Over the next few years we will face a reduction in nuclear power as older stations are closed, well before a new large nuclear power station comes on line. We will experience growing demands for electrical power as more people switch to electric cars and electric heating, and as the economy and the population continues to grow creating more need. There will be a further major increase in wind power, which will cover the days when there is the right level of wind to maximise turbine output without needing to shut them down through too high a wind speed. The question remains, what is the back up plan for days of high demand when the wind does not blow and when solar output is also low?
In the short term the government has brought three coal power plants back on stream to deal with shortages. These have to be kept, and perhaps could be converted to biomass to make them more reliable and popular contributors to our power output. The country relies heavily on its remaining combined cycle gas stations which produce less carbon dioxide than the coal stations per unit of output. It would be a good idea to bring several old retired gas stations back into a state of readiness to be available to produce power when the wind drops. These are matters which our managed system of generation can commission by offering capacity payments to the owners to make the facilities available.
The government should also look at how it can increase domestic gas output. Currently half the gas we use is imported. Some of this is dependent on paying high and wildly fluctuating spot market prices. Some of it is shipped long distance on tankers. If we produced more domestic gas this could pass to users via pipeline and could be purchased under contract at more stable and lower average prices. Immediately the government could allow Shell to progress the Jackdaw field, which can use the existing Shearwater platform and the existing gas and liquids pipes into St Fergus/Cruden Bay for onward distribution by the existing pipe network. This would be a greener method of supplying gas than the imports and provide us with more national resilience in energy provision. The government should review its other options for producing more UK gas as a transition fuel whilst it puts in place much more reliable renewable electricity and better storage for variable wind power.
October 21, 2021
Well some sense in what you say. But you say āThe country relies heavily on its remaining combined cycle gas stations which produce less carbon dioxide than the coal stations per unit of outputā. True but coal produces less CO2 than burning biomass, especially when imported on diesel ships across the Atlantic.
If one really wants to reduce CO2 (a foolish misguided goal anyway) you should logically chop down all the mature trees and bury or use the wood (in something long lasting) and grow new trees to suck up more CO2. The government never say this and continue to burn imported biomass. This as CO2 is not really the aim of their policy.
October 21, 2021
Also people replacing older cars with new electric ones actually increases CO2 (by causing a new EV and battery to be built) so why exactly are the government subsidising this? Allegra Stratton was right to keep her old diesel in CO2 terms. I assume this is just to make Tesla and Nissan more profit? Even heat pumps (which are very expensive and not very practical in retrofit). They save little or no CO2 unless you have lots of low carbon electricity to drive them and we do not have this.
We are governed by complete idiots on energy and net zero. Also in most other areas alas.
October 21, 2021
I agree, anyway ban soda streams we need the Co2 we have to stop the remaining Nuclear power stations from going into meltdown.
That would create a “warming effect” mind you in winter Pensioners with normal houses and heat pumps might be glad of it.
October 21, 2021
@LL +1
October 22, 2021
Indeed LL, complete idiots at face value but likely more sinister reasons, especially when one considers the Agendas of the UN and the globalists that support them.
October 21, 2021
The real solutions short term are coal, gas, fracking, better insulation, just heat one room, jumpers, thermals, electric blankets, thicker duvets, hot water bottles, keep your old car, shared bodily warmth. It was common in my youth to find a frozen glass of water next to the bed when waking. You learned to get dressed and undressed rather quickly.
Long term solutions lots or R&D into better nuclear power, fusion, synthetic fuel manufacture, fuel cells, better batteries, better insulation, adaption to whatever climate changes we get (the climate will always change), transport system, better ways to avoid travelling too much, more efficient housingā¦
October 21, 2021
Sensible R&D yes please and roll out only when it works and is cost effective. Roll out of duff uneconomic and impractical technology by law or using taxes to subsidise. This, unsurprisingly, just gives you loads of duff, uneconomic and impractical technology to dispose of and make everyone poorer. As was done by the EU with those dire compact fluorescent light bulbs..
October 21, 2021
Living in a large flat as a child, with only the ‘sitting’ room heated by a coal fire, I used to get changed into my jim-jams under the sheets in my (freezing) bedroom and scrape the ice off the window in the morning to see out. My children (now grown) have never known anything but central heating around the whole house and in their bedrooms.
Holidays were often day trips to Littlehampton on the charabanc (coach to younger readers) and I didn’t get to ride in a car until I was ten (local GP gave Dad and myself a lift home). My children grew up in a two car family and took family trips to Canada for granted.
I really wonder if the younger generations are really prepared to step back 60-70 years and live the way most folk did back then. I doubt it somehow but that doesn’t seem so unlikely if we keep on this current track.
PS We received a text inviting us to get a booster jab several weeks ago. We had to phone a ‘line’ that was open 2-5pm Mon to Fri and book appointments. It seemed genuine so we tried to call it. The number would ring, be answered by the usual “we are very busy etc” and after ten minutes be disconnected.
Five or six attenpts got us nowhere, so we called the local GPs surgery. They told us it was being run by the pharmacy (same building – in Wokingham Medical Centre) so we called the pharmacy. They denied all knowledge and told us it was the surgery. We gave up and are still not sure if the original text was some kind scam. Last week an email from the NHS arrived and we booked booster shots but have to wait another two weeks.
Is the Booster Programme running slowy? Well, it’s not because we don’t want the jabs – it’s just very poor communications and admin. If that text was genuine, then why send it to so many people that the phone lines collapsed?
October 21, 2021
@LL +1. to sensible, to logical – no ‘grandstanding headline’ so not on the agenda
October 22, 2021
R&D costs money requiring investment by companies, individuals or government. For companies and individuals that requires patronage – people buying products, so if you want a better car you need to buy cars to provide the cash flow – which you advocate people specifically not do and give yourself as exemplar.
You call for more R&D but appear to want everyone else to fund it while you sit back after others you decry as idiots have taken the risk as early adopters or investors.
Your daily rants suggest do not appreciate the risks, process and practicalities technology R&D actually involves.
October 22, 2021
So you are suggesting we buy duff technology in order to fund R&D into better technology?
That is surely idiotic, people should buy shares in people doing sensible R&D and they get a hansom payback if it works. That way 100% of funding goes into the R&D.
Your way perhaps 90% is pissed away on making and selling duff tech and perhaps just 10% goes back into sensible R&D. Plus you end up with duff (Betamax, Squarial, 8 track, duff EV car, compact flourescent lamp technology) littering everywhere!
October 27, 2021
As I said you clearly haven’t a clue how major R&D operates. The commercial world accounts for the vast majority of R&D and that is driven by corporate activity, mostly established businesses, that get the funds through trade.
It is very hard to find original investment opportunities, to simply buy shares in “people” doing “sensible” R&D.
As usual you pluck meaningless phrases and numbers out of nowhere, certainly not connected to reality, and pretend you are an expert in everything by relying totally on hindsight.
October 21, 2021
None of it will happen till we have massive power cuts and then all Varrie will say is more windmills.
There’s not an ounce of common sense in the Road to Ruin document so don’t expect any from Westminster.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
I see the latest scam from the nudge unit is to tax uk meat and dairy products to make them too expensive so we can import more thereby claiming we’ve reduced our carbon production.
Good article in today’s Telegraph about the up and coming rebellion against our masters for imposing net zero without consulting the electorate.
It’ll be the poll tax and Brexit rolled into one.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Boris the clown has zero mandate to ban ice cars, our boilers etc. The time has come to put this in a referendum for the people to decide as they have in Switzerland. It’s far to important to leave it to the politicos. When their is political consensus they are invariably wrong. Remember the EU?
October 21, 2021
IW, +1. !!!
October 21, 2021
(Greta Thunberg has accused countries including the UK of being in denial over the extent of the climate and ecological crisis and using ācreative carbon accountingā to augment their green credentials.)
Our “Sage” of the age; Greta is on to them anyway at flop 26. Freezing pensioners to death is simply not something they will vote for for, a green transition… To death. “Climate change” will likely make Northern lattitudes colder.
And electric cars, cars! Have they gone mad, the only “green” way is trams, 19th c electric vehicles.
October 21, 2021
The science does not prove human causation to climate change neither does it prove that CO2 is contributory to global warming; there is no point to the net zero policy. Carbon dioxide does not control the climate and physics proves this. All the evidence from past temperature records show that it was warmer in the 1920s than now.
October 21, 2021
Indeed – once you allow/adjust for the urban heat effect and temperature measurements taken at, for example, Heathrow Airport.
October 21, 2021
1930’s Ameruca had the highest temperatures ever recorded. All can be read and seen on Tony Hellers website, “RealClimateScience”. Boris should be made to look him up and read his articles as well as Dr Patrick Moore. They are real scientists not like fake knowledge Greta and Boris’s advisers. Carrie on Boris, no ones going to vote for the Consocialists when the Bill’s start dropping on our doormats. No one votes to be poorer on unproven science that will have zero impact. Madness.
October 22, 2021
If the UN and the IPCC really wanted to show balance, transparency and peer review theyād hold a fringe event at cop26 inviting all the sceptic scientistsā¦.now that would be real science
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Sir John, I think, tries to conflate long term environmental matters with the short term looming crisis facing millions this winter.
That’s unsurprising. It is not green aims but Tory ideology, which has allowed the Only-For-Profit kids to trouser the money that they have saved by ditching gas storage facilities, and in so doing expose millions of consumers to price spikes for their heating, light, and so on. There is also an increased risk of power cuts.
But hey, the Tories are fed up of experts, even though they are who you need to specify technical detail in contracts, and to foresee the consequences of failure to do so properly. You also need them to provide due oversight and inspection, and you need them to be independent of the industry itself, that is, to be part of the public sector.
Oh dear, oh dear…
October 21, 2021
The government should immediately licence and 100% Treasury fund the Stag Energy Gateway gas storage project. It will store 3 billion m3 of “working” gas; equivalent to the now closed Rough storage which couldn’t operate profitably in this crazy UK market system. BTW. Working gas has to be pushed out of the storage medium with “cushion” gas. Someone will have to finance the likely 1.5 to 2 billion m3 of cushion gas that Gateway will need; and you don’t get your money back for decades. https://www.stagenergy.com/gateway/
October 21, 2021
Thanks, Acorn, yes, more ethically-governed countries – most of those just across the Channel – have avoided this utter shambles somehow though, haven’t they?
October 21, 2021
The energy industry follows government policies.
The government wants to ditch fossil fuels and that includes gas.
They have listened to the experts and that is the problem.
