The government says it takes energy security seriously so it encourages more wind and solar. Opposition parties want a faster run down of the gas and coal power stations that have been keeping the lights on, and query biomass at Drax. This would destabilise us more.
On Sunday demand was about one third below peak but we were dependent for than a quarter of our electricity on imports. This is alarming and shows the dangers to security and self sufficiency from premature fossil fuel plant closures and undue reliance on intermittent renewables.
If government insists on more renewables it first needs to get someone to put in massive investment in some combination of
More grid capacity
Large battery stores
Conversion of power to hydrogen and its derivatives
More pump storage
Government claims renewables are cheaper than gas generation. They do not usually allow for the extra grid and storage costs, or for back up power. If this were true then some of the cost gain has to be spent on storage and transmission.
If it is as some expect that fully costed renewables are dearer government needs to tell us the extra costs and explain who pays.
Given the delays in rolling out hydrogen and large battery with extra grid it is probably necessary to add more combined cycle gas capacity for the transition. This is what Germany is now thinking of doing.
It is quite wrong to be so dependent in imports. It loses us jobs, costs us tax revenues, puts big strains on our balance of payments. The EU is energy short, so it is very dangerous to rely on imports from them.
The ideas that we can muddle through with insufficient power on low wind days rests on two dangerous assumptions. It assumes everyone will accept a smart meter and accept the use of differential pricing to shift power demand away from peaks when renewables are low. it assumes many more people will own an electric vehicle and will be prepared to plug it into their home and run down the battery to heat and fuel the home when renewable power is scarce. Many people are resisting having a smart meter as they do not like this idea. Most people are not ready to buy an electric car or cannot afford one, and few are volunteers to have one to act as an adjunct of the national power supply.
February 27, 2024
Good morning.
Well if you cannot increase supply, why not try and reduce demand ?
Or do we have to wait until people just give up on this country and go elsewhere ?
February 27, 2024
The latest twist in the lunatic power story is cable’s being laid for 3.5gw underdea from Morocco
No doubt receiving some priority guarantee from this idiotic government.
We don’t here any mention of the polluting STOR emergency diesel generators which are running daily
It appears to be some kind of sick joke Importing more and more energy when we’re sitting on 309 years of the stuff.
February 28, 2024
John,John please do some research. Batteries are a non starter. Do the sums. They can serve as momentary grid stabilizers when the wind doesn’t blow and the grid lacks ‘inertia ‘. Read it up. Storage? Do the sums!!! Hydrogen is a non starter. Besides its dangers there’s the energy silliness. How do you produce hydrogen? Read it up. How do you store hydrogen? Read it up, a gross non starter. Net. zero is futile pointless and impossible. Wake Up
February 27, 2024
Reduce demand? Well energy go into everything our food, clothes, houses, transport, heating, steel, concrete, comfort. True we can wear more jumpers and heat just on small room. But cold people warm themselves with human food burning and human food uses energy to produce. Better insulation is very expensive esp. on old houses. Takes energy to produce and fit and often 100% payback is never.
As an physicist & engineer I am at a loss to understand why on earth our deluded politicians have fallen for the net zero heat pumps, wind and EV car insanity. It is vastly expensive economic suicide and with zero benefit.
February 27, 2024
LL :
Because economic suicide, as you have correctly described Net Zero, is the real aim. There is no other logical conclusion. As Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson :
“…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
February 27, 2024
Lifelogic
2nd Paragraph indeed, I cannot understand it either, I can only put it down to group think of stupidity.
likewise an Engineer, 35 years in the Design and Build Construction Industry, also sat on the British Standards Committee for improving Insulation Standards in housing (many years ago).
At the time in the 1980’s, a pig sty required better insulation standards than a new build house. No not a joke !
February 27, 2024
That’s the whole point of the Smart Meters. So they can switch off people’s power if they want.
February 27, 2024
And who on earth want an electricity supply that cuts out half way through roasting your beef rib, mowing your lawn, shaving, having a hot electric shower, working on the computer & internet or charging your car for an important meeting you have to leave for in 30 mins time? This is not progress!
JR says:-
If government insists on more renewables it first needs to get someone to put in massive investment in some combination of:- My comments in […]
More grid capacity
[Vastly more if you do the maths & want everyone to shift to EVs and Heatpumps circa 10 times the grid capacity as electricity is needed just for a few winter weeks rest of the time the grid with be wasted running at perhaps 20% of capacity on average. The renewables generating capacity may need to be 10 times as much as current and with back up Gas/Coal capacity of the same size the agenda is moronic, cannot be afforded, impractical & delivers no advantages anyway]
Large battery stores
[ Not remotely cost effective or practical to any large degree will more than double the cost of electricity and waste about 40% of the energy in conversion back and forth, capital costs huge often very dangerous too and vulnerable to terrorism etc.]
Conversion of power to hydrogen and its derivatives
[This will cost a fortune, waste about two thirds of the energy and is expensive and dangerous to compress and store] Might be useful in a few very specialised cases.
More pump storage
[for pump storage you need lots of water at the bottom and at the top suitable site have usually be used. Large areas needed. You can only store energy if you have loads of spare water at the bottom to pump and space at the top to hold it. Dams have killed hundreds or thousands of people. We very nearly saw this recently Whaley Bridge.}
Government claims renewables are cheaper than gas generation [Lie or perhaps they are just deluded]. They do not usually allow for the extra grid and storage costs, or for back up power. If this were true then some of the cost gain has to be spent on storage and transmission [which more than doubles the cost and large scale storage is not cost effective at all].
February 27, 2024
They being the government or supplier not the customers!
February 27, 2024
There have just been two Capacity Market auctions: one for 2024/25 (T-1) and one for 2027/28 (T-4). Both auctions included “capacity” for Demand Side Response, which is in fact paid-for power cuts. The T-4 auction included 1,129.76MW of DSR and the T-1 included 710.08MW. Instead of building capacity to keep the lights on, we will pay some people to be ready to switch them off. They will get handsome additional payments from us if they actually do so: we have been paying almost £5,000/MWh for the live events this winter.
February 28, 2024
Mark :
Are 1.1 GW and 0.7 GW going to be sufficient? Is this domestic or industrial DSR or both? As well as destroying our industries I would imagine there will be schemes set up simply to benefit from large DSR payments….Perhaps even alfalfa type schemes where the less electrical equipment an organisation connects to the grid the more money they are paid from the DSR fund….Tata Steel could for instance say, pay us and we won’t build the eaf at Port Talbot and this will reduce the amount of power required….
Has anyone does any work to estimate the financial consequences of chaotically intermittent rolling power cuts?
February 27, 2024
The costs and results of Net Zero have yet to impact on the public. When they do the government of the day will be blamed. This will be the legacy left to them by the Conservatives in power at present.
February 27, 2024
…………………This will be the legacy left to them by the Conservatives in power at present…………..not for much longer. We will have to tolerate Starmergeddon before Reform take up the reins. People are just realising more of the same Uni – Party isn’t working. We don’t want mass immigration, high taxation, congestion, destruction of our culture/heritage, net stupid and Tory encouraged and legislated non equality laws. Woke everywhere whilst health, emergency services and public services have failed. We need a return to common sense and a meritocracy.
February 27, 2024
That’s been tried with the price ripoffs and the extortionate profits the companies have been making. Don’t know about you, but we’ve cut every corner we can, but still my bills are twice what they were 3 years ago. The big profits shown last week were substantially from the government electricity support – we tax payers instead of paying in full the ripoff prices, paid directly into their profits instead via support for the consumer. What a deal! And on top of that, they are going to load us up with the losses they make from people not able to afford their ripoff prices. A licence to print money if ever their was one. Be an electricity supplier and you cannot now go bankrupt like the smaller forms did a couple of years ago. Nice work if you can get a Tory government to bail you out and continue with humungous profits made out of pauperising the population and reducing our economy. We can’t spend it twice – it’s either in the shops or to the energy giants.
February 28, 2024
During the energy crisis energy retailers were forced by the OFGEM cap to trade at a loss. Part of that came from having to buy additional supplies for the customers they took on when the unhedged fly-by-night operations went bust. Part came because it was no longer possible to hedge, and part because customers found it impossible to pay the bills. Their profits are catch-up in large degree, just as oil and gas companies got some compensation for the losses they endured during the pandemic – at least until windfall profits taxes left them feeling that operating in the UK is no longer worthwhile. The companies that have been making very big profits are the existing renewables generators who continued to be paid lavish subsidies immune from taxes, while benefiting from higher market prices as well in the case of those on ROCs.
