Considering the number of additional, avoidable winter deaths due solely to Fuel Poverty caused by exorbitant electricity prices, if that happened in private industry, directors would possibly face charges of Corporate Manslaughter.

At the beginning of the year the UK Met Office seemed to think it would be a hot year this year. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/21/met-office-2013-warmest-years

Umm, good at prediction aren’t they?

To arrive at the 2050 position of cutting CO2 by 80% we would need to replace all home heating and most of our transport fuels with energy from a carbon free source. The principal way do this is would appear to be by carbon free electricity [or the products of electricity say hydrogen]

By my count we should need about 300,000 MW of installed electrical capacity to do this [80/20 x 75,000 =300,000] Carbon capture & storage CCS loses about a third of the electricity to power the process and in any event doesn’t catch all to CO2; wind power needs ‘back-up’ [usually from fossil fuel] on standby to cope with intermittency and in practice wind saves little or no CO2. So the answer would seem to be 100 Hinkley Point ‘C’ nuclear power stations at only £1,400 billion. say £40 billion per year!

Some how I suspect we will not complete two/three Hinkley Point power stations every year till 2050 so the goal of cutting CO2 by 80% seems doomed. We should face the facts and revoke the Climate Change Act

I was sure I’d seen it somewhere, I just didn’t expect it to be buried in:-

Home >>Products and services >>Public sector >>Contingency planners

Their 3-month outlooks are updated every month and can be found here.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publicsector/contingency-planners

i.e Their predictions for Spring 2013, made during Autumn 2012 & Winter 2012/3.

Can you help, please?

Here in Yorkshire, we were no better than average, so my guess is the UK figures will look cooler than CET.