Subsidies and grants to the industry are available for renewables like wind, solar, biomass etc so their investments go into those areas.
Gas we were told by these experts can be easily imported and that is why fracking was cancelled as was planning permission recentlyfor a new gas field.
Gas storage which you seem obsessed about NLH as some sort of clever price mechanism, is just spare capacity which might help stop power cuts, but it won’t alter the big rises in world gas market prices if demand for gas increases.
October 21, 2021
Correct
October 21, 2021
Oh P2, you do give us at DM&NC a LOL. You make it so obvious that you haven’t got the first idea how this energy market system works.
October 21, 2021
Go on then acorn give us the benefit of your genius.
October 22, 2021
I notice that acorn has run away after his or her impolite post towards me when acttually challenged.
October 21, 2021
NLH – I thought that is what Ofgem was supposed to do; Protecting customersā interests in the future:
The focus of Ofgemās work to protect customers going forward will be on:
ā¢ monitoring competition and, where necessary, using powers under the Competition Act 1998 to tackle market abuse
ā¢ pursuing a range of measures under the Social Action Plan to help vulnerable and low-income customers who suffer fuel poverty, and
ā¢ continuing work with energywatch and others to make it easier for customers to choose and change supplier and enforcing licence requirements where these apply
October 21, 2021
Ah, I see, Tracy, as long as it’s not Tory voters’ faults, then millions having to get through the winter without affordable heat doesn’t matter eh?
It’s always someone else’s, isn’t it?
October 22, 2021
Funny that you regularly demand independent oversight of organisations in the marketplace NLH, yet when tracy correctly places blame on just such an organisation, you switch to blaming anyone who voted Conservative.
October 21, 2021
LL – I may be wrong, but logic tells me the following: Growers inject CO2 into greenhouses to get better plant growth, and the plants take up the extra CO2. Quicker plant growth makes larger plants which will take up even more CO2, and the additional plant growth will eventually replace the greenery lost in the Amazon and elsewhere. Nature is a wonderful self-balancing entity, and will balance the levels of CO2 without any interference from humans. We need CO2. We need more CO2, not less.
October 21, 2021
Shirley, the biggest irony is the deliberate production of CO 2 to fill food bags, so that salad and a host of other food lasts longer, then when the packaging is opened the whole of that CO 2 production goes into the air to contribute to the so called emissions problem.
The biggest farce is that the government actually helped the two companies that produce this 100 % waste of their product to keep on running during the so called HGV shortage.
Difficult to make it up really !!!
October 21, 2021
topac.com āSuggested gas mixtures for modified atmosphere packagingā
October 21, 2021
The glaciers that covered much of Britain receded 12,000 years ago.
That was a big even. Not a chimney to have been found then.
October 21, 2021
event
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Indeed historically we are period with a dearth of CO2.
Most plants, crops and trees evolved to benefit from more not less CO2.
October 21, 2021
Indeed. Over the 3.5 billion years of the earths history temperature has gone up and down as has CO2 content, sometimes temperatures in the opposite direction to the temperature. Plants need 150 parts per million to survive. Currently 400 parts per million. Industrial growers pump CO2 into their vast greenhouses to get it up to 1000 parts per million. Faster and larger growth. The Australian Great Barrier reef has reached record size this year despite eco nuts claims CO2 would kill them off. Duh, apart from the lifeforms the reefs are made from calcium carbonate. The carbon is CO2 extracted from …. the atmosphere. Carbon is essential to all life on Earth!
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Not only is biomass a much bigger CO2 emitter than coal (because wood chips don’t burn as hot, limiting efficiency), it is also much more expensive. The CFD for Drax is priced at Ā£118.54/MWh currently, while Lynemouth gets Ā£124.35/MWh, compared with the current value for Hinkley Point of Ā£106.12/MWh. Coal prices are now back below $200/tonne for API2 benchmark. That gives a cost before green taxes of about Ā£63/MWh. We should be maximising coal burn to reduce our need for expensive gas imports over the winter.
I doubt we could afford the timeout involved in converting stations to biomass, and the investment is unlikely to make sense by the time the government understands the realities. Yesterday I posted a study by Chatham House on BECCS – adding CO2 capture to biomass- that shows it is a highly dubious, costly proposition, and the CCC assumptions are unrealistic.
October 21, 2021
These are all good points. The problem is, they are long term decisions which may involve spending that has not political pay -off for the Government of the day. As a consequence we can expect none of this to happen , least of all while we miserably toil beneath the foot of this Nationalist and Socialist Government. We will continue to lurch from one crisis to another.
I start to wonder if the internal logic of the Brexit State is not such that it requires relentless crisis and will invent more if it runs out .Seems as good an explanation of N Ireland as any I have head anyway
October 21, 2021
It will be a massive political disaster for Boris. Something like the ERM+ the Poll tax times by about 20 – once people realise just how mad and job destroying/exporting this insane agenda is.
October 21, 2021
Already four posts in an hour. Obsessive.
No it wonāt. You continue to be out of touch with younger more idealistic people, I guess it is being old, plus as you continue to be blind to, both geo politically and large corporations have moved on.
Andy Burnham if he came back would be the threat allied to the large tax increases/reduction in standards of living we are likely to get.
āItās the economy, stupidā
October 21, 2021
That will the “younger more idealistic people” who do not know much about climate, engineering, energy or energy economics and live in a dream world then? Big businesses have little option but to appear to be green and to be “saving the world” good for sales (and to keep in with government) just as they do when accepting all the idiotic regulations and employment laws that are thrown at them.
October 22, 2021
It is not enough to be right, you have to convince the young, the majority, enterpises, academia and the politicians of the case.
Whining continually on here does none of these things and you have given no evidence you have done anything constructive or practical to counter any “greencrap” .. except invoke the “magic” of past degree subjects and throw “blackcrap”.
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
@Nig1 – my experience of younger, more idealistic is that they become less idealistic when inconvenienced. Unlike older people who become more entrenched.
October 21, 2021
I think you mean younger people become experienced as they age, idealism is for the birds!
October 21, 2021
I suppose you too ,as you grow older, will develop more stupid ideas, then. Though that’s difficult to imagine.
October 22, 2021
+1 total insanity.
October 21, 2021
Re the brexit state, this is interesting, from the British Survey of social attitudes:
“…if we examine how people say they would vote if there were to be a rerun of the 2016 referendum on the UKās membership of the EU. No less than 92% of those who voted Remain in 2016 say in our latest BSA survey that they would vote the same way again, exactly the same proportion as in our 2019 survey. Just 6% say that they would vote Leave. But similarly, as many as 85% of those who voted Leave in 2016 say they would vote the same way (slightly higher than the 82% who in 2019 said they would do so), while just 10% indicate that they would vote Remain.”
Never mind the words, just do the arithmetic, and that would plainly result in a healthy win for Remain.
I find that the spin which has been put on these findings by its official sources more interesting than the results themselves, however.
And let’s remember. This only includes Leave voters who are still alive and capable of answering the survey, and excludes new voters who were not old enough in 2016.
October 21, 2021
no no no – give it up for god’s sake. It is DONE. Suck it up, perlease.
You LOST. The contract does not allow for a rematch.
October 22, 2021
The European Union would wisely never foreseeably let the UK rejoin anyway.
However, there are many other possible arrangements besides the obsessive, puritanical brexit that you – quite wrongly as the evidence shows – claim that the electorate want.
October 22, 2021
+1
October 22, 2021
A respondant sample size of around 4,000 against a population of 65m+ and you are claiming it is representative of the country.
Shame you remainers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed in 2016 when it actually mattered.
More of a shame you couldn’t be bothered to think of everyone else in the country over the 40+ years and made sure the EU was of tangible benefit for the vast majority rather than the select few.
October 22, 2021
Yes, it’s a pity indeed that the 18-25 year olds did not bother as you say.
October 22, 2021
The sample size is tiny but the sample would contain all age groups.
Surely you realise this NLH
October 21, 2021
Reminds me of Hitlers rant (in the movie) about Germanys new weapons and technology on the drawing board, at the end of the battle of the bulge, when his general ask what shall we fight them (the allies) with tomorrowā¦āāwe have a new weapons in design we have another starting developmentāā
We the people need a cheap and consistent supply of energy TODAY, generated by coal, gas, shale gas, oil and nuclearā¦.everything else is vanity
October 21, 2021
Indeed, that is why we are exporting our manufacturing industry and carbon footprint abroad and importing their products and carbon footprint back. That is a special kind of stupid. As is importing Russian coal when we have 300 years supply here or refusing Shell licences to extract gas in the North sea. Carrie on Boris it must make you feel good. The rest of us are astounded by your stupidity.
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Are you on drugs? No sane human being would call this government remotely “Nationalist”. Its economic, diplomatic and social policies are all as internationalist as you could possibly conceive. Look at its green agenda, its continued membership of the ECHR, its huge foreign aid spend (0.5% of GDP is way above average), its desire for trade agreements that restrict the government’s ability to support British businesses, etc.
And you can put away your tinfoil hat, too. The idea that the government’s NI dispute with the EU was fabricated by Britain is idiotic conspiracy garbage. It has been caused by a combination of Boris’s stupidity and weakness in signing the Protocol in the first place, and the EU’s vile anti-British hatred in trying to rip NI out of the UK.
October 21, 2021
Good morning.
Thank you for finally releasing my contribution from yesterday. I did chuckle as, Everhopeful’s post just after it, and no in reply to it, made a poignant reference which coincided what I was trying to get across.
—
Reading between the lines of our kind host, one can only conclude we are in a real mess due to decades of mismanagement and slavishly doing what the EU tells us we can do. Our MP’s and Civil Serpents have become rule takers and not rule makers and, consequently, have become infantilised and helpless.
We saw in the mythical pandemic what an individual from the Private Sector can achieve. Someone use to getting things done as opposed to those who need to, ‘set up a meeting to discuss’ the matter. Decades of too much talking and prevarication have culminated to this – a nation and its elected representatives grasping at straws. Too much of listening to people and their siren words of Green Revolution and the benefits. None of which would stand the test of proper scrutiny.
The only saving grace, should the lights start to go out and people begin to freeze, is that we all be able to stay warm thanks to the anger building inside. The next GE cannot come soon enough it seems.
October 21, 2021
Mark B
Couldnāt agree more!
At every turn, it seems the decision making is barking mad!
October 21, 2021
@Mark B & @Sharon +1 – there is no thought or logic applied – just look at me and my eco-religion, I grabbed the headlines again and everyone gets to pay but me!