Wind turbine builders have found that their costs have been soaring, so they too have been making big losses, some of which come from having underestimated the maintenance that would be needed on existing wind farms, where they signed a deal to provide the turbines and a maintenance programme.
The blame for the UK having such high prices sits squarely with those running UK energy policy. Ministers and Parliament seem to accept the bad advice that comes from the Climate Change Committee, National Grid, OFGEM, assorted consultancies and green think tanks, and DESNZ itself. There has been plenty of criticism of that policy, but they pay no heed to that.
February 27, 2024
They will do that by rolling power cuts when supply is insufficient – they already do this in California which is a far more wealthy state than the UK is as a country but whose politicians have taken them back into the dark ages. .
February 27, 2024
Indeed taken back to the dark ages by a mad new religion for no reason or benefit at all.
February 27, 2024
Yep – when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow – we can look forward to rationed time of electricity.
By staging and planning on the strength of sun/wind we can look forward to mobile sent information messages to warn of our share during the daylight hours. Also the Government has not really controlled very high gas pricing because that is the only way to keep use lower that it would otherwise be.
February 27, 2024
Nobody in authority is listening. So it is preaching to the converted.
Sunak is just running the clock down and doing what he is told until the general election.
As for meters, I was told I was getting one by Thames Water whether I wanted it or not.
February 28, 2024
Peter: I reluctantly agreed to a water meter only in the last few years. Admittedly our overall water usage remains about the same year on year. It was the best thing I did & has saved me hundreds of pounds. It illustrated that we had been overpaying for decades.
February 27, 2024
On the issue of smart metres, I understand they are funded by the tax payer, if so this is a con and installation should stop.
My metre hasn’t worked for months ,an engineer came out to fix it, the fix lasted about a hour and now I’m waiting for a 2 band model to be installed.
Energy companies install the metres knowing fine well many will fail, I’m guessing they get paid for every installation . The failure of smart metres lies with this government for allowing this to continue at tax payers expense.
February 27, 2024
Not funded by tax, but loaded onto our bills without it being shown. It is a con and is required so government can spy on you as to when and how you use power and cut you off if they don’t have enough juice to supply you. The companies don’t have to employ meter readers either, although I have not seen one for donkeys years and supply my own readings. Win win for the big corporations, lose lose for the consumer.
February 27, 2024
Indeed but in effect another tax as are the now very high standing charges for energy. Especially unfair for poor people they can cut down use but do nothing about these poll tax charges for nothing supplied.
February 28, 2024
The standing charges don’t change, smart meter or not. We are ripped off in all ways. If the energy supplier doesn’t make enough for its shareholders they merely up the prices aided and abetted by the so-called regulator. Why are electricity prices linked to world gas prices, other than to keep prices up?
February 27, 2024
It’s the other way round Stephen. Energy supply companies are fined for not installing enough smart meters, £10.8 million in 2022. so the government blackmail them rather than come down hard on consumers. It’s the same story with electric cars except that the manufacturers can purchase credits from such as Tesla or perhaps a different division of their own company. Totally shameful for a government that supposedly believes of freedom for the individual.
February 27, 2024
Have just read about sharing “corporate secrets” among major housebuilders. Government is naive if it does not believe that collusion has been endemic in the building industry for many decades. Surely some MPs must have had some experience of the building industry!
February 27, 2024
Not many MP’s have experience in anything other than expenses and b/s.
February 27, 2024
Experience of any industries might be useful!
February 28, 2024
I think the dysfunctional way our housebuilding market operates hardly requires collusion to produce the results it does. Builders secure the right to buy land via an option that costs them little, but the price is typically some way above current market value of the land. They haggle with the planners, and hope that at the end of that process house prices will have increased sufficiently to allow them to pay for the land at the inflated option strike price and build to sell at a profit. They will not actually proceed with buying the land and building unless they can see it will be profitable. At the worst, they may end up with the option expiring before they can build profitably, reducing their loss to the premium they paid.
If prices are very profitable because they have been inflated by government policies such as Help to Bubble, QE, ZIRP, high LTV interest only mortgages etc. then builders will build as many as they can, being limited by the rate of planning permission grants. The dynamics of the system encourage them to build high density estates as cheaply as they can to maximise the return on land.
February 28, 2024
The standing charges don’t change, smart meter or not. We are ripped off in all ways. If the energy supplier doesn’t make enough for its shareholders they merely up the prices aided and abetted by the so-called regulator. Why are electricity prices linked to world gas prices, other than to keep prices up?
February 28, 2024
Sorry the dreaded ‘duplicate commenet detected’ Seems it can detect but not delete
February 28, 2024
Shocking report on ‘You and Yours’ on radio yesterday regarding the quality of new houses. A surveyor called in to check a house found 500 faults and one where the mortar was one part cement to eleven parts sand and could be scraped out with his fingernail.
February 27, 2024
The taxpayer is also funding the TV adverts, the endless text and telephone calls and the related quango (the Data and Communications Company (DCC) will be an entity regulated under licence by Ofgem)
£Billions of taxpayers funds spent on smart-meters that no one wants nor voted for
February 27, 2024
My smart meter no longer gives any electricity consumption figures and the supplier believes that the gas reading is far too high.
They were going to take £750 from my account on 4th March when our previous bills were £350.
I’ve put a stop to that!
It’s a 3000 sq ft house, quite well insulated, with only two residents. We make best use of our solar panel array and run only the downstairs radiator circuit of the modern gas boiler during the evening. Our gas Aga (which costs £5 a day to run) allows us to keep the large kitchen warm. How do average families afford to heat their homes ?
February 27, 2024
ANSWER is quite simply they build debts, poorer families go without all sorts of things, praying for lighter warmer days and choosing the cheapest food. Welcome to the 3rd World here in ‘Great’ Britain.
February 27, 2024
The tory green revolution and policy of net-zero is for your benefit ….and green bills will be cheaper in the future
February 28, 2024
Yeah, like nuclear energy was going to be too cheap to meter we were told in the fifties when they had that to sell to the public.
February 27, 2024
British Gas ,Ovo, Bulb ,Eon, Scottish Power and SSE were the companies ” fined ” over missing 2022 smart meter targets by more than 1 million.
Following action by Ofgem the companies agreed to pay together £10.8 million into Ofgem’s Energy Industry Voluntary Redress (EIVRF) for not meeting the targets .
As a result of suppliers agreeing to make these voluntary payments , Ofgem says it will not investigate the reasons for the target shortfall .
February 27, 2024
So another back door tax.
February 27, 2024
In the case of Scottish Power, I told them quite bluntly that I wasn’t having one and to stop making unsolicited phone calls attempting to coerce me.
February 27, 2024
In a property I recently refurbished – 18 months ago, the newly installed smart meter has already been replaced with a ‘upgraded’ model, and I am still being asked to give readings because their ‘mobile phone technology’ which allows them to obtain a reading is not working.
The only consolation with regard to the control and surveillance policies of the Government is that most will fail. Already there are many no-go areas in the country where a gas meter reading man amongst many other state employees will not venture. All politicians who have personal security admit to Islamophobia in deed!
What a mess they have made of our green and pleasant land!
February 27, 2024
This and past governments offer us utterly deluded energy policies. The only hope is to develop the UK’s own oil and gas resources, build combined cycle gas fired stations and reduce dependence on pie in the sky, so-called green technology.
February 27, 2024
Indeed and not waste the asset of the good gas grid and large fossil fuel resources we have. Eventually we will have to move to better nuclear and fusion but we have plenty of gas, coal, oil for 100+ years. Get fracking and ditch the insanity of net zero and grow up please. The government’s energy agenda is insane and suicidal.
February 27, 2024
Indeed a house using gas for heat, cooking and hot water with petrol or diesel cars might only need say £500 of electricity for lights, fridge freezer, TV’s, washing machines and computers. One using all electricity with heat pumps, EVs etc. might need as much as 10-20 times this amount of electricity. Furthermore most of this will ne needed in a few cold weeks of winter.
Ditching the gas grid and increasing electricity production and the grid capacity hugely, up to 20 times mainly for those few winter months and wasting the gas grid is insane, impractical and vastly expensive. H2 is largely another waste of time and energy. Other than for s few specialist applications.
February 27, 2024
The laws of physics, energy, entropy and energy economics are what they are. MPs can pass laws but they will not change the laws of physics.
February 27, 2024
Not that many in government or the civil service seem to have done any physics or science beyond 16. Certainly not ministers for energy, science, technology or the likes or even their senior civil servants! Most do not even know the various units for energy and power or the difference between the two!
