.”
(Balkan Stream is the -just opened -extension of the Turkstream pipeline that takes Russian gas across the Black Sea to Turkey,Bulgaria,Serbia,Hungary and possibly(I’m not 100% sure) Croatia,bypassing Ukraine.
October 8, 2021
Glen Cullen – Thanks, that’s really good to know. But the WEF Board of Trustees member and now EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to block Russian gas exports to Europe via Nordstream 2. Who else is against Nordstream 2? German ‘environmentalists’, who ‘argue that it is incompatible with Germany’s emissions goals’ (BBC). So we have greenies and global corporatists in an unholy alliance to stop Europe getting affordable energy. Great!
October 8, 2021
There are about 2.83 cubic metres to a therm of gas, so €100/thousand cu m is €0.283/therm for comparison with out recent soaring prices that reached 400p/therm.
Not sure about the statistics on gas imports. BEIS show some 26.3TWh of Russian LNG imports in the first half of the year (there have been none since), following 24.6TWh in 2020 and 31.4TWh in 2019. This chart shows the imports history across the various sources:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/W0qOT/2/
October 9, 2021
The Baltic LNG project (based at the rapidly expanding new port of Ust-Luga (from where NS2 also starts it’s journey under the Baltic)will generate more supplies but it’s not due to be operational until mid decade.
October 8, 2021
We need more energy because we have too many people and will need even more as the population increases which means more pollution, CO2, gridlocks, less GP access, more houses, less space, more food imports, more food and waste stuff to get rid of, more resource depletion etc., etc., etc.
What a nightmare, insane environment we are making for future generations – do you think politicians can fix this and make a beautiful UK?
October 8, 2021
Dennis, certainly not the present incumbents or their obvious alternative. At present, every which way you look, politicians are a disaster. The few who have positive solutions are confined to fringe meetings and shut out.
October 8, 2021
Sir John,
A good article but all to no avail unless Boris can be made to take notice. May I suggest placing a hard copy in front of his nose with an appropriate enticement to read it?
October 8, 2021
Don’t forget the National Grid to carry all this extra electricity. It has been run down under semi- private ownership.
A long time ago Electricity Generation was a local thing and privately owned until Nationalised and a Grid network put in place. The same is required now for our Water and Gas supplies.
October 8, 2021
Off topic – but flowing on from recent days , From Conservative Woman
“Already £9million of the new National Insurance increase to fund the NHS has been allocated to 42 new ‘Integrated Care Specialists’ with salaries of up to £270,000 whose job descriptions include the requirement actively to promote diversity and inclusion”
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/can-the-nhs-be-cured/
How can money taken from the ‘taxpayer’ for one thing be used in such a disingenuous way. That’s how dishonest this Government has become. Apply that to every corner of the taxpayer funded State and it is easy to see instant savings
October 8, 2021
Nota# : “……whose job descriptions include the requirement actively to promote diversity and inclusion”
According to HoC Library figures the number of foreign nationals working in the NHS is 15% encompassing 200 different nationalities. This compares with 9% of the general population who are foreign nationals.
So diversity managers are not required in the NHS.
They exist because the Marxist NHS wish to replace meritocracy with diversity.
October 8, 2021
Conservative Woman commentators can say it better than most on how things actually are.
‘Even John Selwyn Gummer’s Committee on Climate Change calculated that we would still need 125 TWh of gas-generated electricity in 2030, even with our projected ‘Saudi Arabia of wind’. This is actually more than gas power stations produce now, and would supply about a third of demand. The grid simply would not be able to operate on intermittent renewable power alone.’
‘There is no way that this gas could be properly replaced by other energy sources in that time scale, or for that matter by 2050. There will never be sufficient electricity capacity to meet peak demands for heating during winter, and distribution networks could not handle it even if there was.’
‘They say that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. That is certainly true of the repeated claim that air pollution leads to 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK, a lie recently spouted by the British Safety Council.’
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-a-weekly-round-up-9/
If the above is just half correct, it is an indication that this delusional PM will stop at nothing to cripple the UK, its people and its economy. Ego before common sense, ego before duty
October 8, 2021
Read what Putin has been saying on Reuters website. He is spot on. We need to invest in extraction industry, as fake green nonsense which just forces production and jobs to other countries, and expensive power which can leave the vulnerable cold… Is not good.