October 21, 2021
I am happy with eco-religion, they’re regional, theyāre individual, have a passion and generally work & protest within the rule of law. Iād describe myself as an environmentalist; I love nature and support the maintenance of the wildlife habitat within reason and balance. I enjoy our clean air & rivers.
What I donāt support is the climate crusaders that manipulate science, control the media, silence decent, corrupt the young and proclaim that the science as settled while ignoring thousands of opposing scientists
October 21, 2021
I should point out that Iād put Extinction Rebellion (XR) and their offshoot Insulate Britain in the same category as the Climate Crusaders
October 21, 2021
Other Crusaders were disposed of by a Pope and a King. Fat chance now.
October 22, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
spot on
October 21, 2021
Correct Mark
I’d rather be stabbed in the front by the Labour Party then in the back by the Tory Party
October 21, 2021
Quite right! An honest enemy is preferable to a false friend who completely betrays you. Hence my refusal to vote Conservative again next time, even if it means Labour getting in. Boris has betrayed Britain on Brexit, on economic policy, on immigration, on freedom and on social policy. Reform UK will have my vote instead!
October 21, 2021
For the contempt that this government has shown the voting public I hope that the Reform UK Party will split the Tory vote at the next election
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
I doubt the anger will remain inside.
October 21, 2021
Addendum
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/331297/regulator-shell-jackdaw-plans/
This is what happens when governments subcontract their responsibilities to QUANGO’s
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
+2 a not me Gov culture
October 21, 2021
Rises more questions of this government actions than anwsers
I would why they cancelled Shell Jackdaw drill…could be cop26 ?
Drilling for new natural gas before cop26 would send the wrong signal to IPCC and other countries
But what of the needs of our people and our country ?
October 21, 2021
It seems that logic and science are now subservient to ‘green’ lobbyists who have us by the proverbials.
October 21, 2021
Sir John: Your suggestions on this blog over recent weeks for a better energy policy have in my view been what the country needs to hear. Unfortunately, the government might just as well belong to the Green Party for all the notice they are taking. So would it not be more effective to turn to a topic where you might make a difference? The Henry Jackson Society has obtained data showing that over the last few years the Prevent scheme has played down Islamist radicalisation. After last Friday’s appalling tragedy, will there be a better time than this to ensure that Prevent is put back on track? The danger is that Patel’s review of the scheme will simply be a cosmetic exercise pressured by the woke Left into leaving things much as they are. The authorities should have properly reviewed Prevent after the 2019 London Bridge stabbings, but did not. The ‘deradicalisation’ programme did not ‘prevent’ terrorism on that occasion. The present scheme clearly isn’t fit for purpose, it needs to be toughened if it is to achieve what it is supposed to do, and the government needs to hear Conservative voices saying as much – loud and clear, and as often as it takes.
October 21, 2021
The only effective form of “Prevent” would be to remove them from society. Shouts of Horror off stage left.
October 21, 2021
Agricola, +1. !!!
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Well, Sir John, you get my vote to be the new Secretary of State at BEIS. But let’s not over-complexificate the simple issue of keeping the coal-fired stations in reserve. Converting them to ‘bio-mass’ would be lunacy. Having their coal-yards kept full is the way to go. And the smarter move is to have a small-scale coal industry in the UK ready to top the yards up. We must be self-sufficient in energy.
P.S. Off-topic, how pleasing to see rumours that Sunak is considering doing away with inheritance tax – like Australia has done. That would be a little bit of Conservatism from a government that doesn’t deliver nearly enough of it.
October 21, 2021
He is needed even more at number 11!
October 21, 2021
LL
No…. No 10
October 21, 2021
The bonkers Tory MPs even preferred the foolish John ERM (no change no chance) Major to JR – so incompetent insane were they last time he stood?
October 21, 2021
LL- The UK Establishment decide who will be the leader.
October 21, 2021
Off-topic is a great idea if it materialises but make sure he is not buying you off. It might please high end worth conservatives, but their vote is not changeable. The vast majority of potential tory voters probably do not qualify anyway so comprehensive change to our tax system is still overdue. By repute the tax book is seven volumes and 20,000 pages, a whole industrial base in itself. I read that the Singapore tax book is no more than 500 pages. Think about it.
October 21, 2021
Every time I look at some Singaporean government policy I see something I like more than our own. Our MPs should spend more time there on fact-finding junkets.
October 21, 2021
its just a bribe
October 22, 2021
Allowing my estate to keep the money it has already been taxed on? I would rather my siblings and niblings get the dosh than a wasteful Treasury.
October 21, 2021
Drax has to keep its supply of biomass (ex swamp forest from America and irreplaceable I reckon in practice) in an inert atmosphere so that it does not self-combust. You don’t have to do that with coal stocks at a power station.
October 21, 2021
Coal is good, Coal is right, Coal works
October 21, 2021
Sir John,
One Carbon zero question that hasn’t been asked or answered as far as I can tell:
Why has this UK Government, and prior UK governments felt the need to push to be the leader in this area?
As has been noted, UK emissions are trivial in the wider world context, yet we still pursue expensive policies that leave us commercially/economically disadvantaged. Why?
October 21, 2021
Because national politicians like to dance on the World stage. This show will increasingly be at our expense.
October 21, 2021
So why are UK politicians shouting loudest in the carbon zero race (and have been for decades) but not the French, or Italians, or Americans, etc?
October 21, 2021
ā¦and nobody in Peru or Pembroke cares a toss about cop26
October 21, 2021
Nor the Chinese!
October 22, 2021
Got it in one. Look at the background behind adoption of CFL lighting by the EU – it was the chance for some up and coming politician to make a name for himself.
October 21, 2021
@PeteB – UK emission just 1% of the World Pollution. Rice in paddy fields 18% of methane emissions.
UK imported(90% are) Windmills, solar panels, heat pumps all add significantly to World Pollution – and manufactured by the Worlds biggest polluters, who are not dancing to Boris’s tune. In fact the Governments in the pollution manufacturing side of the World are rubbing their hands at the idea that they are killing off a country that could be a big competitor.
October 21, 2021
It’s all down to inherited guilt.
Ironbridge which kicked off the industrial revolution which benefitted the whole world is now to be demonised. Like white privilege we must now atone for our past by reverting to pre revolution ways of living.
Except for our masters of course.
October 21, 2021
Ian, that could be a part of it. Fact that the IR ultimately raised billions of people out of poverty gets overlooked.
October 21, 2021
What about our reparations from the Vikings or Roman’s?
October 21, 2021
Ian W. Yes I hear calls for us to give Africa shed loads of money because of the slave trade. Don’t we already give them enough in the form of foreign aid?
October 21, 2021
Most English people were impoverished or enslaved too.
October 21, 2021
The Climate Change Act 2008 committing the UK to a 80% reduction of CO2 production in comparison with 1990 levels amended by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 to change the target to (net) zero. Both were passed with across the board majorities. So sorry, if you want to end this madness, cease voting liblabcon; they all have the same policies on anything important.
The climate change act needs to be repealed and the net zero target needs to be reassigned to migration. That would do far more to benefit this country than the virtue-signalling idiocy of the liblabcon.
October 21, 2021
+1
Finally, I am not alone in speaking about the the elephant in the room.
October 21, 2021
We are led by virtue signalling idiots with zero grasp of energy, economics, climate, science or logic perhaps?
October 21, 2021
PETEB – just ask yourself where the money paid to the Paris Climate Accord goes.
October 21, 2021
Off topic:
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/alastair-campbell-diary-brexit-ireland/
“Irelandās sadness and pity for Britain over Brexit”
“In his weekly diary ALASTAIR CAMPBELL gives his account of his experience in Ireland talking British politics.”
“āHow many of you,ā I asked, āwould say Brexit is going well?ā All hands stayed down. Then, āhow many of you would say that the UKās reputation is in a good place?ā Once more, no hands raised.
There seemed to be a mix of anger, scorn, sadness and pity for the UK.”
Is Liz Truss not concerned that the Irish are being fed lies about Brexit and conditions in the UK? Why do we even bother with the expense of an embassy in Dublin, and similarly in Washington, when our diplomats are clearly failing to make our case abroad, just allowing anti-Brexit propaganda to go unchallenged?
October 21, 2021
Sorry Sir JR it is obvious no one is listening nor answering your excellent questions.
What is Plan B.
And in other news we see the result of the appalling booster programme roll out with the Secretary of State pleading with us to get the jab and threatening us another lockdown.
If that happens it will be directly down to government failure and NHS uselessness.
As we are told to get a jab, my surgery says it is still waiting for information/instructions and despite being eligible time wise, the NHS booking website says I am not.
Complete shambles.
October 21, 2021
My surgery hasn’t offered the booster either.
October 21, 2021
Not heard anything from ours either.
October 21, 2021
Perhaps this is because your local council and health region is particularly useless. In North Manchester, I had my flu and virus booster vaccination a few weeks ago, 6 months almost to the day, after my 2nd vaccination which I had last Good Friday. After I had booked my appointment on-line with my surgery, I was also contacted by NHS by text, advising me that my vaccination was due and that I should make an appointment.
October 21, 2021
It’s being spun that people don’t want it and aren’t bothering but this is the opposite of the truth.
October 21, 2021
It will do now because they have updated the selection criteria to include all over 50 who had their second vaccination 6 months plus 6 days or more ago.
October 21, 2021
+ 1
I and others are wondering what’s going on. We all participated in the first vaccinations and did our bit and are keen to do our next.
It is now clear that CV-19 is here to stay.
Focused shielding. N95s for those of particular vulnerability. Let the rest of us live properly.
AND
A war on obesity please.
October 21, 2021
Allister Heath today in the Telegraph.
We need a referendum on net zero to save Britain from the green blob
As with membership of the EU, the political elite is imposing a revolution on the public without consent
October 21, 2021
The grey-suits going in to No 10 could sort the problem out in thirty minutes. Back-benchers hold the key to sorting out the problem.
October 21, 2021
@Lifelogic +1. You get the feeling that the conspiracy theory of the ‘Great Reset’ was in fact a plan
October 21, 2021
Absolutely true. Problem is the “Green Blob” is in the driving seat by the simple device of avoiding it as an issue during the last election. Well they have two and a half years and forces are gestating to put an end to this illogical nonsense.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
I admire Sir John’s attempt to bring some rationality and common-sense to this lunacy, but the people making up policy are not logical and rational. They are Eco Zealots forcing their “religion” on us in much the same way other Religions have over the centuries: conform to their dogma or be punished.