February 27, 2024
Good Morning,
First, Sir J., thank you for focusing on the important national issues, rather than the nonsense infecting the HoC at the moment. (Our parliamentarians seem to focus on virtue signalling and the irrelevant; useless!)
Quite, the ‘green energy’ myth of occasional wind and solar is rolling on to its final chapter. The place money SHOULD be being spent is nuclear, fission for the short term, get those SMR’s approved and in action, and fusion investment for the longer term, I’m reading encouraging progress. We could be world leader’s in this technology, IF ONLY we focused on what needs to be done!
February 27, 2024
@David Andrews -This conservative Government has the policy of import first. Subsidies foreign taxpayers first and just dig deeper in to the taxpayer wallet
February 27, 2024
Rather amusingly it will be Starmer, who has promised to entirely decarbonise the grid by 2030, who will have to start burning fossil fuel again to keep the lights on – but as he’s so adept at U Turns (almost as good as the Conservatives) this will be no problem for him.
February 27, 2024
RG :
The Conservatives are doing their best to ensure that Starmer will not be able to U-turn as they have proudly declared that all coal burning power plants will be demolished by September this year, in preparation for the winter ahead. Our Consrvative COP26 president is seen here in this official SSE video of the demolition of Ferrybridge power station:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1429456184902393858/pu/vid/720×720/JwPnpycxEiyBmqVJ.mp4?tag=12
February 27, 2024
Not with this lot and the opposition. They’d rather bankrupt the country first then swan off bearing no responsibility to a nice retirement on pensions we could only dream about. They are going to get a huge payout when the electorate sack them as well and their pensions will be boosted when their new pay rise comes in in April. So incompetence pays.
February 27, 2024
The primary decisions on priorities are not complicated. It is hard to know why the Government gets into such a muddle over its priorties. It makes the EU look supremely competent.
February 27, 2024
My petrol station has put up the cost of fuel to £1.48p per litre, thats 5p in a fortnight ….this Tory government isn’t interested as it collects extra VAT income
February 27, 2024
Mass migration has meant we are creating new cities every year but no compensating changes in infrastructure. It’s pure selfishness by both corporates and migrants. This is why young people can’t get on the housing ladder until they are 34, this is why the IFS has said taxes would drop by £1100 if mass migration stopped, this is why there are energy shortages, this is why we see queues of people who can’t get a dentist.
I have said for years mass migration without compensation creates masses of problems that cannot be reversed for decades. It will result in the Balkanisation of the UK and social conflict well beyond my life.
Yet we see a slow creeping admission week by week what the real problems are as people gradually tell the truth and become brave enough to speak out. I have no doubt in a few years there will be a full admission that mass migration was one of the biggest disasters economically and socially in modern history.
February 27, 2024
+1. It usually takes the politicos decades to realise what Enoch said would happen many years ago. There said it, will the woke thought police be round!!!??
February 27, 2024
It’s existential.
Will we have a new surname – the equivalent of the Spanish ‘Hildalgo’ – which means ‘no Arab blood’.
February 27, 2024
Our LACK OF ENERGY is a consequence of an ill conceived Nett Zero, a denial of our own resources, and unbelievable incompetence. It is not unreasonable to suggesf that HMG has deliberately set out to deprive the country of power and exacerbate the situation by driving us to a greater use of an electrical power we do not have. HMG has no viable power policy and the opposition would further deprive us if you believe the ill thought out nonesense they talk. Power policy in the UK is an end of life suicide, the only advantage to which is a lack of need to travel to Switzerland. You, we in the real world, and Reform know the way forward, but HMG do not even want to know.
February 28, 2024
I do not think the Reform idea of wasting money on nationalising parts of the energy sector is helpful. That is money that could be much better spent in other ways. What we need is to restore proper competition to the business of energy supply (that is, generation, exploration and production of oil and gas and uranium and even wind and solar, although I would not expect them to be very competitive in the real world with no subsidies), instead of running it by diktats under rigged markets, subsidies and quotas, set by the energy quangos.
February 27, 2024
Sir John, your party has been in control for the last 13 years, the ‘grandees’ have blocked and generally screwed up Brexit and, let’s face it mismanaged the administration with their zealotry for a completely unnecessary ‘NetZero’ policy. If a conservative administration cannot see how this alienates life long conservatives such as me, they are a lost cause and deserves to be driven out of office.
February 27, 2024
Cheap reliable on demand energy is vital for living standards, the economy, defence, building, transport, growth and almost everything. else. Net zero is economic vandalism. Storage of electricity once generated is vastly expensive expensive, hugely wasteful of energy and impractical. We have little spare electrical energy available to store anyway.
The way to store energy is as a pile of coal, gas storage or oil and generate as needed.
The UK net zero policy seem to be to move everyone to heat pumps and EV cars (or price them off the roads) increase the electrical grid capacity and generating capacity hugely to cope with this (10-20 times is needed) and close down the large valuable gas grid and any oil heating. Also to export the high energy using industries like steel, concrete, car etc. manufacture and kill employment.
The policy will cost something like £100k per household, impoverish and freeze people to death and will achieve nothing positive for the UK, the environment or the climate.
We are sitting on very large stores of natural gas, coal amd oil so get fracking, drilling and mining please and sort out better nuclear R&D for later. Net Zero is appalling. Totally misguided lunacy a suicide agenda.
February 27, 2024
By the by.
It is quite wrong to purposely and totally unnecessarily make your population
COLD.
February 27, 2024
Perhaps a future brisk walk to the Polling booth and a cross in the right place will make us all feel better?
February 27, 2024
The walk of champions ….the one day in half a decade that the people have the power ….feels good
February 27, 2024
I watched “A Very British Revolution” last night.
Mrs T was even better than I previously thought.
I didn’t realise that she knew exactly what the unions were up to ( not about wages but about destroying the country) and she said on the very day of that bombing “ Terrorism can not beat democracy” ( did she mean be allowed to maybe?).
But anyway she would not have put up with present nonsense.
February 27, 2024
..and there were better candidates than Mrs T. It’s tragic that she was the best PM we have had since the war – by a military mile.
February 27, 2024
Interesting that a new study by a group of universities, and part-funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has concluded that the government’s Neto Zero policies will lower living standards. They will ‘push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’. There will be a rise in unemployment, food will become more expensive, and required changes such as insulating our homes or switching to electric cars will be challenging for low-income households. According to the study, 40 per cent of households risk falling into poverty. Universities and the Nuffield Foundation are not exactly hotbeds of alt-right extremism, so if they are saying this you would think Starmer and the Labour Party will take it very seriously. Or will those traditional defenders of the less well-off ignore the harm inflicted on their electorate, and try to con everybody into thinking it’s all about saving the planet? I think we know the answer.
February 27, 2024
Good morning John. 6.55 am a fantastic red sunrise and very cold start to the day.
The most important lesson to take from our energy policy decisions this past fifty years is we have made very damaging mistakes.
The most serious is our failure to capitalise on our once world leading position of nuclear power generated electricity. We allowed our French cousins to take that position of us due to political incompetence.
We are now importing natural gas which is a bit odd as we have more than enough of it to meet our needs under our own land. We are also importing electricity which is a bit odd again because we had all the coal fired power stations we needed to supply our own grid demand independent of Europe/EU production.
Anyone looking is with fresh eyes not clouded over by years of anti fossil fuel bias would conclude we have knowingly destroyed our own economic strength and good fortune position by shutting down our energy industry and its UK owned independence.
Perhaps you would like to comment on that?
February 27, 2024
So what does John believe is the ideology behind the policy actions of the British political and bureaucratic class in the sphere of energy production?
If we assume that what we are seeing simply doesn’t make functional and economic sense then we can arrive at only one definite conclusion, the people of this nation are being deliberately punished, harmed and conditioned. I believe this a criminal act being perpetrated by the state against those who finance it
Thatcher always understood the danger of a state that had grown too big. We past that stage in which the people become the servants of the state. It won’t end well.
February 27, 2024
I would state further that a LACK OF ENERGY is merely a symptom of a greater HMG malaise. HMG have run down everything they are responsible for, while back loading the private sector that keeps them alive, to such an extent that nothing actually works in the UK.
Mark B is correct in saying our residual talent should go elsewhere. It is the only answer to our grotesque gross immigration figures. Then the whistle blowers they contrive to call racist for pointing out the obvious. Whereas the real heretics are HMG.
February 27, 2024
Every single thing is this country is insane. If anyone speaks the truth they are suspended.