October 8, 2021
Commodity traders trade on news stories from the media for there allocation of money to make more money, at the moment it gas, no news stories no increase in the price of gas, why, they have just putt the taxes up on the electric to subsidence more windmills and going up again next APRIL by using the price cap. 25% of your electric price is tax and then 5% VAT for households and 20% VAT for businesses which just gone up. The gov making a killing on fuel prices like petrol were the tax take is nearly 70% tax, with propaganda, also for the gov GDP to DEBT ratio looks better as prices go up, there also no shortage of HGV drivers, HS2, HINKLEY POINT and others big gov projects who are paying more, have taken a lot of driver who get to go home at night and have canteen on site, so the fact is the gov caused the driver shortage itself. I could go on about the gov and what it is doing via the media but what is the point, the people are fixated on their mobile phone and trying to make decision of whether to buy a freeze and fill full of food.
October 8, 2021
Your tweet today SirJ ‘’ Replacing coal power stations must be a key priority’’ suggests that you believe the hype from the 50% of scientist, that are funded by the green lobby, that the world will end if we don’t decarbonise
I believe the complete opposite in that we should provide cheap energy for the UK people and its economy by using coal & fossil fuels….and by leading the world in technology to make fossil fuel clean & efficient
October 8, 2021
Certainly at the moment is would be dilatory not to make maximum use of our remaining coal capacity which could shave at least £2bn off our winter energy bills as a country. I hope some MP will challenge BEIS on this.
October 8, 2021
I see LBC is reporting that loo roll manufacturers will have to stop production as gas prices are too high…
What do we wipe our bum with in this new green nirvana?
October 8, 2021
Come on Iain use your imagination, running out of water will be the real problem.
October 8, 2021
Talking Pints last night with guest Dr Andy Palmer. Watch it on repeat, one of the best informed conversations about the motor industry and the future of personal transport.
Government should define what they see as the problem and indicate what they are aiming to achieve. At their peril, from a position of technical ignorance, they should not offer detailed solutions. Ask yourself this, would you be willing to allow any of them to replace your hip with a new one however much they expressd their desire and ability to do it.
Politicians, having defined the problem should leave it to the industry to offer solutions. As industry has to sell the end product of such solutions they will choose the most marketable they can come up with. Not I would add the hair brained exchanges on a pillow of comedic politicians. Those will lead them to a black hole. Politicians did not create the Covid vaccine, they facilitated its creation.
October 8, 2021
bigneil & comments thereafter – but maybe now, if Mr J is still looking & observing and wishing to perhaps follow friends and partners ( reportedly excluding at present France, Germany and Spain though ) he may be aware of, say it quietly, the ‘P’ word as a group of 12 EU countries call on Brussels to toughen border measures against (illegal) migrants ahead of a discussion on the reform of the Schengen Borders Code. More on politico.eu but talk now of swift & proportional action to the threats to national security. Yes, that’ll be ‘P’ for pushbacks then. Some diplomats already referring to the proposals as a call to ‘legalise pushbacks’
October 8, 2021
Sky News have filmed migrants laboriously hauling a boat to the water’s edge and starting the motor under the noses of a group of French police, who did nothing. Boilerplate response from Dan O’Mahoney about ‘dangerous journeys’ and ‘smugglers’. Has the penny dropped yet, JR? Are you prepared to accept that mass immigration is the policy of our Establishment, facilitated by an agreement with the French and the UN Global Compact on Migration which was signed behind the backs of the British people?
October 8, 2021
Saw that…and it was truly shocking, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those French police were calling their counterparts in Kent to expect a delivery in the next couple of hours
October 9, 2021
How do you know that they were migrants, and not simply French people going fishing, say?
What is illegal about what they were doing anyway?
Your supposition might well be correct, but what grounds are there for the police to act?