As Johnson has articulated: we must be punished for the Original Sin of starting the Industrial Revolution. Our future must be colder, poorer, less mobile and our lives made “smaller” so he can virtue-signal to the other Eco Zealots.
He and the CON Eco Zealots have forgotten that they are supposed to serve the British people: not the UN, WEF or Bill Gates.
October 21, 2021
Agreed they have been gripped by climate change zealotry, when religion is involved all rational thought goes out the window and anything can be justified.
They are intending to make trillions of pounds of expenditure to eradicate our miniscule contribution to world CO2 levels while the likes of China and India and others pump it out at ever growing levels, and just a few months growth of theirs will make our expensive CO2 reduction an irrelevance. How stupid is that?
If the gods of climate change are real then the only rational thing to do is to spend our limited resources on mitigation and making sure we have spare capacity to overcome any problems, which is the opposite to what they are currently doing which is to declare a climate emergency while stretching our resources to breaking point and beyond with their over population policy.
October 21, 2021
Colder, much poorer, less competitive and with far fewer UK jobs – does not sound like a vote winner to me.
October 21, 2021
you forgot higher taxes
October 21, 2021
I just wonder what mass numbers of those Brits ‘Colder, much poorer, less competitive and with far fewer UK jobs’ will respond with? Surely waiting around shivering, hoping food is available and affordable, with meagre power available and the clock ticking on the means of keeping warm enough and travelling to work, is not to be accepted sitting around? Unrest? You better believe it.
October 21, 2021
+1
(I do wish this site had an approval/disapproval tick facility!)
October 21, 2021
+1
October 22, 2021
I suppose that matters to people who depend on Safety In Numbers.
October 21, 2021
I agree Donna- and your last line says it all
October 21, 2021
This all the UK so called ruling elites want to do, posture and look good on the world stage. Hence Blair and Cameron wars and being USA poodle, and signing up to UN unlimited immigration.
There is no need to let the green persuaion win. There aren’t that many of them.
The so called elites can be beaten, as they were beaten with BREXIT, and it’s been so much fun since then, watching them squirm and squeal.
October 22, 2021
In what way have the true elite, the few hundred who own half the land area of England that is, been “squirming and squealing” about brexit or about anything else?
Do tell?
October 21, 2021
Bio mass either for burning or feeding digesters takes up good arable land which theoretically takes it out of food production.so we could get in the position of being in the dark, cold and hungry. And all the while the population keeps expanding. Is this cabinet totally incapable of joined up thinking š¤
October 21, 2021
To your last question, yes I fear so.
October 21, 2021
It also kicks out more CO2 than coal when burned per KWK generated – plus there is the diesel used in transporting it over the Atlantic. If you want to save CO2 you bury or build with the wood not burn it.!
But net zero CO2 is a con trick as we know it is not serious!
October 21, 2021
Turbo. Good points. I remember in Scotland many farmers started gowing crops for biomass and digesters and the farmers found that the cost of feed for their animals went up and there was a shortage of feed. The problem with this is that if they are going to get more money for these types of crop then that’s what they will grow.
October 21, 2021
ime to reiterate a touch of reality. Unless, as some conspiracy theorists would have it, there is some āhidden agendaā behind what is happening, the sheer ignorance, innumeracy and outright incompetence being shown now by Westminster is quite breathtaking.
1) Our gas grid is exquisitely vulnerable to malign action by unfriendly agencies. When it is taken down, the power grid will follow in quick succession as soon as the wind doesnāt blow nicely.
2) Without electricy, heat pumps and electric cars become expensive but quite useless ornaments.
3) Westminsterās nutnutcase posturing is puny and pointless in the light of the enormous and still swiftly growing use of coal for electricity generation by China and India.
4) For the more distant future, China now seems to leading the world in funding research on innovative SMRs – most recently thorium-based – with India hot on its heels. What a dreadful loss of opportunity for UK industry, which lacks other than token support from purblind government. (Respect for R-R, whose smallish reactors have long and safely powered the Royal Navyās nuclear boats, but the world now needs much more up-to-date SMR technology).
4) The great hairy mammoth in the room (which Westminster is so loth to see) is the colossal waste of energy in thermal power generation, whether fossil or nuclear – the simple laws of thermodynamics are such that little more than a third of the energy input is seen as (net) electricity output to the grid. If only that āwasteā energy were diverted to district heating / combined heat and power, (as was done in The Hague donkeysā years ago) instead of disappearing up those great big cooling towers to warm the globe, the emissions savings would be really huge. District heating is the perhaps the one area in which those heat pumps could come into their own, because ….
5) Air-source heat pumps are efficient in relatively mild weather, but become seriously inefficient when the weather gets properly cold and wet in UK winter. Why? – because then they have to go into a frequent defrosting cycle in which they have to pump heat out of the home instead of into it! Ground-souce heat pumps are spared this cardinal disadvantage, but are eyewateringly expensive to install. Whilst a nice supply of warmish district-heating water from a local base load or SMR power station would overcome both of these shortcomings quite handsomely, it does require infrastructure preinvestment (as in digging up the road for the pipes) …. and of course all those heat pumps become useless when electricity is, oops! suddenly no longer available.
6) To keep the lights on this winter should things get seriously more difficult, there is a sceaming need to put in place emergency fuelling for our natural gas powered generators using light petroleum naptha (as in Jet-A1 or similar for which the turbines were originally designed) as an alternative to natural gas, right now, before it is too late.
(Footnote: Obituary – It is with sadness that we report the passing of the boffinsā heat pump, due to cardiac arrest … compressor seizure as the likely result of a latent manufacturing defect bleeding out the vital lubricant … the rotten thing was Made in China , no doubt on the back of very cheap coal-fired electricty.
Caveant emptores!
Fortunately the boffin household expects to be able to survive this winter despite such energy supply catastrophies as Westminster may manage to inflict upon the nation, ācos a dinkly little emergency stove is in place to provide warmth and hot suppers whatever happens, and its supply of good Welsh anthracite has just arrived).
October 21, 2021
What you recommend is welcome but the short term measures proposed amount to firefighting. You will know that CCGT power stations are designed to be a principal power source and to run them on an as needed ad hoc basis as backup is extremely expensive. To think that the worldās 5th largest economy is reduced to this. That Presidents Putin and Xi, leaders of 2 of the worldās most important players in energy markets, are not attending Cop 26 reflects their contempt for our idiocy and this crazy climate alarmism, and their proper emphasis on the energy security and prosperity of their own citizens. Even their clear stance wonāt stop Mr Johnsonās crusade however.
October 21, 2021
@MPC
In all probability the refusal of Putin and Xi to attend our COP26 conference is due the new variant of the Chinese plage virus that is rapidly spreading across the country – and the fact that the Russian Sputnik vaccine and the Chinese equivalent are ineffective. Countries across the world are starting to ban Brits from entry again.
October 21, 2021
Eh? Putin and Xi know full well that COP 26 is a virtue-signalling pantomime which will have no impact on the real world other than to make Western countries poorer, less productive, and colder. Surely nothing to do with vaccines.
In any case, none of these Covid vaccines are really effective, not just Russia’s and China’s. If they were, we wouldn’t need a booster. And the booster won’t be effective for long, that’s why we’ll need another booster, as in Israel now. (You’ve heard of planned obsolescence as a business strategy?)
October 22, 2021
Keep dodging that vaccine, Hat Man, please.
October 21, 2021
Lame attempt to invent an excuse. They aren’t even appearing by Zoom. Moreover, China, as part of the LMDC group, has signed a statement rejecting any call for changes to the Paris regime, which is in any case merely concerned with voluntary aspirations, not binding commitments. We have FLOP26.
October 21, 2021
We have a large number of redundant coal-fired power stations here in the UK, in addition to the three that have just been brought back online. Many of these have yet to be demolished, some of which apparently still have their generation plant/turbines installed.
The company E2S Power AG proposes to make better use of these stranded assets by transforming ex-coal power stations into thermal storage systems for renewable energy, breathing life and new green jobs into the local economies and helping to secure our electricity supplies.
http://e2s-power.com/
SoS BEIS Kwarteng should take a look at the E2S proposal, which looks sensible and cost-effective.
Reply Please name the stations
October 21, 2021
@Sir John reply
The following coal-fired stations have closed in the last 6 years, most have been bought by foreign companies with a view to conversion. I have to say that on that basis, I assume that the actual generation plant remain installed :-
Kilroot, Carrickfergus, Antrim
Aberthaw B, Wales
Fiddlers Ferry, Merseyside
West Burton A, Nottinghamshire
Cottam, Nottinghamshire
Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire
Uskmouth B, Newport, Wales
Eggborough, North Yorkshire
Rugeley B, Staffs
Longannet, Fife, Scotland
Ferrybridge C, N Yorkshire
Ironbridge B, Shropshire
I think its worth pointing out that during the recent “shortage” of wind the lights did not go out, the grid was shown to be robust enough to cope – even following the fire at the French interconnector – and within 3 weeks the Norwegian NSI interconnector was commissioned and is currently replacing the French juice. Rapid construction of onshore LNG storage facilities would help secure gas for power plant generation.
Reply Yes, but the weather was mild so domestic demand was well below mid winter levels. We need a bigger safety margin
October 21, 2021
SG, have a little look at YouTube and the spectacular demolition of Eggborough Longannet Ironbridge Rugeley and Ferrybridge Power Stations.
October 22, 2021
@miami.mode
+5
Many thanks
October 21, 2021
Do you realist how energy inefficient and energy wasteful it is to convert electricity to heat energy then back to electricity you probably waste well over 50% of it? Expensive too.
October 21, 2021
She can’t. All have been bulldozed flat and the machinery taken to Germany as they were owned by RWE or EDF.
Go to Didcot if you need convincing.
October 21, 2021
Go to Ratcliffe on Soar website……
This is one of only 3 coal fired stations re.ainimg and due to be closed in 2024.
October 21, 2021
Not interested if it involves foreign ownership of the assets and control of the revenue.
October 21, 2021
More tin pot ideas from you. You seem to worship the alter of green energy. I hope you enjoy your bigger bills, colder house and an economy that’s gone to the wall.
October 21, 2021
Having looked at their website I conclude that the company may have an interesting product that is looking for an application. They provide no detail on cost which limits the economic evaluation that is possible.