February 27, 2024
In parts of South Africa they have ‘energy sharing’. This means that for two hours every day, everyone in rotation has no electricity. A smart meter would allow this to happen here. People aren’t stupid. Many have worked out the possible downsides to them.
When you read the realities of net zero it’s an absolute nonsense, it doesn’t even make sense.
I read one account about housing following net zero completion, and with no concrete or brick making any more, we’d be pretty much making mud huts! In our climate, in Britain?? Crazy!
February 27, 2024
Nut zero is total nonsense over a problem that doesn’t exist and the fools in Westminster are not prepared to open their minds or read contrary views. So many independent scientists out there trying to educate the masses being obstructed by the twits in Westminster and elsewhere!
February 28, 2024
WIthout a source of fabric (no animals, no petrochemicals for synthetics) we would surely daub ourselves with mud and woad for warmth. It’s blue, not green though…
February 27, 2024
‘More grid capacity
Large battery stores
Conversion of power to hydrogen and its derivatives
More pump storage’
The first is costing the Earth, quite literally.
The second provides literally, minutes of power as well as risk of dangerous fires.
Hydrogen takes double the energy to produce than it provides, amid other difficult to surmount problems.
Pump storage simply does not pass the cost/benefit test and provides short term energy.
My genny is installed.
February 27, 2024
You say “few are volunteers to have an EV to act as an adjunct of the national power supply. Indeed and they are right energy storage in stationary batteries is hugely expensive but using even more expensive EV car batteries is even less sensible, Car batteries decay and depreciate with each charge this likely to be of the same order in cost as the electricity stored per cycle. Vast amount of energy needed to make the EV cars and batteries and recycle them too.
Pie in the sky lunacy and economic suicide from non engineers, deluded net zero (brain) religious priests or vested interest outright crooks!
February 27, 2024
Smart meters make little difference to people’s energy consumption. After an initial burst of interest people revert to their usual pattern of behaviour. The only benefit of smart meters is to the energy providers: they can read our meter remotely and can turn us off at will thereby controlling our energy consumption when they cannot meet the demand. The madness of decarbonbisation of our grid when we have no reliable replacement sources of our own. Depending on imports from the EU, which is facing its own energy shortage as the French nuclear power stations go off line, is madness.
February 27, 2024
While we are on the subject if energy bills. There is talk of a £28 addition to energy bills, to make up for those who cant/wont pay their energy bill.
As someone, who has always paid their energy bills, I bitterly resent this. I pay full Income and Council Tax, and I don’t see why I should have to subsidise others, especially as I have a suspicion that, not all those who dont pay their bills, are ‘vulnerable’, or ‘struggling families’.
What are the cost of living payments for – if not to help to pay energy bills?
February 27, 2024
Be grateful that you are not an non-VAT registered small business paying 20% VAT on energy bills!
February 28, 2024
In a month’s time we will see how much our energy bills will be increased by the indexation of renewables subsidies from April. A quick back of envelope estimate suggests it will be rather more.
February 28, 2024
Not so much to subsidise others but to subsidise the profits of the big producers.
February 27, 2024
Another example of a policy area where from the Conservative govt we hear disingenuous nonsense – but Labour would be even worse. Therefore vote Conservative! How inspiring.
February 27, 2024
There once was a country called .Britain
Where you had to keep much woolly kit on
It had loads of coal and gallons of oil
But they thought it was something to sit on!
Result = mass hypothermia
February 27, 2024
Any shortage of energy in this country is entirely due to government incompetence in failing to organise replacement nuclear, failing to build sufficient onshore wind or solar parks harvesting our abundant supplies of free wind and solar energy, failing to build any of the grid-scale energy storge systems developed by British universities. And killing further investment in N Sea windfarms with their odious and retrospective Electricity Generator Tax.
This disastrous situation is a direct result of the failed privatisation of the old CEGB and the National Grid – thank goodness for the interconnectors to Europe. The government is now forced into controlling the price consumers pay for household energy via the energy price cap, which is the start of re-nationalisation
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
February 28, 2024
The tax on generators does not apply to any that take up or already have a CFD, nor does it apply to other subsidies such as ROCs and FiTs.. It therefore has no influence on investment, except perhaps as a warning that when the government gets desperate it will finally find ways to tax green mega profits.
The lack of new investment plans for offshore wind is down to misplaced government optimism about the real cost: they assumed it could be provided cheaply, only to find they will have to pay perhaps three times the number they first thought of. Still we have net zealots telling us that wind is cheap, when even ignoring all the integration costs – more pylons, batteries, synchronous condensers, back up generation, etc. – it is clearly going to cost rather more than gas generation, currently trading around £60/MWh in today’s money: the AR6 auction assumes around £100/MWh in today’s money, with little certainty about how many bids it will attract.
February 27, 2024
It’s going to cost Trillions and all to save <1% of Global CO2 (which will be taken up by China in weeks or even days)
February 27, 2024
Communism leads to queues for resources because there is no motivation to outperform or even meet production targets. Our electricity generating policy is communist in nature and assumes it will be alright.
Please get real and use proven technologies which have longevity.
February 27, 2024
Er,no;the planned economy leads to that.There was plenty of genuine worker motivation in the early Soviet Union. Are you aware of the term Stakhanovite and what it means?
February 28, 2024
Stakhanovites kept themselves out of the GULAGs, while readily condemning their fellow workers. The motivation was survival. Read Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak.
February 27, 2024
Another day, fresh evidence of another attack upon the people by this rotten government.
Energy security is not a new concept: A. Merkel’s folly of Russian gas replacing nuclear was a reminder.
February 27, 2024
Spain still intends to close it’s remaining nuclear plants over the next few years;it is already one of the largest European buyers of Russian LNG.
The first deliveries are due from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project in the next few months-I have read that this will be the world’s largest LNG facility when fully operational.Most output will go to Asia along the Northern Sea Route which will be operational throughout the year from this year on.
February 28, 2024
The Russians stopped publishing details of ship movements in the Arctic shortly after the start of the Ukraine war. However, AIS does pick up the vessels when they get to an Asian port. Transit times on the route go up sharply in the peak ice season months, which delay the vessel’s return as well. The result is that in winter, LNG for Asian destinations gets trans-shipped either off Murmansk or Northern Norway, or via Zeebrugge and Montoir, which can actually pump across the dock to a second vessel that makes the long haul voyage via warm water seas. I monitor the vessel movements for signs of any changes in policy. The Chinese are now avoiding Suez, going via the Cape of Good Hope, which also adds to voyage times and ship utilisation. Fortunately the relatively mild winter and reduced gas use in Europe means that the market is well supplied.
Arctic sea ice has been at levels not seen in 15 years this winter. The evidence that the levels are cyclical, and perhaps related to the ~60 year AMO cycle is mounting. The Russians will need their atomic ice breakers to assist the Arc 7 class LNG ships (which can cope with 2m ice unassisted) if they are to have any hope of making much use of the route in winter.
February 28, 2024
No, F57. Merkel’s folly was to renege on the Minsk agreement that she signed as guarantor. Now Germany is becoming an economic basket case. Her SDP successors have no idea what to do, except muzzling the public’s right to criticise government policy.
February 27, 2024
Mr Sunak is no doubt fully aware of what Net Zero will bring about. But he also knows his time in office is limited so will not address the fundamental problems.
National Grid’s estimate of NZ costs is £3 trillion, but that is confined to grid related costs and not all the knock on cost consequences. Labour in government will make matters worse with their inane commitment to decarbonising the energy grids by 2030. Unless we have informed debate and policy change soon there will be blackouts and economic depression. Only then would government have to change course, but by then deindustrialisation will be irrevocable and with a catastrophic effect on new business investment.
February 27, 2024
MPC : “Unless we have informed debate and policy change soon there will be blackouts and economic depression. Only then would government have to change course, but by then deindustrialisation will be irrevocable and with a catastrophic effect on new business investment.”
That is the plan. All based upon the false narrative that we have CAGW caused by the burning of hydrocarbon fuels and outrageously propagandised by our state broadcaster, the BBC, who have unilaterally decided to not allow any alternative view to be broadcast. Such an anti-democratic attack on our freedom of spech is a national disgrace.
February 27, 2024
Only the Eco Extremists and the pathetic politicians in the Westminster Uni-Party think the reliance on so-called renewables is a viable strategy. It clearly isn’t.