October 9, 2021
The police could act under –
Health & Safety
Competent Coastal Seamanship/Skipper licence
Maritime Equipment Requirements
Maritime Safety Inspection
Children Safeguarding
Check Immigration Status
I could go on…but there are many reasons the French could have used to stop that boat
October 8, 2021
John, can you tell me who using all of the gas to be a shortage of gas, car plants are shuttering, no parts or driver in the UK and in Europe, steel plants are on go slow with not much to do, no steel for cars, the household in the UK and in Europe have not turn on their heating yet, the USA has it own gas supply and export it around the world. So where is the shorage of gas John, it is true that the UK gets 48% per cent it gas from the north sea but it is also true that UK cannot import more than 48% of it north sea gas otherwises the companies are fined so they have to sell the gas elsewhere or burn it off at sea and turn down the pressure in the pipe, now gov regs are causing this to happen and all they have to do is say 60% of UK gas can now be onshored instead of 48%. Russia has offered the UK a contract for cheap gas but they do not want it, why. They say Russia is stopping GAS getting to Europe, how can Russia biggest gas seller put more gas in the pipe line when nobody’s using it, they also offered them cheap contract’s for gas for year,s out and they are not signing why, after all it just business deal, they paid out for another pipe line because they were complaining about, not have all the gas they need, USA might not want that deal, they wanted to sell their gas to Europe because over supply so where is the shorage of gas, John can you tell me.
October 8, 2021
John can’t tell you but I can –
The whole of Europe are using ‘gas’ (Russian gas) to fire the power stations now that we’ve turned our backs on coal & nuclear in the pursuit of the green revolution
October 8, 2021
Off topic, a couple of interesting articles in the Irish News today.
The first:
https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/leadingarticle/2021/10/08/news/editorial-hard-work-on-protocol-must-begin-2472140/
“Editorial: Hard work on protocol must begin”
“AFTER days of sabre-rattling over the Northern Ireland Protocol at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the most telling contribution came in Boris Johnson’s much-awaited main speech on Wednesday: precisely nothing.
The prime minister’s 45-minute address on the state of the nation and his government’s priorities managed somehow to omit any mention of Article 16, the Irish Sea border, the European Union or Brexit itself, a remarkable feat for an issue that continues to cast such an enormous shadow over British and Irish politics.”
“DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson … has somehow gambled his political future on the removal of the Irish Sea border, despite voluminous evidence showing Boris Johnson cannot be trusted to keep promises and will happily sacrifice unionist interests to satisfy voters closer to home.”
“It is by now abundantly clear that this solution will not involve the wholescale rewriting of the protocol as demanded by Lord Frost or the DUP. The reality, as Maros Sefcovic set out yesterday, is that the protocol is a solution to the challenges caused by Brexit rather than the problems itself.”
And the second:
https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/columnists/2021/10/08/news/alex-kane-boris-johnson-is-a-menace-to-the-union-but-too-stupid-to-realise-it-2470788/
“Alex Kane: Boris Johnson is a menace to the Union but too stupid to realise it”
“That he is prime minister appals me. I’m not exactly sure what it says about politics today, particularly in England. But of one thing I am absolutely certain: he is a menace to the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, yet too damn stupid and self-absorbed to realise it.”
I could have written that myself, in fact I could have written almost everything else in this well-deserved excoriation apart from:
“His elevation to the highest political office in the land was the unexpected, unintended consequence of the Brexit vote.”
Because it was Theresa May’s decision that she would use the demands of the Irish government and the EU as a pretext to placate the CBI and other business pressure groups which brought about his elevation.
October 8, 2021
So Denis we can see how things have changed dramatically – ie. unintended consequences – trade betwern NI and ROI has increased by leaps and bounds 40 – 50 % each way- the Irish haulage groups are not using the UK land bridge to the continent as before – too much troubke with paperwork and congestion – Sinn Fein has run ahead of itself at recent polls and is now the most popular party in ROI – has to be something similar going on in NI – no wonder Sir Jeffrey and the DUP are worried – but that’s what they wanted ‘brexit’ thats what they championed – as I said unintended consequences – the genie is out if the bottle
October 9, 2021
You should read my last paragraph again.
These problems originate with Theresa May’s decision to try to deal with the trickle of goods crossing the land border into the Irish Republic by a system of import controls rather than by export controls.
A suggestion which appeared here nearly four years ago, for example on December 7 2017:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/12/06/comments-to-this-site/#comment-905832
“My possible solution was for the UK government to give an undertaking to the EU that it did not intend to allow its territory to become a source of unsuitable goods placed upon the EU Single Market, and so it would introduce a system to licence UK exporters to the EU which would force them to meet EU requirements or suffer penalties under UK law, with the possibility of EU officials being invited to assist in investigations.