However, they quote 300 cycles per year for 1200 operating hours. So they envisage a 4 hour storage duration, and essentially daily cycling. That puts them in the same market as pumped storage. It is certainly no solution to bridging periods of Dunkelflaute lasting days and weeks. However, pumped storage has a round trip efficiency of about 75%, whereas they admit they will struggle to achieve 40%. It is hard to see that this will fly economically, even if their storage medium is low cost.
October 21, 2021
@Mark
Agreed. Its one of a number of technical suggestions that have been proposed and I threw it into the mix to continue the debate. I actually think there is no short term solution to obtaining greater energy security other than expanding UK LNG gas storage capability. Ideas?
October 21, 2021
You claimed that the proposal is sensible and cost effective. Now that I have demonstrated otherwise you agree it isn’t.
Abut the only thing we can do in the short term is to maximise coal burn (which could be ramped up to 5GW of baseload supply), saving on gas imports and allowing us to capitalise on gas exports, helping to lower prices for gas in global markets. Otherwise we can ask that the US and Russia (and by extension, the EU) take steps to ramp up production of gas and exports. We should obviously seek to increase our own domestic production, but new fields will take time to bring on stream. For instance if Jackdaw gets a green light it is probably 2024 before we see production. Government fixation on COP26 means we are unlikely to see sense from them until afterwards at the earliest. Whether they are capable of generating sensible strategy for a world that refuses to agree to trash its economies for the sake of some unlikely degree of climate change is however doubtful.
October 22, 2021
Try fracking
Try allowing Shell to explore in the North Sea
Try building lots of nuclear power stations.
Even coal power stations with the latest exhaust scrubbing systems.
Its simple SG
Otherwise lights will go out and electric cars won’t work.
October 21, 2021
Off topic again, the Irish government and is now openly offering itself as the protector of Northern Ireland, leading to a two hour ruckus at Stormont yesterday:
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/unionists-clash-with-irish-senators-over-protocol-during-stormont-visit-40968971.html
While a letter in the Irish News urges the EU to make reunification of Ireland one of its common policies:
“… there is now a strong argument that the EU should safeguard its fundamental interests, security and integrity by advocating for the re-entry of Northern Ireland into the EU as part of a united Ireland. This could include providing funds in order to ensure an easy integration following reunification, the setting up of a formal parliamentary committee on achieving a united Ireland and continuing to make clear to the UK that the existence of a frictionless border in Ireland is integral to the fundamental interests and integrity of the Union.”
He means the European Union, of course.
October 21, 2021
Unless the festering boil is lanced with Art.16 it will lead to the sepsis and gangrene desired by the EU.. What is Boris waiting for???
October 21, 2021
I think they are worried about what else the apparently crazed Macron might do.
October 21, 2021
Taking NI away from the UK was the EU’s intention from the very start – they said so openly! – but Boris was too stupid to understand it and played straight into their hands. Or was it cowardice? Or treachery? Whatever the cause, the fact is that the Protocol now needs to be revoked in its entirety. Merely suspending it, or just a few sections of it, under Article 16 is not enough. But you can be sure that Boris will, once again, be too stupid, or cowardly, or treacherous, to do this. As long as he remains PM the UK is screwed.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
I am afraid that because May sold us down the river with her ridiculous and naive assumption that the EU would play fair in the negotiations, Boris inherited a position where the only way to get Brexit done was to go along with the protocol. He did this in the full knowledge that there were to be safeguards built in such as the five year review and article 16. He knew that he should be able to make changes through those methods.
It was still touch and go, such was the treacherous behaviour of remainers on all sides of the house, and the chair. All were intent on usurping the democratic outcome of the referendum.
We now know that the EU were so intent on weaponising the GFA in order to subjugate NI, that their interpretation of the protocol in no way honours the GFA. The damage to NI trade with the UK is more than enough to justify triggering Article 16. I am sure that Sefcovic knows this only too well but is being hamstrung by hardliners like Macron.
October 21, 2021
No, your timeline is wrong. The NI Protocol was supposed to have been amended by the TCA, which was signed on 30 December 2020. But the Protocol was NOT amended, so why did Boris sign the TCA? This was AFTER the general election, and by then he had an overwhelming majority in the Commons and could do anything he wanted. He could, and should, have held out for improved Protocol and TCA terms at that point – including on fishing and on financial services. His failure to do so was an act of treachery against the UK.
Oh, and your assumption that Sefcovic does not fully agree and support the destruction of the UK is so naive as to be laughable. You haven’t a clue how much the EU hate us and want to destroy us.
October 21, 2021
X-TORY – Boris does what he is told to do by the Globlasit UK Establishment.
October 21, 2021
Great to see a trade deal with NZ, a country which has sufficient natural resource for its own clean electricity production. Whilst presently only a small portion of our trade, NZ is pointing in the right direction with its potential to provide us with wine, food and space to invest in them for the future where clean power means we wouldn’t be importing deep carbon as with our pre-existing close trade partners.
October 21, 2021
I like New Zealanders, but the idea of shipping food from the other side of the world seems extravagant. I would rather see us source our food from closer to home. They say we eat too much meat, so surely the solution is to reduce imports, which certainly should include less from the Antipodes. Next task – phase out Irish beef, German pork and Danish bacon.
October 21, 2021
I’m all for phasing out protected EU merchandise but it makes sense to import New Zealand lamb – which I don’t think as good as ours – because their seasons mirror ours and we can then have lamb all year round. Besides, we have a lot to make up for, having dumped them without warning when we went into the Franco German racket. Life was very hard for them until they developed other markets.
October 21, 2021
We too have numerous valleys in the UK that could be turned into hydro electric reservoirs. Windmill created power could be used to pump water overnight from holding reservoirs. I look forward to cheaper Cloudy Bay.
October 21, 2021
Tell that to our farmers.
October 21, 2021
I have been laughing my head off this morning at the Brexitists deal with New Zealand. Iāve never been to NZ but Iād like too. It looks like a great country and I know some people who emigrated there.
But it is literally on the other side of the world. It has a smaller population than Palestine (as it should be) and the Central African Republic. In 2017 it was our 43rd biggest trading partner – doing less than half the volume of trade we do with Luxembourg. We do less trade with NZ than we do with Slovakia.
I appreciate you Brexitists are scraping the bottom of a trade barrel – but the world is laughing at you. Tiny NZ got a great deal because the Brexit clowns are desperate.
And now, COVID is back again too – with a minuscule 223 people dying with it yesterday. All because the Tory pensioners in Parliament refuse to wear masks. They are literally killing your generation now and you donāt seem to care. Very odd.
October 21, 2021
Andy, you like the word “literally”, so my advice is to find out what it means.
Try to find ” metaphorically” too, which might help you to understand its meaning.
October 21, 2021
New Zealand is, literally, on the other side of the world.
And around 200 mainly older people are literally being killed each day by this couldn’t-care-less-about-covid19 government.
These are not metaphors, John.
October 22, 2021
Literally you post far too often every day NLH
Is that correct?
Grammatically I mean.
October 22, 2021
A sphere does not have a side.
If you mean antipode then you and Andy are wrong – Seville is the antipode of Auckland while London’s antipode is well south west of NZ at the antipodes islands
October 23, 2021
So what should Pink Floyd have called that LP then?
October 21, 2021
Andy, you mean seasonal respiratory disease is back, as it is every autumn when the weather turns colder. What makes it Covid? The UK’s PCR testing, which is off the scale compared to most countries, ensuring that a) the chumocracy running the testing scam continues to coin it in, and b) that the media and health bureaucrats get their scary headline numbers. Meanwhile there are now, thanks to media scuttlebutt, a lot of decent hard-working people fearing for their jobs if there’s another lockdown, and no furlough.
October 21, 2021
This country is serving a very useful function, Andy.
It is held up as a graphic illustration, by governments on the Mainland, as to why their very effective measures against covid19 are necessary, and what happens if you don’t take them.
It would appear to be having the desired effect, with vaccine take up now outstripping the UK’s, and things such as vaccination passports to go to work being more or less accepted.
October 21, 2021
New Zealand – a temperate, fertile country the size of the UK but with a population of just over 5 million.
What is the matter with them? Why donāt they have governments determined to massively increase the population?
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
The long range weather forecast from the Met’ is for ”a calm winter”!!!!!!!!!!!! So much for the improvement in the wind farms being able to work in a stronger wind.
What a fabulous outlook, the lights going out in our cold houses and an increased stream of RIBs crammed with migrants crossing the channel!!!
Every week the SNP’s ‘crofter from Skye’ wastes his two question at PMQs but this week he hit the bulls eye and got a useless answer from the PM. If the use of ‘tidal stream’ for power generation has been put on the reserve list for political reasons that is a disgusting example of mis-management.
He asked for the money to be ring-fenced, so it could not be syphoned off into Scotland’s financial black hole, and the UK as a whole is in desperate need of sustainable electricity. The smirk on the PM’s face followed be a load of tripe about the Acorn project being on the reserve list indicates to me that the national use of tidal stream generation will be off the agenda for a very long time.
If that is in anyway near the truth then the whole delay is nothing short of criminal, and I would urge you Sir John to get this matter exposed and sorted please.
October 21, 2021
This government is incapable of making intelligent decisions regarding power generation due to it’s green mania. Already the decision to replace E5 with E10 fuel is shown to be a poorly thought out disaster that has increased fuel consumption and is busily wrecking engines. The ludicrous policy to go to largely useless heat pumps instead of gas boilers will be another disaster. Even worse replacing all fossil fuel vehicles with a completely impossible electric vehicle fleet is cretinous. I charge your government with working against the people in almost every possible decision it makes and every MP with complicity.
October 21, 2021
You make some sensible suggestions. But they will not see the light of day while Johnson continues to control the elective dictatorship which passes for democracy in the UK. You need a change at the top with someone there who shares your views. I used to think the Conservative party was pragmatic but it seems I am wrong. It is on the road to electoral disaster.
October 21, 2021
Yes, as usual, I agree with every word you say but the Green Crap mafia that currently makes policy just isn’t listening. As a result they are taking us doan a path that will impoverish us all personally.
I descend into despair when I read what other countries are, or rather are not doing on the climate change front. They have the more sensible policy : putting their own people first.
October 21, 2021
All sensible suggestions – but the question is do we have a sensible government, or one that will carry on dogmatically not matter how it harms the country?
The government has been preparing for energy shortages for a good few years – by installing smart meters in homes. Yet have done next to nothing to ensure we do not run low on energy.
The motive behind smart meter was that they can be used remotely to turn off energy supply to individual homes – How’s that for forward planning!
October 21, 2021
Smart meters = CONTROL.