I have no Smart Meter and no EV, and I’m not intending to get either. Even IF I got an EV, I can’t charge it from home and I couldn’t use it to power my house, even IF I wanted to. Dorset Council has just issued (an expensive) piece of propaganda in which it boasts that their aim is to have an EV charging point within a 10 minute WALK of everyone living in a Dorset town. Then they’ll think about the villages.
A ten minute WALK translates into half a mile. So their plan is to have ONE charging point every half a mile. It’s ludicrous!
Net Zero …. a policy created by Extremists which is only supported by idiots.
February 27, 2024
Government saying it takes energy seriously is merely a string of empty words. “We take xxxx extremely seriously” is typically the weak fill-the-blank response used after each major failing is exposed, whether it is health, security, safety, crime, waste or much else.
Action is needed. This government is lax and incompetent, firing on blanks, lacking even the energy to maintain itself.
February 27, 2024
“We take xxxx extremely seriously” for a few nanoseconds before it is consigned to a wastebin.
February 27, 2024
Sunout keeps telling us he has a plan and the Tory’s are sticking to it. Out here in the real world whatever the plan is, it isn’t working and everything is broken.
February 27, 2024
Do the politicians ever look at http://www.gridwatch? When you look at the weekly or monthly charts its clear that as the wind blows, gas generation goes down, but when the wind does not blow, gas generation goes up to meet demand. They mirror image each other. We cannot survive with wind turbines. All wind does is enable us to burn less gas. But the country – unless you are happy to have black-outs on the days the wind doesn’t blow – needs a consistent, reliable and cheap base load of electricity.
So easy to fix. Get fracking. Get a gas surplus and export. Get more cash in the coffers. More taxes paid by the workers. Bigger supply chain. More income tax. The community 100,000 UKP per well and then 1% of revenue or free gas / elec to residents and businesses with 2 miles. If they allowed fracking at Preston New Road – a deprived area outside of Blackpool – and gave nearby businesses free gas / electricity, businesses would run to the place. It is so easy.
February 27, 2024
“The government says it takes energy security seriously so it encourages more wind and solar.”
An oxymoronic position statement, all the better understood if we correctly substitute “wind and solar” with “unreliables”.
February 27, 2024
“The government says it takes energy security seriously” How can it, so much of it is not just under Foreign ownership but also is Foreign Nationalised Companies subject to the discretion of the elected power in that foreign country.
It is not so long ago the French authorities said ‘do as we say or we cut off your electricity supply’. That is not energy security, that in not energy resilience that is being held hostage, subject to ‘blackmail’ on the whims of a foreign power.
This same foreign government held a gun to this Conservative Government and said give us more money or we won’t build your power stations, the government said no but paid up. Now a couple of months late they have come back for even more – still discussing. All this is on top of the additional subsidies over and above the market rate for any supplies delivered.
It goes on the UK paid the French Government a poultry! £1.5 Billion last year to keep the flow going through the inter-connect.
‘Taking energy security seriously’?
February 27, 2024
It goes on and on how much has this Conservative Government just promised to pay in extra subsidies for the Danish Government to supply the UK’s green wind energy. They are paying the Government in Denmark more for them creating our UK renewables than the going rate and considerably more than consuming our own gas – a Conservative Government claim that is misplaced
Then you have the Norwegian Government extracting oil/gas from the UK using their own taxpaying citizens to do the work, using their own Norwegian equipment, then selling all out put on the open market with all taxes paid in Norway. If the UK wants to use its own oil/gas they have to buy it on the open market.
You can’t blame these foreign governments for exploiting the UK and its taxpaying citizens, the give away is a Conservative Government that is anti-UK
February 28, 2024
Equinor will pay UK taxes on their production in the UKCS. The only currently producing field operated in the UKCS is Mariner. Probably their interest in wind farms (Dudgeon, Hywind, Sheringham Shoal) now rival it for revenues.
February 27, 2024
….. and we take their illegal immigrants who could be turned back or taken back the same day. The rest of their excuses is just lies, b/s and secret deals by a weak, woke useless Tory Government.
February 27, 2024
Please can we dismiss the delusion that batteries are any kind of solution to energy storage? Currently, the degradation of a battery during its recycle costs more than the energy exchanged.
Batteries are a good solution to emergency power, to keep the emergency lights on during a power cut. They can’t be relied on to run the oven.
The best forms of energy storage currently are unburnt coal and gas and nuclear fuel. If renewables are necessary, drill 5 miles down into the rock where the heat can generate steam to run turbines, must be easier than all that mining for battery minerals.
February 28, 2024
I have seen two recent incidents where batteries appear to have failed to do the job of providing emergency power. One in Victoria, Australia, where a storm on February 13th downed key transmission lines and caused wind farms to be taken offline, with the loss of transmission also leading to a big coal station having no means to export its output. Batteries made some attempt to handle the early shut down of some wind, but failed to make a meaningful contribution when the main transmission and coal was lost, resulting in further wind and solar being tripped out and blackouts across the state.
The other was on 22nd December here in the UK, where a trip of 1GW on the IFA1 interconnector from France resulting in a cascade of other generating loss with grid frequency falling to 49.275 Hz before Dinorwig span up to full power. There was a danger of further frequency fall, and a repeat of the August 2019 blackout scenario. The battery response that normally would have handled a 1GW interconnector trip by injecting power as soon as the frequency dropped below 49.8 Hz, holding it above say 49.65 Hz as a minimum simply was missing entirely. The reaction speed needed to halt frequency excursions is related to grid inertia: at the time there was almost 50% wind, so inertia was a little on the low side. Another 10 seconds or less without adequate response and there would have been blackouts. Increase the wind and solar close to 100%, and the available reaction time falls. If the batteries fail there won’t be time to do anything else.
We are still waiting for any proper report from National Grid about this incident. Perhaps JR can ask them next time he passes the Wokingham control centre.
February 27, 2024
Perhaps the only way Politicians will learn, is when the power actually goes off, perhaps we need a smart meter in Parliament, as soon as we switch on an inter connecter, then power to Parliament and No 10 should automatically be cut off.
Same with food, Parliamentary restaurants should only be offering food which is home grown.
The only way the fools will learn, is if they are made to suffer first hand the real affects of their policies, because many of them appear absolutely bloody clueless.
February 27, 2024
Nice to have something smart in Parliament! Our host exempted.
February 27, 2024
….and lots of sections of PIR lighting around and overhead the H of C, and the H of L – so that when areas are empty (!) or no movement (nodding off) – the taxpayer will save money on lighting turning off.
February 27, 2024
Our government and Parliament are working against the interests of those whom they pretend to serve on behalf of a globalist cabal intent on controlling the majority and further enriching themselves.
February 27, 2024
There is an expensive paradox in adding more intermittent generation as the back up gas generation wil be used less but 80-90% of our total capacity is still needed for windless weeks and they will have to charge a very high price to keep their vital resources available.
February 28, 2024
The T-4 auction cleared at a price of £65/kW/a yesterday. In fact, less capacity was offered than the government wanted to procure, so they are going to have to play catch-up later on. That price should be enough to pay for newbuild gas generation if it were offered on a life of plant contract. However, threats of either being closed down or required to add on CCS with no guarantee on how that would be paid for mean that only gas powered reciprocating engines rather than OCGT plant offered and won supply. Most of the so-called new build was short duration batteries, which is OK if you are only concerned about meeting a power peak, but quite useless in a prolonged period of Dunkelflaute where you won’t have the capacity to recharge it.
February 27, 2024
Its an out right lie to name a government department ‘energy security’ that doesn’t use fracking shale gas, coal, coke and offshore oil & gas …this governments idea of energy security is to purchase energy via interconnectors at huge cost ….
February 27, 2024
Dear Mr. Redwood,
This Conservative government, of which you are an MP, also has plans to pump solar energy from Morocco to Britain through an undersea cable 2,500 miles long. It has been described by the government as a nationally significant project.
Lack of energy? No, it is a lack of brains that afflicts this most useless of useless governments.
February 27, 2024
APJ :
Has the Government explained how they will protect this 2500 mile undersea cable from hostile attack?
We don’t even have the military cabability to defend the hundreds of thosands of square kilometres of fixed and floating offshore wind turbines around our own coast which they intend to build for our major source of energy.
The CCC and DESNZ may be working for “the Government”, but which government?
February 27, 2024
We keep being told that renewable energy is cheaper but my supplier claims to supply me with 100% renewable energy and it is exactly the same price everyone else pays. Renewable energy will NEVER be cheaper for the consumer – taxes and massive subsidies to producers will see to that. The only people benefitting financially from renewable energy are the companies producing it – time for a windfall tax on their profits.