After all the present general freedom to export from the UK to the EU without any border checks is based upon the EU’s trust in the UK government’s good intentions but backed up by UK legal sanctions for infringements of EU law, a system which works OK but with the undesirable consequence that every business in the UK has been made subject to the EU requirements even though only a small minority ever exports to the EU.”
Which suggestion was soon after communicated to Theresa May both privately, as my constituency MP, and publicly through a succession of letters in the local newspaper; but clearly she preferred to listen to Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI and other business lobbyists.
October 8, 2021
Your Diary is sensible today Sir John.
Can you make it Compulsory Reading for all the relevant Government Ministers, including the P.M.?
Mind you, with the P.M. it is debatable how much he can understand. Especially with his wife talking in the other ear.
October 8, 2021
If you follow through every single action of Boris’s Government when it just comes to the UK energy supplies, it relies not on building a self-reliant resilient future for the Country, instead it promotes the manufacture of product and then the shipping of them from some of the nastiest polluting places on the planet then sending them here by the most polluting method. -Bizarre! Which ever way it is laid out this Government is encouraging, paying for with the taxpayers money, for more and more of world pollution than by any other action. That can never be considered the ‘greening of the planet’ (what ever that is meant to mean)
I know some have put forward on this blog that we assemble some of the components in the UK – but that is all that is happening, assembly. The pollution created was more than if it had been done domestically
The crying shame is that the UK has the resources, the capability and the know how already here – its just not used, its pushed away, discourage by exorbitant taxes over bearing red tape and so on. Do the Countries we buy from care, have the same rules, levels of bureaucracy – of course not we are making them wealthy. Most of this Governments purchases amount to nothing more than transferring UK generated wealth abroad. Then even worse, they have placed the UK under the control and whim of foreign political powers that now own our energy supplies. The basics Russian, China and France are the UK’s dominant suppliers, not commercial companies but Government controlled nationalised industries. The UK’s supplies are as safe as the political powers that control them.
If we fired up our coal powered power stations to power the manufacture of solar panels it would make more sense. But, no its about crippling the UK for the ‘grand gesture’, the ‘virtue signal’ for the sake of some misguided ego.
October 8, 2021
The comments this morning typify one thing. The constant theme is that Government “does not know” is “hasn’t woken up” or “has yet to realise”….
It’s all about the superiority and grandiosity of the person making the comment, not about solving the peroblem.
The local problem is British, but the overall problem is worldwide. Energy – gas – prices in the holy, wonderful, world-beating EU rose 60% in two days this week. Factories are churning out candles in China. Candles! Gasoline prices are way up in the US. Same story in India.
Taking a Worldwide energy supply problem – which I guess is mainly due to a Worldwide recovery from Covid, although there are clearly additional problems – and then insisting that it is local, British, and all due to Boris, is simply infantile.
October 8, 2021
Nothing to do with covid…its to do with the worlds idiotic green revolution increasing the demand & price for gas over coal and nuclear….the greens have deemed ‘gas’ as an okay fuel
October 8, 2021
sorry – the greens haven’t included ‘shale gas’ as okay rather the evil of all evils
October 8, 2021
There is one comment I could stand to read less often, and that is the one that demands to know why Brexit has not transformed our lives yet.
Did people ask Thatcher why privtization had not yet transformed their lives six months after she got elected? As a matter of fact, they did. That rhetorical question was a part of the propaganda campaign to oppose privatization. If it’s so wonder why hasn’t it worked after six months? Three elections later nobody was asking whether privatization would work because everyone could see it as working.
Everyone sane and reasonable, that is, because three elections later there were still peoplel damning privatization because their local library no longer too two weekly copies of the Fisherman’s Gazette, as it had in the good old days of socialism. So we have that to look forward to, and Andy and MiC will be with us for a long, long time, boring everyone to death.
October 8, 2021
Sky news has footage of the French police (est 10) looking on while refugees (est 30) set off on large rubber boats in day-light heaing towards the UK…..can we ask for our money back
October 9, 2021
ask? – or insist?
October 8, 2021
If the current surge in energy prices is caused, as I think it is, by a recovery from Covid that is taking place too fast for energy distribution to adjust, and I mean adjust physically, not nonsense about “Didn’t they see this coming?” what can we expect next.
I think we can probably expect quite a lot of industries to find energy costs going too high for their current profit models, and reducing output. That will feed through into employment, in other words a recession, which will cause a crisis in personal finance, which will kill house prices and possibly lead to a wider banking and financial crisis.