October 22, 2021
Iām just waiting for them to be made compulsoryā¦another chip at our freedom
October 21, 2021
It strikes me that Downing Street from behind it’s green tinted spectacles ignores the logic of the national power chaos it has drifted into, while at the same time being blind to the political implications of this drift. Rhetoric man sells snake oil, practical man has a national self sufficient power creation plan that individuals and industry can afford. We are growing tired of snake oil having rubbed it everywhere to no effect.
October 21, 2021
The problem is John, sensible though your suggestions are, you are arguing against Boris who seemingly wants to charge ahead at any cost.
I see even the BBC are now even suggesting that many Countries in the World are at last waking up to what will be the true cost of all this change, alleged leaked documentation suggests some large and developed Countries have already started lobbying against such rapid change in the banning of fossil fuels, because a sensible alternative will not be in place in time.
If Boris does not start listening to some alternative views soon, he will find himself completely isolated, and COP 26 will be a COPOUT for many countries, who will simply agree one thing, but do another which suits their own interests best.
The UK will be left on its own to commit economic suicide on the alter of Climate change whilst others will simply stand by and look on with glee as they hoover up our businesses.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
Good morning Sir John
Good comments and observations as always.
However, the problem, your Government doesn’t use its brain, or think things through it is only about being the leader of the World Pack – me too, me first. The surfs will pay so who cares. I will stay warm so the plebs can go and jump. There is always more tax to be grabbed, deliberately producing a bad performing economy, just doesn’t matter. Its almost as if the anecdotes of King John are being brought to life.
Being able to tax more than create wealth will get us through š¢
October 21, 2021
So let us return to Candlemas and snowdrops,
To the plough and cold winter evenings around the snail-roasting fire.
Let Johnson do his worst.
Despite what he appears to believe he most certainly is NOT Moses!
And if he thinks he is presenting humankind with 10 rules of greencr*p by which to live for 4000 years then he is sadly mistaken.
āFor we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.ā Ephesians 6:12
October 21, 2021
I read this morning that the Climate Change zealots who are now making British Government policy and appear to have brainwashed almost every politician in the country, are proposing a meat tax to “encourage” us to switch our diet towards becoming vegetarian.
Everything they propose from heat pumps to expensive electric cars are just going to impoverish us, and make us cold through the winter. A meat tax will follow their suggested increase in gas prices to level up with electricity costs and an increase in car fuel tax must only be just over the horizon to “persuade” us to switch to inconvenient and expensive electric cars.
Other countries are being far more measured and sensible and as a result, they are not going to trash their economies and reduce their citizen’s standard of living.
We are told we are doing all this to set an example and shame other countries to follow us. It will have the opposite effect. We already see that from comments in advance of the waste of time that is COP 26.
The only countries that really count are the big emitters like China, the US, and India and they are not listening to us.
Instead of doing immense damage to our economy, we should state that we will make the changes but only at the same pace as the average of those three.
October 21, 2021
All very well, but why are we always faced with Sir John’s virtue signalling in this matter – conversion of coal to biomass in this example. I seem to recall he has criticised biomass servicing so why are we faced with this – are you Sir John advocating the chopping down of our own trees which you are certainly much in favour of planting just about everywhere. We need to mine our own coal not import poorer stuff from Russia is it?
And off-topic maybe that will be a perfect idea as our farmers can then have more ground to farm more efficiently under the free trade deals affecting agriculture government seems in favour of, and which I am too. It’s time our farmers changed their habits and were freer to do so. There are too many controls – take the destruction of rapeseed growing, they can’t use the essential pesticide any more because government banned it as willing slave to the EU.
Reply Yes I am willing to see more trees for sustainable forestry so we can burn our own wood. I am against importing it.
October 21, 2021
Sir John
Why are you going along with the crazy Net Zero cobblers?
Co2 poses no threat to the planet, Climate Change isnāt happening, the Earth is entering a cooling period, the sea levels arenāt rising but you swallow all the greencrap from Mrs Johnson, the Greens have ONE MP, if I was concerned Iād have voted for the Green Party but instead I got them by the back door.
Do you have independent evidence that weāre going to burn up, someone made 10 predictions 10 years ago and do you know how many came true?
NONE, donāt you do independent research on the subject or do you blindly just follow Boris down a dead end road?
Donāt you appreciate where this will end, the poorest being unable to heat their homes, the greatest advances in our living standards have been achieved by the use of fossil fuels but Johnson is destroying all the advances made in the last century
A couple of years ago our council declared a Climate Emergency and on enquiring why I was told that it was UN policy, the UN arenāt a benign organisation, they are calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and I asked if this is now official council policy.
The BBC tell us that weāre going to burn up but looking outside this morning the opposite seems to be happening, their weather app also reveals the truth.
Donāt you do independent research on the subject, Tony Heller.. realclimatescience.com has records going be over a century.
Thereās going to be a day of reckoning very soon for the government and the Conservative party will cease to exist
October 21, 2021
While Boris loves his ‘grandstanding’ and big very expensive gestures while at the same time increasing World Pollution exponentially. It means that basic low tech, no so glamorous quick fixes get pushed aside. Carbon capture and carbon storage, would permit the firing up of coal fired power stations and still be less polluting than the expensive UK taxpayer financing of production is some of the most polluting hot spots of the World. Its not that convoluted to also apply similar to the domestic gas boiler.
With a little it of extra thought it also solves the situation that most existing UK Homes are not capable of going down the heat pump route.
The Government is sending UK taxpayer money at around Ā£5K at time abroad to just be seen to be on the heat pump message, is rude and insulting. That’s along with all the taxpayer money flooding abroad to fund other very polluting countries to send us windmills and solar panels. That again is not only dumb but insulting – as far as the World goes it is far more polluting.
How about UK taxpayer money being invested in 100% UK manufactured solutions that are provided by 100% UK based companies. How about the UK taxpayer ‘investing’ in its own nuclear power, the UK taxpayer funding the Chinese and French States, is also insulting. These Countries get to own the resource, they benefit directly and they could walk away tomorrow. The UK Government is not fulfilling its duty of keeping the UK safe and secure.
October 21, 2021
Natural Gas market prices have been historically indexed to Crude Oil prices. Lately, global prices are being set by āfloating pipelinesā, that is, LNG Tankers and they are steering east where the prices are higher.
A 266,000 m3 tanker of LNG is equivalent to 162 million standard m3 of NG; about 18 hours worth of UK average annual consumption.
No big Oil & Gas plc is going to prospect for new gas finds with ānet zeroā a couple of decades ahead. They could get stuck with an asset that never pays back for the Shareholders. Some ongoing projects may need a rethink as well
UKās own gas production is currently 36 billon m3 per year (bcm/y). It is forecast to drop to 19 bcm/y by 2030 and 11 bcm/y by 2040. Consumption is forecast to drop to 67 bcm/y in 2040 from 79 bcm/y currently.
October 21, 2021
What do you think happens when supplies prove inadequate, leading to severe energy shortages, particularly in winter? Do you think that people will accept having no job, a cold home, their relatives dying because they can’t keep warm enough, supply shortages of food?
My guess is widespread rioting and rebellion against the green ruling class.
October 21, 2021
āā as more people switch to electric cars and electric heatingāā
Youāve got to love that line. Weāre not switching weāre being force into a single source move due to a government BAN on the current alternatives
I read yesterday in the governments net zero strategy document that heat pumps will be āencouragedā in older properties but mandatory in new build ā¦..if you BAN the alternatives youāre social engineering the people and manipulating the market ā thatās communism
This is being done under your watch SirJ, by your government, your fellow backbenches and your partyā¦its time before cop26 (when our government will committee us to further treaties) that brave people raise the heads above the parapet
October 21, 2021
Good post, glen. I too get angry when I read shifty politician’s phrasing such as “switch to”, when we are forced, with no discussion, and against our will, to obey their decisions.
October 21, 2021
Yes. Just like boats being “stopped” in the English Channel.
October 21, 2021
The PM at COP26 will no doubt say that the UK is responsible for the Industrial Revolution, and hence man-made CO2, as he has already done at the UN.
As a penance for this sin I fear the PM will announce higher taxes to subsidise the wealthyās purchase of Teslas and heat pumps, to further de-industrialise, thereby increasing the UKās dependency on the rest of the World and reducing living standards and to fund decarbonising schemes throughout the World.
Instead the PM should announce a massive Ā£multi-billion R&D program into developing economically feasible long-term solutions to producing and storing carbon free energy ā wind/tidal/solar/nuclear (fission and fusion)/biogas and all possible electricity storage solutions etc.
This would be a far better way for the UK to contribute to reducing man-made CO2 than taxing us back to poorer living standards just to save the planet from our 1% CO2 emissions.
October 21, 2021
We should also look into producing green biogas, natural gas/methane made from anaerobic digestion as :
1) It can be made from animal/food waste and from agricultural products such as just grass, of which we have an abundance in the UK.
2) It can also be made from excess electricity produced by wind farms and is storable.
3 ) It can be used with our existing gas boilers and gas distribution piping, saving a fortune on the replacement of millions of boilers and digging up every road in the country to put in either new piping for hydrogen or increased capacity for electricity.
3) It is low technology and hence can be used throughout the World.
October 21, 2021
Perhaps you could ask Dale Vince what sort of price he thinks he needs for his gas. With so many pressures on our agricultural land from green schemes, how much would be left to feed ourselves?
October 21, 2021
Mark : āPerhaps you could ask Dale Vince what sort of price he thinks he needs for his gas. With so many pressures on our agricultural land from green schemes, how much would be left to feed ourselves?ā
I also wish I knew the price and I have thought of emailing him the question. Biogas will of course be far more expensive than natural gas but we need to compare the price with other non-fossil fuel alternatives.
However, I do take his point that generating biogas removes the enormous expense of replacing millions of gas boilers with ineffective, expensive-to-install and noisy heat pumps and the need to upgrade our whole electrical distribution network. Small biogas plants everywhere can easily feed their gas into the gas system.
The Danes appear to be taking biogas seriously and there is an interesting Irish video where it is discussed if they would be financially better off using land for growing grass for biogas rather than rearing cattle.
I expect land used for growing food would need to be used if we wanted to produce enough to fuel all our gas boilers but I do wonder how much could be produced from animal/human/food waste and from grass cut from road verges, parks, golf courses, home gardens etc.
It also occurs to me that the intentional production, viz, capture of biogas (methane), a gas which is 84 times stronger than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, means that far less is emitted into the atmosphere.
October 22, 2021
I suspect the risk of emissions from biogas plant is far higher than from conventional gas production.