February 27, 2024
Perhaps politicians have not yet realised what actually using your car as a power source actually means.
Every time a battery (any battery) is charged or discharged, it loses a very tiny percentage of its capacity and so become less efficient.
I understand that many EV manufacturers now guarantee the battery capacity life in percentage terms of degradation, based on the number of charging cycles.
Eg A battery will still hold a capacity of 80% over 500 charging cycles etc.
Anyone who has used battery powered hand tools will know that the battery will slowly lose capacity over its working life, until such time as it will only last a few minutes on a full charge rather than a couple of hours, that is why many are sold with tow batteries and a charger.
Any one with a mobile phone knows batteries do not last forever.
Who in their right mind would voluntarily use a £10,000+ battery in their car on a regular basis to power up their home, and accelerate its demise.
Madness utter madness, AGAIN ! .
February 27, 2024
From the MsM – “Rishi Sunak’s raid on workers and businesses will cost the country an extra £100bn in taxes by the end of this decade just as surging net migration piles more pressure on public services, the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned.”
It would appear we have more proof that this anti-UK Conservative Government is digging in and piling on the UKs destruction.
How many years? How many promises? Each and every time they get to do the opposite of all pronouncements
February 27, 2024
Well said David, most politicians are parrots without a brain! Unfortunately they are louder that those with intelligence.
Next time I hope a lot of the greenies are redundant.
February 27, 2024
Our energy situation shows we have both a Government and an Opposition who are incompetent. There has obviously been no proper research or planning for cheap, reliable energy, the basis of a modern, prosperous economy. No proper research or analysis of whether Net Zero is correct, and whether we need the stupid and costly laws to get us there.
Net Zero is nonsense and easy to disprove. Building two energy systems is nonsense , as is turning the building of SMRs into a competition. For goodness sake back Rolls Royce and the UK!
Sir John, you must insist that the PM listens to the well-qualified scientists who know Net Zero is a wrong policy.
You know it is nonsense, but skirt around stating it to try and influence people without offending them. But it is now time to put a stake in the ground and say loud and clear Net Zero is a myth we will never achieve, and far more important, we don’t need to!
February 27, 2024
Whilst I also oppose the serious dangers of ‘green’, I find it largely impossible to believe that you really oppose ‘the government’, because it is your party. You are intensely loyal to it whatever dangers it comes up with or whatever failures it allows.
Consequently the result is that the country and the people come second to you. You will never abandon tbe party however much we suffer and are destroyed. Can it do anything which convinces you you must leave? Surely you could survive outside it. Others have put their beliefs first. They are abused of course.
February 27, 2024
Energy impoverishment is the future, it seems. Netzero will eventually make sure that happens.
You can’t believe in netzero and then expect a plentiful supply of cheap energy – the two are incompatible…. and we all know where HMG intentions lie: Total impoverishment!
No matter how many windmills they put up they will never replace oil and gas for the creation of energy – Doesn’t everybody know this by now?
It’s not hard to extrapolate where this is all taking us. Those that can still think for themselves have worked out where the globalists are taking us, and it is far from pretty, and very far from a decent world where Man can be free and live well without government suppression!
February 27, 2024
In the three main areas where we expect Government to get it right – National security, energy security and food security Westminster and the civil service do not have a clue.
February 27, 2024
Sums up the ‘lies’ around Drax. The National Audit Offices recent report states ‘ the government cannot demonstrate its current arrangements are adequate to give it confidence industry is meeting sustainability standards or give it assurance over the billions of pounds of subsidies involved’
Ministers are ignoring this and the fact that it actually increases CO2 emissions (whilst we are all battered to reduce ours) to consult on the renewing of the subsidy.
Nothing to with their failed energy policy needing this output or the umpteen jobs at stake. Please don’t crowbar what the opposition might do to try and deflect blame.
Looking at the mess you have made (Sizewell billions over budget, decade late and finishing pushed even further out/promised Nuclear not even at planning stage) you have zero right to criticise others.
February 27, 2024
Ps Hinckley Point not Sizewell C. This one will of course be late with HMG no doubt signing an appalling.contract.
February 27, 2024
Nigl :
A few notes re Hinkley Point C (HPC) & EDF’s EPR :
– A recent video from EDF partly blames the increasing costs on the ONR for requesting 7000 design changes to adapt to UK regulations requiring 35% more steel and 25% more concrete. A claim which the ONR has of course denied :
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c/news-views/january-2024-project-update
https://news.onr.org.uk/2024/01/hinkley-point-c-project-update/
– Note that the same technology, EDF’s EPR at Olkiluoto, Finland, although also very late, is supplying electricity at £53/MWhr, half the price of the next renewable auction (AR6) for unreliable, chaotically intermittent fixed offshore wind (over £100/MWhr (2023 price)) and nearly 60% cheaper than HPC at £128.09/MWhr (2023 price). And of course wind requires a full hydrocarbon backup system in addition, or hydrogen storage doubling the price again according to the Royal Society’s Large-Scale Electricity Storage report.
– Professor Dieter Helm of Oxford University told the BBC that the cost of HPC would have been halved if the Government (Cameron, Osborne & Davey) had borrowed the money itself instead of using Chinese capital at 9%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44363366
– A Secretary of State for BEIS wrote to my MP to say there would have been a £30bn saving if HPC had been financed by RAB instead of CfD.
– EDF say, quite rightly, that unlike the French who have kept their nuclear industry going, the building of HPC after two decades of no nuclear construction since Sizewell B was completed in 1995 meant that they had to train up a very large workforce and supply chain. The building of subsequent HPCs will be much cheaper provided we keep the project going.
February 28, 2024
I still wouldn’t choose the problematic EPR technology. Much better to go with proven Korean or Japanese designs, and tell the ONR to learn that we won’t suffer an ML9 earthquake for at least 200 million years when the tectonic plates shift.
February 28, 2024
Mark :
I agree with you that EDF EPR technology is “problematic” and better nuclear technology could and should have been selected. But, as they say, “we are where we are” and EDF’s EPR holds the trump card that it has ONR approval unlike any other designs available. If we were to change technology the communists in Parliament and the ONR would ensure no further large scale nuclear build for a decade or more while we await their approval. They have scuppered the ordering of RR SMRs, which was expected to be this year by introducing instead a competition which will not be decided for another 5 years in 2029. A deliberate delaying tactic.
We are going to be so short of energy that the correct approach is to run at least 2 large scale and two small scale (SMR) technologies and start immediately with ordering more EDF EPRs and RR SMRs.
February 28, 2024
There is no reason not to be able to fast track proven designs through the approvals process except a lack of political will. It’s what M Boiteux achieved in France, pushing an accelerated programme of nuclear building.
February 27, 2024
EV’s are a complete disaster. Hydrogen, wind, solar will not work in large scale for lots of reasons. Nuclear is the only non fossil fuel that works. Climate policies are a catastrophe. Immigration policies are a catastrophe. Foreign policies are a catastrophe. We are heading for absolute disaster due to government ignorance, stupidity and greed. Your entire profession, Mr Redwood, is a threat to out society, economy and lives.
February 27, 2024
Sir John I’m more concerned about the lack of energy in recruitment of senior figures to join Reform.
Clearly Mr Anderson has considered, you would get the reins of our economy and taxation.
Should the likes of Mordaunt, Braverman, Truss, Frost, Badenoch etc switch I suspect the polls for Reform would suddenly zoom into contention.
February 27, 2024
There is no intention to provide sufficient energy as evidenced by the selection of expensive, unreliable chaotically intermittent renewables with no plans for storage over either hydrocarbons or nuclear despite both being abundant, reliable and cheaper.
The Government will have a further renewables auction later this year (AR6) with fixed offshore wind at £100.27/MWhr and floating at £241.75/MWhr (2023 prices). This is twice the price quoted by RR to a recent HoC ES&NZ Select Committee for their SMRs and twice the price of EDF’s EPR technology (the same as Hinkley Point C (HPC)) in Finland. HPC was made expensive by a combination of the ONR’s regulations and by Cameron, Osborne and Davey selecting the Chinese to finance the project at 9% when the interest rate was 2%.
According to the Royal Society’s “large-Scale Electricity Storage” report the price of electricity will double again to make renewable electricity reliable and dispatchable thus making the price 4 times that of nuclear (both large and small).
Gas is half the price of renewables once the carbon tax has been removed.
February 27, 2024
“The government says it takes energy security seriously so it encourages more wind and solar.”
How can renewables possibly provide energy security when :
1) The basic infrastructure (wind turbines and solar panels) are supplied by a state described by our security services as “hostile”?