And this has nothing to with the Tories or your favourite politician to hate, but instead will be a Worldwide phenomenon because the recovery overshoot is a Worldwide phenomenon. There are things you can do to protect yourself, and there are things you can’t do. But it may be time to do a bit of planning.
October 8, 2021
Off topic, but the great holy EU that was never, never, never going to renegotiate the NIP and don’t even ask, is beginning to do exactly that, staring by accepting yet another three month truce over sausages in NI.
This is a small step in a niche market, but it is a huge win for us folk who have consistently insisted that in the end the WA, FTA and NIP would be sorted out by self-interest.
The EU are trapped in a box of their own making. They desperately want the NIP not to be torpedoed, because they want to maintain some sort of presence in NI, and if they persist in being too zealous in imposing EU “safety” rules they risk exactly that torpedo from people who simply don’t see sausages as a danger.
But one concession leads to another, and now there is blood in the water, as they say. Eventually the whole NIP will be gradually trimmed back to the point where it still exists, but makes no practical difference in daily life.
October 9, 2021
The Northern Irish people want to remain in the European Union, as does Scotland, London, and all of the decent cities in the UK.
October 9, 2021
It is a fact that the referendum was a whole UK referendum.
Not town by town or street by street.
October 10, 2021
EU referendum: Nottinghamshire votes in favour of leaving.
October 8, 2021
In the 40’s to 70’s the pollution from the U.K. coal burning polluted the trees and
vegetation in Sweden, Norway,Finland.The damage now is much less. In the U.K. we suffered Smog.
We must bear this in mind for the future.
October 8, 2021
I must say Majorfrustration that it not gov who are the thickos, they do their job and get the vote in to win, it the people who are the THICKO’S, they might not know much about running a country but sure know how to win a election and they will win the next election on back of saving people lives which is just more propaganda from the media, women love BJ for saving their lives.
October 8, 2021
Forward message to year 2022-
We are “Comin` in on a wing and a prayer “.
October 8, 2021
My research into the ‘national-grid; has led me to ride the mystical rollercoaster of international finance
Gas Distribution –
SGN – SSE (33.3%, UK), Borealis Infrastructure (25%, Canada), OTTP, (25%, Canada), Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (17.7%, Abu Dhabi)
NORTHERN GAS NETWORKS – Cheung Kong Group (Hong Kong), Power Asset Holdings Limited (Hong Kong) and SAS Trustee Corporation (Australian Pension Fund) (percentage splits unknown)
CADENT – 39% National Grid (UK), 61% is a consortium led by Macquarie, an Australian investment bank. The deal is also backed by China Investment Corporation (CIC) and Qatar Investment Authority, along with fund managers including Hermes and Allianz
WALES AND WEST UTILITIES – Cheung Kong Group (100%, Hong Kong)
Energy Electric Distribution –
SSEPD – SSE (100% UK)
SP ENERGY NETWORKS – Scottish Power (100%, Iberdrola, Spain)
Northern Ireland Electricity Networks – ESB Group (95% State Owned)
ELECTRICITY NORTHWEST – consortium of funds controlled by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IIF International Holding GP Limited which is a constituent of the Infrastructure Investments Fund (percentages not available)
NORTHERN POWERGRID – Berkshire Hathaway Energy (100%, US)
SP ENERGY NETWORKS – Scottish Power (100% Iberdrola, Spain)
WPD – PPL Corporation (100% US)
UKPN – Cheung Kong Group (40% Hong Kong), Power Asset Holdings Limited (40% Hong Kong) and Li Ka Shing Foundation (20%)
Source – https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/energy/2017/05/25/who-owns-the-uks-energy-distribution-networks/
October 8, 2021
“That is why Germany is busy negotiating to buy yet more quantities of Russian gas to keep her factories turning when she has little gas or oil of her own.”
Was it Mrs. Merkel’s intention to make Europe more dependent upon Russian gas by closing Germany’s nuclear power plants, a lady whose parents moved from West to East Germany and who was a senior member of the Russian pro-communist organisation Agitprop ?