October 21, 2021
John,
As ever thanks for this blog.
Cheers
October 21, 2021
Sir John, all sensible and well-made points. However the destination that this Government seems hell-bent on is chillingly(!) well described in the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s latest paper entitled “Survival of the Richest-Smart Homes and Energy Rationing” all the likely consequences for families well described. However even that paper does not begin to describe the dire future for businesses, the economy generally and for infrastructure. Allister Heath in today’s DT advocates a referendum, it seems to be the only way to halt the Green Agenda madness.
October 21, 2021
The people voted for net zero. Who cares what Allister Heath thinks.
October 21, 2021
Andy
The people voted for Net Zero?
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Evidence please but you have none!
October 21, 2021
They who did claim here that they didn’t. And then in the same breath claim that 17 million voted for the hardest of brexits.
What funny people.
October 21, 2021
Not funny NLH
People vote in a particular way for many different reasons.
They like a local candidate.
They like one policy locally a candidate might support.
They vote tactically.
They vote for a particular party leader.
They vote for a particular party.
Claiming as young andy does that everyone who voted Conservative in 2019 only voted that way because of a net zero policy in a manifesto is completely ridiculous.
As is you NLH trying to compare it to the defined one issue referendum question.
October 23, 2021
Those laughing will be the judge of what’s funny or not, as ever, our Peter.
October 23, 2021
Which can be translated as whatever NLH says is both correct and funny.
Maybe some quiet self reflection would benefit you.
October 21, 2021
Net zero should be the aim of all nations, and yes, I saw that in the Tory manifesto but my right to vote for UKIP was taken from me. It’s the speed with which it’s being done and without the technologies or infrastructure in place nor ever likely to be.
October 21, 2021
Off Topic but relevent
Twenty countries, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe, make up the LMDC group, and according to Today’s blog on the Not a Lot of People Know That site they have all joined together to state they will not be going Net Zero just to please the western world
Full story on the website.
Good old UK keep on slashing your wrists. Two left feet and out of step as usual.
October 21, 2021
Turbo
View BBC news website for others listed, Boris will be looking like King Canute if he is not going to be sensible and listen to other views.
October 21, 2021
COP26: Document Leak Reveals Nations Lobbying to Change Key Climate Report
By Justin Rowlatt & Tom Gerkin.
October 21, 2021
FLOP26 it is. Now where are the plans that recognise that reality?
October 21, 2021
Why am I not surprised that this isnāt reported by the BBC and Sky
October 21, 2021
The few that really matter are India, China, Russia, USA, Brazil and increasingly Germany!
October 21, 2021
Another wheel nut falling off?
The Indeed Recruitment Company has reported the “green” jobs must increase 25 times faster for the government to hit its green employment targets. Who would have ever thought that one out?
https://www.cityam.com/uk-green-jobs-25-times-faster-hit-target-job-site/
Also well reported on the Not a Lot of People Know That web site.
Just another piece of the government “Living the Dream” wishful thinking scam being forced upon us.
October 21, 2021
Barry Gardiner MP during todayās cop26 debate suggested that we needed to be retrain to fulfil the objectives of IPCC and a new green economy
Sounded a lot like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge when teachers had to be retrained to work the land for the common good
Concerned about how easily our politicians have bypassed democracy and gone straight to dictate
October 21, 2021
Very good article on heat pumps in the Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/this-heat-pump-scheme-is-a-bung-to-the-rich?mc_cid=f9986338e4&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
The only way that this government can hit Net Zero is to force the whole country to be totally reliant on 100% electricity usage for all the elements of living where today we use other fuels. The infrastructure is not and never will be available to ensure all the lights remain on and the cars still running. The country will be totally bankrupted.
October 21, 2021
Herein lies the problem.
Government should be listening to the experts instead of the Committee on Climate Change or Carrie!
Roger Bisby Construction expert writing a very good article in the Mail On Line
October 21, 2021
When the history of bad ideas is written, the decision to sail the Titanic at full speed at night through a frigid sea full of icebergs will be seen as inspired genius compared to this Government’s energy policy
October 21, 2021
Ed
Well done. You win quote of the day. Alas there is no prize, although you deserve one š
October 21, 2021
I estimate the Titanic to have been David Attenborough’s lifetime carbon footprint. His brother Richard’s even worse… all those tatty plastic dinosaurs sold to kids.
October 21, 2021
You are accepting that CO2 is bad – yet the Govt is paying to have it produced. We cannot sustain our lives without it and no plant will survive without it. At present it constitutes .034% of the atmosphere.
October 21, 2021
Lynn, pay attention, right?
Water good.
Tsunami bad.
See?
October 22, 2021
See NLH, are you claiming Tsunamis are actually caused by climate change?
Looking forward to your peer reviewed links.
October 21, 2021
Lynn
Itās actually 0.04%.
October 21, 2021
Free speech, debate and argue was welcome in academia 20 years ago, nowadays youāre pointed at, avoided and talked about as though you had the plague if you decent and deny that climate change isnāt real
I feel the same thing has happened in parliament. While listening to the commons cop26 debate today it struck me load & clear that no one, and I mean not one MP would talk against cop26, climate change or the target of 1.5 degree
If there isnāt real debate in parliament, with free speech and argument than weāve just elected nodding dogs
October 21, 2021
i have recently seen present times described as an era of – post rationalism –
No proper debate and healthy argument allowed with cancellation of people with views which do not align with the sacred text.
Do i now detect a slight change in the wind though ? Hope rationalism comes storming back -a gentle breeze at first then a hurricane .
October 21, 2021
GC- How many MPs were in the chamber???? And the people think their government cares about them, think again.
Reply It was obvious to all that with all Opposition parties supporting the Reg and with Conservatives on a 3 line whip to do so there were only a few of us wishing to oppose. The overwhelming majority got its way.
October 22, 2021
Not many MPs in the chamber, and it wasnāt even a debate as we understand the term ādebateāā¦it resulted in most MPs reading and agreeing to the doom and gloom of the IPCC report ā a sad day for democracy….most MP looked afraid to speak out against cop26
October 21, 2021
What you propose about our own gas fields is strategically sensible in these uncertain times when even France threatens to cut off the power it supplies to us. Coal power stations must be phased out as soon as possible and all coal power stations should be replaced with a mini nuclear power station, built on site to take advantage of the power line infrastructure etc. UK is a world leader in design of such power generation and it is beyond comprehension why we are not much further advanced in their deployment instead of relying on much delayed, foreign designed (and incredibly expensive) super nuclear plants.
October 21, 2021
Iāve just realised that the people, are on a hiding to nothing, with regard to net zero and the green revolution
Most of the media, both houses of parliament and the civil service supported the āRemainā camp against the people during the brexit referendum
Again
Most of media, both houses of parliament and the civil service are supporters of cop26 and the climate change crusade against the people who just want cheap and consistent energy
October 21, 2021
The government is pushing this Green Agenda with a frightening, religious zealotry which permits no debate and no questioning by heretics. While no sensible person could object to environmentally clean and sustainable energy, it has to be (i) reliable (ie. available when needed) and (ii) competitively priced. At the moment, NONE of the alternative energy we produce meets these criteria. But the government refuse to listen to reason, and I fear that there is nothing that a handful of sceptical Tory MPs can do to make Boris the lunatic see sense. You would need to actually oppose his leadership to open his eyes to the insanity of what he is doing.
As I said, I am NOT opposed to clean energy per se. Electric vehicles (whether BEV or FCEV) will be great once the technology is perfected. And it is true that fossil fuels are finite, so finding a renewable alternative would be a good idea. But this obsession with eliminating CO2 is a sign of mental illness. I have previously explained that CO2 is NOT the worst greenhouse gas. Methane, for instance, has a GWP (Global Warming Potential) 85 times higher than that of CO2 (over a 20-year timeframe), so rather than waste billions putting CO2 into the ground in the moronic and nugatory pursuit of carbon storage, I would rather see money spent building a chain of anaerobic digesters to convert manure into energy, thereby killing two birds with one stone: cutting methane production and producing energy. [FYI: Manure and slurry contribute about 50% of the UK’s anthropogenic methane emissions, and the anaerobic digestion of this could produce 0.5% of our annual electricity demand].
Another completely overlooked energy source is municipal waste. Waste-to-energy incinerators are safe and again have a dual benefit: you eliminate waste and you produce energy. Some eco-extremists try to claim that these release dioxins in the air but that is not true of the modern plants – just look at the one in Copenhagen which is so clean people visit the grassed rooftop slope to have fun there, including skiing! The British government however is much too stupid to invest in British manufacturers of these plants, despite the fact that there is growing international demand, meaning that other countries like Germany and Japan are getting all the business.
Our main energy supplies will, however, need to come from gas (which should be extracted from the North Sea) and nuclear (which should be the RR SMRs). Once again, Boris Johnson is too stupid to commit to this. He is drip feeding the RR SMR consortium with tiny amounts of funding, meaning that it is progressing much, much slower than necessary. And he hasn’t yet started the planning approval process. Everything that useless man does is so slow and incompetent. The UK had a technological lead in SMRs, thanks to RR’s long experience, and we could have exploited this as a country in order to win global orders worth hundreds of billions of pounds. But because Boris is too stupid to move ahead with URGENCY on this, our lead has been thrown away. France this month announced ā¬1bn in funding for their state-owned EDF company to develop its own SMR technology by the early 2030s. Well done Boris – another cretinous failure to advance British interests!!
October 21, 2021
I find it statistically strange that while circa 80% on this forum whom might identify as having conservative principals, Iād suggest that 50% of those can also be described as climate change sceptic to some degree
Why is it than that out of 650 MPs and 800+ Peers not one is a climate change sceptic
That result is almost statically impossible
October 21, 2021
glen
It is the way they are selected. For example. My MP’s (Conservative) CV is of a man that has never ever worked in the Private Sector. He has worked for the NHS. The Local Council, and as a SpAd. Not one job, not one, has been in the Private Sector. So how can an MP, whose only work experience is in the Public Sector, understand what someone who is self employed or running a small business has to go through or someone in the Private Sector who is an employee and whose job is not as secure as he’s use to be.
I tell you this. Come the next GE he is going to be OUT !!
October 21, 2021
not impossible if you consider the need to hang on to a job?
October 21, 2021
GC- Follow the MONEY.
October 21, 2021
Roll on the end of the Glasgow jamboree and then maybe the Government will listen to all this very good advice.