2) We will need to protect our major source of energy spread out over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of the North Sea and other surrounding seas plus all the many thousands of kilometres of undersea cable either from offshore wind generators or from connections with mainland Europe? All susceptible to attack from cheap airborne or submarine drones.
Far fewer nuclear plants would be easier to protect, and if SMRs are employed, because of their small size, they could even be built underground. Large nuclear plants are even built to withstand a falling aircraft.
February 27, 2024
Demand for energy across Europe is going to continue to increase at an ever-accelerating rate for all the reasons we have been discussing here for months.
We cannot rely on the interconnectors in future so we must ensure we are self sufficient as soon as possible.
It makes no sense to close down perfectly-functioning fossil fuel plants while the government is delaying building SMRs by the Civil Service’s insistence on their ludicrous beauty parade.
Ministers should just have given a contract to Rolls-Royce for at least the first ten SMRs and start preparing sites for many more.
The export potential is enormous and we are in danger of losing the lead that RR already have.
February 27, 2024
Are you aware that the data used by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to justify net zero was just a single year? So, they underestimated the energy storage needed to provide year-round electricity by an order of magnitude. The basis of approval by MPs to target net zero was false data. Is anyone going to call them out on this?
Batteries and pump storage cannot store enough energy to cope with long periods of low wind in the winter. Hydrogen is a very inefficient way of storing energy. Combined cycle gas capacity is the only backup solution, but it will be costly if only used occasionally.
A better solution is to commission greater base-load capacity. The best candidates for this are the Moroccan wind/solar scheme, mini-nuclear and tidal with battery backup.
February 28, 2024
JF : “A better solution is to commission greater base-load capacity. The best candidates for this are the Moroccan wind/solar scheme, mini-nuclear and tidal with battery backup.”
Mini nuclear (SMRs) can provide “base load capacity” but chaotically intermittent Moroccan wind/solar cannot and neither can intermittent tidal. And how would you protect the thousands of miles of cable between Morocco and the UK from terrorist attack?
February 27, 2024
“It assumes many more people will own an electric vehicle and will be prepared to plug it into their home and run down the battery to heat and fuel the home when renewable power is scarce.”
The idea is to power the grid, not one’s home! And if every single bev vehicle battery was drained into the grid there still wouldn’t be sufficient energy for one day at peak demand, never mind the following day.
The 2023 National Grid ESO Future Energy Scenario report shows for LW 2035, the current decarbonisation date (Labour wish to advance this date to 2030) a maximum vehicle-to-grid supply of 28 GW of power when peak demand could be 82 GW.
And we know that for days at a time in winter there can be next to zero wind and solar power (dunkelflaute).
February 27, 2024
Batteries are useless, dangerous and expensive.
Hydrogen is expensive, technically difficult, dangerous and requires a huge input of energy.
Pumped storage is hampered by a lack of sites and will never supply base load.
The actual answer is…….
Get Fracking !!!
February 27, 2024
Fully agree, lets make UK energy the cheapest in europe, lets please the people & business
February 27, 2024
“Many people are resisting having a smart meter as they do not like this idea.”
Many people realise that electrification to more expensive, less practical, and even more dangerous, alternatives is to :
1) Make us more reliant upon China, a state described by our security services as “hostile”, as China controls so much of the metals and minerals required.
2) Impoverish us with much higher costs for electric power, heating and transport.
3) Control us through the use of smart meters.
4) Make our energy and control systems less stable and more exposed to foreign hacking.
February 27, 2024
Installation targets were missed because home owners a)declined, then b)refused, then c)accepted an installation date but were not at home, and if technically competent built a Faraday cage around the site of the internet transmitter.
February 27, 2024
We do not seem to have clear policies on most things nowadays – why is that ?. There is political and economic mayhem and no end to this seems to be on the horizon . I know where I put the blame but I’m getting a bit bored making the same observations all the time .
February 27, 2024
B+Y : “There is political and economic mayhem and no end to this seems to be on the horizon.”
The reason is because a majority of Government/Parliament is either complicit with the fifth column communists in the Civil Service, quangos and regulatory bodies who are running the country and thus determined to destroy our economy with Net Zero and our culture/social cohesion with mass immigration or are incapable of realising what is happening, or simply don’t care.
February 27, 2024
“Given the delays in rolling out hydrogen and large battery with extra grid it is probably necessary to add more combined cycle gas capacity for the transition. This is what Germany is now thinking of doing.”
Correct, and to replace their coal-fired power stations which currently supply 33% of their electricity.
France, which is the biggest exporter of electricity in the EU with £3bn exports last year, has just decided to build a further 6 EDF EPRs (3 Hinkley Point Cs) starting in 2027. France already has 56 operable reactors generating 61 GW compared to our 9 reactors producing just 6 GW.
Renewable electricity is already twice the price of nuclear (large or small) and doubles again, according to the Royal Society’s “Large-Scale Electricity Storage” report using hydrogen for storage, to make its electricity reliable and dispatchable
Instead of cheaper, reliable and secure (no Chinese supplies) nuclear our government wants to expand our insecure, unreliable, chaotically intermittent, more expensive Chinese supplied renewables.
Now why would that be?
They cannot use the CAGW/Net Zero anthropogenic CO2 emissions excuse.
February 28, 2024
We could all do with a Marcel Boiteux, the father of the French nuclear industry, who pushed hard to use cost effective Westinghouse technology over the French design of the day as the foundation of the highly successful French nuclear programme. EPRs are high cost and problematic, even before the ONR messes with them.
February 28, 2024
Mark :
I agree with you that EDF EPR’s are up until now “high cost and problematic”. But they hold the trump card that they have been approved by the ONR and unfortunately I see no “Marcel Boiteux” appearing to force parliament/ONR to accept designs approved elsewhere in any sensible timescale. To avoid further delay I would be quite happy to accept the same price for electricity as the EDF EPR at Olkiluoto, Finland at £53/MWhr and trust that EDF will sort out the problems as they build further copies both in France and the UK. But, since we are in dire need of energy it would make sense to push the ONR to approve a second technology/design to run alongside the EDF EPRs. Also to push the Government/ONR to place immediately orders for the RR SMRs whilst running the existing competition for a second technology for SMRs. We are going to need all this energy and two types for both large and small nuclear would be prudent.
With the correct funding, both Olkiluoto and the RR SMRs are half the price of the AR6 fixed offshore wind and provide reliable, not chaotically intermittent, power.
So why are the Government not doing this?
February 27, 2024
It’s the same as a Welsh shepherd saying he’s achieved lamb produce security by buying lamb from New Zealand
February 27, 2024
It seems the Houthis have just cut an underwater communication cable between India and Europe in the Red Sea. Undersea cables bringing us (very expensive) energy is 100% not taking energy security seriously.
February 27, 2024
The BRICS nations will take over security in this region in due course;their navies,in various combinations, have been conducting exercises in recent years.Regional players that are now BRICS members include Saudi,Iran,UAE,Egypt and Ethiopia(which now has access to the sea).Our presence will not be required.Other BRICS members like China and Russia are not seeing their shipping in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden attacked.
The UAE has recently withdrawn from and closed down the base it had in Eritrea to combat the Houthis.I understand Saudi shipping is not being attacked either-the rapprochement with Iran is clearly paying off.
February 27, 2024
Andre :
Does our Government know how many Houthis are now in the country having come across the Channel as illegals on the small boats?
I expect they simply don’t know or even care.
February 27, 2024
The largest backup battery in the world is in Australia. If called on to back up the grid, it can do so, for a matter of just several minutes. If we were to go down that route in the UK, where would that battery be placed? These huge lithium batteries are a demonstrable hazard if thermal runaway occurs. Just imagine the damage and harm that would occur to people, livestock and the environment should that occur. It would be a little more than expensive madness with today’s technology to go down that route.
We have become increasingly reliant on pulling power from the interconnectors. It is claimed and may well be true for all I know that we export power, but how much and when is unclear. The fact is, that we have been relying on the interconnectors to keep our lights on and if, for any reason, one or more of them became unavailable, the lights would go out.
This sceptred isle is sat on huge reserves of coal, surrounded by seas that could provide gas and oil and once with plentiful sources of fish, all seemingly being thrown away. it seems clear that our fishing grounds have been given away to the French in order to protect our interest in their interconnector. In other words, the UK has surrender surrendered its fishing rights to the potential disconnection of the interconnectors.
Truly, we are ruled by people who are unable to face facts, despite clear evidence that the chosen route can only lead to the UK losing much of what remains of its industry base and standards of living foe the common people.