October 8, 2021
Well Glen Cullen I don’t think that right, most gas in Europe is used for industry and heating homes, industry is winding down, no parts, the supply routes have broken down and may never come back, Germany, Poland and Chec use coal for electric and France use nuclear power, the small eastern countries have had gas contract with Russia for year’s at cheap price’s and do not buy their gas on the open market and still use some coal, Norway has it own gas which goes to Sweden, Denmark, UK and Holland for electric, the UK could ramp gas drilling in the north sea with Norway and put Russia out of business if they want to, you are media lead like most people.
October 8, 2021
Sir John, there is a free market solution to the problem of unreliable renewable energy which at the moment gets a free ride on the back of fossil fuel and nuclear generation. Do not allow any generator to connect to the grid without a guarantee of a reasonable capacity factor. A solar ‘park’ which manages about ten percent would have to generate the other 90% from wind (25 to about 40%), biogas (?), hydro (not much of that unless they run a line to Norway). I wouldn’t expect them to run up their own nuke but they might well turn to gas.
If they did that last they’d find there was no point in bothering with the solar part of the mix. The added bonus, of course, would be the added profitability of real generation.
JF
October 8, 2021
So….
All those old people we sacrificed the economy saving from Covid…
… we’re going to kill them with hypothermia this winter ???
(Anything so long as people don’t die of CV-19)
October 8, 2021
Dear John Redwood
I agree we need more coal and more gas pro-tem until we can fully decarbonise the UK economy. However, when we are facing a big Supply Crisis and potential Inflation Crisis with a loss of confidence in UK.Plc the last thing we need is Green taxes and costs.
A short Act of Parliament suspending the provisions of the Climate Change Act- needs to be passed. This needs to last a couple of years and the UK Government should fund the costs of wind-farms and solar panels (and feed in tariffs) using the proceeds of axing HS2- the UK’s most expensive White Elephant- ever (worth well over £100 billion). This will help reduce Gas and electricity bills.
The remaining proceeds of cancelling HS2 can be put into buying £25 billion worth of oil from Saudi Arabia, the USA- or wherever it can be sourced- so as to provide back-u for the UK energy markets so the lights don’t go out this winter. Then what is left should be used to abolish VAT on fuel and provide a vital business rates holiday for all businesses until April 2023. There also needs to be a suspension of all green regulations for the next 18 months. We are, Sir, facing a threat of Stagflation- the cure from which is partly Supply side reforms.
In the meantime, the Gilt Markets are getting jittery, so there needs to be a renewed effort to close the Budget Deficit by making real cuts to the bloated Civil Service and to Quangos. The Bank of England now needs to be told to stick to it’s Day Job (Price Stability) and to Stop Printing Money whilst raising Interest Rates to 1% in the first instance. That will calm the nerves over Sterling in the Currency Markets.
Levelling Up and improvements to Public Services cannot be funded by borrowing more- so whack 50% Tariffs on Chinese imports (to make them repay some of the costs of allowing Covid-19 to spread across the World). If China retaliates we can put the tariffs up to 100%: Either way (with a current £45 billion annual trade deficit with China) we help repair the Balance of Payments, more money stays in Britain and finds its way to the Exchequer to pay for Levelling Up and better Police, the NHS and Armed Forces.
October 8, 2021
Yeah.. am afraid you British guys have been had.. don’t know why it is .. but it seems countries with large population sizes are prone to accepting political BS .. countries with smaller population sizes kick and scream and are not taken in yhe same way – they question everything
October 9, 2021
‘countries with large population sizes are prone to accepting political BS ‘.
So would you include China, Russia, USA, Brazil, India, Japan?
October 9, 2021
what he meant was
‘countries with large population sizes are prone to being ignored’
October 9, 2021
Lets assume the department-for-business-energy-and-industrial-strategy is responsible for our Energy Strategy and Transformation from fossil fuels towards net zero. Perhaps you could confirm this Sir John?
Where is the plan and budget?
Where are the dependencies, risks and mitigations?
Including the recent concerns about energy security, price spikes etc?
When will these be published and when will contracts go out to tender via a suitable Energy PMO, Programme Management Office? Preferebly NOT staffed by civil servants, but by experienced energy SME subject matter experts/engineers and programme/project management skills (Prince2/PMP qualified).
October 10, 2021
We are in a crisis of government making and they want us to belive that its not done on purpose.
If it has been manufactured by them, it is unforgivable. If it happened by misjudgement its unforgivable. To leave the whole country in such a precarious situation is the game of madmen.