October 21, 2021
I fear that the jamboree will conclude with new treaties that the electorate didnāt vote for or realise during the last general election
October 21, 2021
Are biomass power stations āmore reliableā ? Why is that ? The power stations involved are the same (DRAX has used both) but the international sources of biomass (wood pellets) are far fewer than coal (given we produce neither ourselves).
October 21, 2021
Ha!
I see that my comment is still awaiting moderation, what a joke you are Sir John!
Deliberately Suppressing unpalatable facts
October 21, 2021
You’re not the only one. Can’t blame him really, seeing the party he once joined being slowly turned into the SDP.
October 21, 2021
Actually it’s interesting to see what the SDP is turning into. Probably still left of centre with pledges for nationalisation, but actually anti net zero, socially relatively conservative. Probably a Peter Shore version of Labour.
October 21, 2021
Get over yourself. I too have posts that occasionally are not published (including today) but I don’t whinge about it and I certainly don’t insult our host who generously provides both the website and the moderating all at his own cost and time. If you are not happy then don’t come back here, just as I no longer visit ConservativeHome since they barred me from posting ANY comments – and I have no idea why!!
October 21, 2021
“These have to be kept, and perhaps could be converted to biomass to make them more reliable and popular contributors to our power output”
If “popular” where a valid criteria for choosing our energy source selection, ICE cars would not be being phased out, would they?
Sir John, perhaps you could explain how this taking a plant already made to reliably burn coal and converting it to burn biomass will make it more reliable.
Also seems a tad odd that someone as numerate and enquiring as yourself appears to blindly accept biomass as green, when the overwhelming evidence is to the contrary.
Reply I am making suggestions to the government and so putting it to them in the way they characterise these forms of energy production. I am trying to get something done so I am not looking to pick an argument over definitions or green qualifications
October 21, 2021
Thank you, Sir John, for attending the Coronavirus Act renewal debate, such as it was, on Tuesday and asking two good questions, which in a proper debate surely would have taken centre stage. We know, of course, that the government has no intention of answering them, but still. Also, I found watching the way in which the Commons took its ‘democratic’ decision not to have a vote on the renewal motion quite… fascinating.
October 21, 2021
+1
October 21, 2021
I saw the Salford MP during the HoC debate on cop26 today describing the end of the world scenario by 2050, full on apoplectic destruction and famine, if we donāt adopt in full the IPCC findings and get below 1.5 degree, she then finished her debate by concluding āāand its also wrong that the people of Manchester have to pay Ā£4 for a bus journey while in London its only Ā£1.40āā
What planet are these people onā¦.they donāt understand it nor believe it themselves, it just a vehicle to make sound-bite comments
October 21, 2021
In 1972, the Director of the UN Environment Programme forecast that there were just 10 years before global catastrophe would occur.
In 1982, another Director forecast there would be an environmental catastrophe by 2000, which would be worse than a nuclear holocaust.
In 1989, the same Department said that climate change must be ‘fixed’ within 10yrs or it would be beyond human control and so on, and so on, and so …….
October 21, 2021
SM, Do you have a reliable track of the announcements you say had been made? I guess you should have no difficulty in providing the references and will want to share your knowledge with all the other readers of this blog. Thanks a lot in advance.
āDid UN official say nations would vanish if global warming not reversed by 2000?ā Alex Kasprak, 20/09/2019, snopes.com
October 22, 2021
Look it up yourself heffy.
The internet is available to you.
October 21, 2021
Glen Cullen
Totally collect
October 21, 2021
EU27 number crunchers are sniffing a possible market for two new betting opportunities. One is which week the UK will go back into lockdown. The second is when the EU27 / Schengen Area, will put the UK back into the red zone for all travel. We are coming to the end of the UK foreign holiday season; tourist revenue will be diminishing from now in the EU27; hence, the continentals won’t be that upset.
If only we had a President Macron type leader. A man that knows how to manage a nation full of Frenchie’s that riot at the drop of a hat, and take them in a direction necessary for the good of all his citizens.
October 21, 2021
Acorn, what do you want Boris to do right now? Lock everyone back in, force vaccination on everyone like Italy, covid passports so people who donāt vaccinate are prisoners, go further tell them they wonāt get NHS treatment? How far do you want him to go?
It is bizarre that you suggest we will be barred but only after half term holidays when theyāve taken the coin.
How many people are Europe testing compared to the UK proportionally, are they testing children as regularly as they do in the UK?
October 22, 2021
Europe, historically, has been riddled with little dictators with which we have to save them from. And Britain and her Commonwealth has the War Graves to prove it.
I just want our politicians to do their job and act in our best interests and keep their elected promises. Not much to ask and no need to riot either.
October 21, 2021
I see China has stopped production of magnesium, as they dont have enough electricity to keep the factories going.
So not only can the car makers not get chips, they cannot get magnesium either. Essential ingredient into engines etc.
Shortages are going to be a big problem.
October 21, 2021
Here is a good bit of progressive thinking. Barbados elects first president as it prepares to drop Queen as head of state. Caribbean nation elects governor general to new role prior to former British colony becoming a republic.
Perhaps Barbados’s erstwhile colonial master, should think of doing similar. Imagine having a Head of State that actually takes part in governing the nation and controlling its Head of Government (Prime Minister) like proper Republics.
October 22, 2021
I agree.
October 22, 2021
Do you imagine the EU elite might copy the same democratic idea eh acorn?
October 21, 2021
If I had wanted an innumerate government forcing very expensive and impractical tripling of electrical heating, transport and industry and with costs tripling and power cuts, I would have voted Green, like the 5% of innumerate voters. When are MPs with any sense going to remove Johnson, Gove and other foolish ministers?
October 21, 2021
+1
October 22, 2021
Stred
Whilst I do not necessarily disagree with you, may I suggest that you look further afield as it were and ask; “Who is advising these people ?”
I read an article in which a former government ‘advisor’ suggested that farmers should be encouraged (subsidy) not to keep cattle and wild areas where they are kept. This would reduce the meat we produce and and so drive up prices. The fact that the ‘advisor’ happened to be a vegetarian was, I am sure, coincidental. š
October 21, 2021
Dewbs & Co is interesting tonight, two socialist, one an eco, campaign ladies and a very sensible coherent woman trying her best to make sound points that all the people I talk to want to know the answers to. Just what exactly is Boris wanting people to do in the next year, the next five years and finally by the 9 year target he has tied us to without our permission and without this being in his manifesto.
Insulate Homes
If, as the majority do, we have a home that weāve insulated walls and ceilings are we being expected to pay more taxes to pay for other people that havenāt? If they havenāt already how many homes are there? Where are they? What type of home? Why arenāt they insulated when grants have been available? Has the government thought of helping people to move and downsize if they canāt afford to insulate their home and make way for people who can.
Give up flights? Cut down journeys? Work from home where you can? Just what is expected of us?
Why do the only suggestions seem to be to give up things, and its bizarre that the wealthiest think they can excuse their excess flights, and pleasure cruises by laying a few tax efficient trees on their ample lands. It is a joke on the working classes, the people that save all year to take one holiday a year. It frankly is very insulting.
These eco people are allowed to say āthere are no policiesā and āthere havenāt been any policiesā unchallenged. Yet we are in the top 10 most eco saving countries with gains made over the past decades. There has been plenty done over the years to cut back on emissions. Iām sick of people being allowed to just talk our Country down all the time. Do you have the facts John of just what the Conservatives have already achieved? Have all these windmills really not achieved anything at all? How much has the government spent already?
On Dewbs a few things they want people to give up: Meat, flights, individual car journeys, petrol/diesel, what next tumble dryers?
October 21, 2021
Andy, you like the word “literally”, so my advice is to find out what it means.
Try to find ” metaphorically” too, which might help you to understand its meaning.
October 21, 2021
I’ve literally given up hope of educating him…Perhaps his son with benefit of private education might put him right?
October 21, 2021
Off-topic, but two interesting and related stories today:
1. Vehicles remain the UKās single most valuable goods trade export. Research by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders found that vehicle export revenues reached Ā£27bn in 2020. The automotive sector as a whole generated a total trade revenue of Ā£74bn with more than 80 per cent of British-built cars and more than 60 per cent of light commercial vehicles destined for export.
2. The shortage of semiconductor processing chips continues to impact the automotive industry, with several leading car makers forced to temporarily close production lines.
So we have a situation where the production of our most important export is being hampered because of a shortage of computer chips … and what is the government doing about this? NOTHING. As usual. The prime minister is asleep at the wheel once again. Any sensible and patriotic leader would have got the big chip manufacturers in to number 10 and offered them all the funding they need to open chip factories in the UK. We would then not just be self-reliant but could also become a major exporter.
One of the main benefits of Brexit is that we are no longer bound by the EU’s restrictive state aid rules. But does the PM take advantage of our new freedom to benefit British manufacturing and Britain in general? NO. Never. What a useless, useless waste of space. My contempt for him grows by the day!!
October 21, 2021
A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change. The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.
It also shows some wealthy nations are questioning paying more to poorer states to move to greener technologies. This “lobbying” raises questions for the COP26 climate summit in November.
The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Will St.Greta take note and turn her attention to the main problem countries, rather than bully UK while it is committing economic green suicide?
October 21, 2021
NLH – do Ofgem have any responsibility or not?
My comment was in response to you saying āOnly-For-Profit kids to trouser the moneyā. Surely the regulator should have tackled the market abuse you alleged?
It is my people who will have more expensive heat, my parents that will worry about it donāt be so patronising. Buying customers didnāt pay but these customers enjoyed the cheap rates for a spell, it wasnāt sustainable and now their old clients will pay up to the cap rate.
October 21, 2021
Do hope my note is not left on the cutting room floor
October 22, 2021
John, what is the government position on re-activating the UK capacity market scheme which was halted by an ECJ ruling in 2018.
If we have truly left the EU then the ECJ ruling no longer holds and we should be able to subsidise owners ofĀ coal, gas and other power stationsĀ so the plants are ready to ensure that electricity for businesses and homes is available at peak times in winter.
Shouldn’t we also be able to hold capacity market auctions again?
Unless we haven’t really left the EU, the remainers in government continue to sabotage our country and the the ECJ still holds sway.
What are Boris and the energy minister doing about this?
October 22, 2021
I see the CCC has invented another perpetual motion machine that produces hydrogen without consuming any energy. Their work on net zero is completely untrustworthy. We need a proper independent evaluation, followed by developing policy on the basis of what is feasible and affordable, and which takes full account of the global nature of climate and the lack of self-flagellating responses in the rest of the world.