February 27, 2024
I’m afraid the political class, in total, is going to run out of power in every sense of the word.
February 27, 2024
Liam Halligan in the S. Telegraph highlighted the shocking disparity between end user electricity prices in the UK and those in Europe and America. In January UK domestic end users paid some 60% more than the EU average.UK industrial users are also suffering the same disadvantage to the great detriment of the UK economy.
The EU no longer has the advantage of cheap Russian gas so why is the disparity so high ? It seems at the moment that the higher the proportion of renewables , the higher the price. This does not bode well for the future.
February 27, 2024
aka – getting screwed.
February 27, 2024
And further to my earlier comment about the disparity between UK and European prices it seems as if the intermittent nature of renewables may be the biggest problem ; and the higher the ratio of renewables the greater the problem.
There are only two solutions ; more battery storage , probably fairly expensive and not very green ,or SMRs. We have a national champion of SMRs in the shape of Rolls Royce – roll them out !
February 27, 2024
RT : “….more battery storage , probably fairly expensive…”
According to the Royal Society’s “Large-Scale Electricity Storage” report we would need to store 55 TWhrs (e)
Taking Europe’s biggest battery, supplied by Tesla, which can store 196MWhrs, located at Pillswood near Cottingham, East Yorkshire, cost £75m, the battery cost would be 21 £trillion.
And it’s unlikely we could obtain all the matetials to build the batteries.
Your other idea, to start building RR SMRs is the route to go. But here the Government has opened up the contract to competition in order to delay a decision until 2029….Now why would they do that I wonder?
February 27, 2024
I note Cleverley’s expressed his wholehearted support for the loathsome Khan and hung Anderson out to dry.
Cleverley’s demand to Anderson is a new low for the Tory party. Cleverley should be labelled persona non grata. The man is utterly shameful. Khan and Labour will be dancing a jig.
Anderson is being pushed out of the party by grovelling snobs
Dig into Khan’s past and what is revealed should terrify us all and Cleverly wants Anderson to grovel to this man?
It is the duty of every Tory MP to condemn Cleverly and his attempt to humiliate Anderson who is simply expressing the sentiment of tens of millions of British people of all races and faiths
February 27, 2024
In fairness Cleverly is thick.
February 27, 2024
The current and probably severe lack of energy is ALL down to the distinct lack of intelligence, research, knowledge, experience and plain old common sense, of those running this project.
Whatever the side of the fence one may be on, the single fact remains, our emissions are NOTHING compared with the big emitters of the world. So why are we literally breaking the bank and devastating households across the country to achieve a nonsensical target of Net Zero BEFORE any of those real ‘baddies’ substantially reduce their own levels?
And why are we buying gas from the USA fracking programmes when we have our own? Can they not do the maths?
Whatever carbon emissions are saved here is always countered by the USA making up our orders, so there is zero net gain. BUT! We have to pay the USA instead of using our own, AND there will be an increase in the carbon emissions due to the thousands of sea miles the gas has to cross to be transported to the UK. This is where common sense should kick in and would do IF we had a sensible Government that puts OUR country and the British people FIRST. It’s not rocket science it’s simple deduction. What is the matter with ‘them’ in Downing Street?
February 27, 2024
“This [lack of energy] is alarming and shows the dangers to security and self sufficiency from premature fossil fuel plant closures and undue reliance on intermittent renewables.
This is all because of the myth that we have CAGW caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 from burning hydrocarbons and that we must unilaterally implement Net Zero even though we emit only 1% of all global CO2 emissions. The fact that our national broadcaster, the BBC, has unilaterally taken a decision to refuse to allow any democratic discussion on this subject is a national disgrace.
CAGW does not exist, as shown by Happer & Wijngaarden whose calculations on the real atmosphere, including water vapour, unlike the IPCC models, show a negligible increase in GHG when atmospheric CO2 is doubled. Solving the equation of transfer, originally developed by astrophysicists to calculate the radiation loss from a star such as the sun, their results, the ultimate test of any scientific work or theory, match the observed data so impressively well they can even show, correctly, that atmospheric CO2 actually cools rather than warms above Antarctica. Go to the CO2 Coalition website or YouTube ‘CO2, The Gas of Life, William Happer’ for the details.
February 27, 2024
“The government says it takes energy security seriously so it encourages more wind and solar.”
The communist ‘s reason for the oxymoronic naming of their department of energy, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, is the same reason that communist countries often put “Democratic” into the name of their country.
February 27, 2024
And ~ if not already said above ~ who pays for the new car batteries once they have been charged and discharged daily to destruction to make up for the lack of reliable national generating capacity?
February 27, 2024
From today’s MsM
Delays to French-built nuclear power stations will leave the UK at risk of blackouts by 2028, new research has warned.
The cost of building Hinkley Point C, which is under construction in Somerset, has risen from £18bn to £46bn – equivalent to £700 for everyone in the UK. – Started in 2016 with a budget of £18Billion, risen to £46Billion and the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire says even more is needed for the French State Nationalised business for them to complete the job.
Britain already relies on its European neighbours for electricity supplies. In the first half of 2023 a record 13pc of the UK’s electricity was imported, generating import bills of £2bn, government figures show.
Meanwhile Westinghouse has announced they hope to be permitted to construct of 3 privately funded and run SMR’s Teesside in Teesside – ’Private’. Westinghouse Nuclear was previously owned by British Nuclear (UK taxpayer owned) until the Labour Party declared that Nuclear had no part to play in the UK’s future, or if the told the truth just as with this Conservative Government they were just desperate for money to prop up an ailing Government.
From Sir John
‘It is quite wrong to be so dependent in imports. It loses us jobs, costs us tax revenues, puts big strains on our balance of payments. The EU is energy short, so it is very dangerous to rely on imports from them.’
Then we get ‘The government says it takes energy security seriously’
February 28, 2024
I have remarked elsewhere that a Department that claims to be for something is actually against it.
See e.g.
Department for Transport
Department for Energy Security
etc.
It’s the modern Minitrue, and just as untruthful.
February 27, 2024
Tory manifesto 2019 –
‘Our world-leading offshore wind industry will reach 40GW by 2030, and we will enable new floating wind farm’
Why didn’t any Tory MP question this ?
February 27, 2024
What the manifesto didn’t say is that the cost of energy would rise tenfold for net-zero
February 27, 2024
Jam tomorrow – -the most ridiculous assurance.
February 27, 2024
Do the politicians ever look at gridwatch website? When you look at the weekly or monthly charts its clear that as the wind blows, gas generation goes down, but when the wind does not blow, gas generation goes up to meet demand. They mirror image each other. We cannot survive with wind turbines. All wind does is enable us to burn less gas. But the country – unless you are happy to have black-outs on the days the wind doesn’t blow – needs a consistent, reliable and cheap base load of electricity.
So easy to fix. Get fracking. Get a gas surplus and export. Get more cash in the coffers. More taxes paid by the workers. Bigger supply chain. More income tax. The community gets 100,000 UKP per well and then 1% of revenue or arrange to give free gas / elec to residents and businesses with 2 miles. If they allowed fracking at Preston New Road – a deprived area outside of Blackpool – and gave nearby businesses free gas / electricity, businesses would run to the place. It is so easy.
February 27, 2024
Well said; gas is relatively cheap and pretty clean. Also plans to plans to take down the gas distribution network must be put on hold for the moment; gas delivered to the house for heating is 90% efficient; the same gas used to generate electricity in that house would only deliver 50% efficiency.
February 27, 2024
I thought that nuclear power was included in renewables. I know it’s expensive, particularly if eventual decommissioning is taken into account, bit I would have thought that 20% of our energy coming from nuclear power would be about right. Offshore wind generates electricity in the wrong place; expect distribution costs to rise. There is a case for small wind farms and nuclear power stations built close to towns and cities. What are the security implications?
February 28, 2024
The government hasn’t been serious about energy security for decades and as far as I can see net zero is a useful excuse rather than a reason. If it were serious about net zero is would promote and subsidise the establishment of manufacturing of key systems and components – solar panels, wind generators, power and digital electronics not to mention nuclear. They certainly do this when they are serious about something – property development and banking for example.
And there is certainly subsidy of hydrocarbons, specifically the large proportion of petrol and diesel that are imported to the UK, not least the military activity in the Red Sea protecting imports of Russian sourced fuel.
50% of gas is imported from the USA, without investment we have no energy security whichever direction we go while fracking and the North Sea are only a partial and temporary answer.
increases in power costs.