By Paul Homewood
The United Kingdom, alongside much of Europe, now faces the worst energy crisis in living memory, perhaps the worst in the historical record.
This crisis is very unlikely to be resolved rapidly, since the causes are fundamentally political, yet Europe’s politicians, and the UK is no exception, cannot bring themselves to admit that the renewable energy obsession of climate policies in the last thirty years are to blame for the current over-exposure to natural gas.
So long as politicians fail to understand or shy away from this recognition, they will not take the necessary actions, which entail a return to fossil fuels, and will instead continue to add still more renewable energy capacity to already degraded and tottering energy systems.
The current crisis is not the result of physical fundamentals relating to fossil fuel production – gas, coal, and oil are all plentiful and the costs of production are still low – nor is it solely the result of geopolitical events, though the invasion of Ukraine has made a bad situation much worse.
The crisis is the result of the subsidised adoption of thermodynamically incompetent energy sources such as wind and solar, which only degrade the efficiency of their host economies, while contributing nothing towards security of supply. Indeed, it is because of renewables that European security of supply hangs by the single thread of natural gas, exposing the whole continent to Russia’s weaponization of energy supply.
The situation is now so desperate that only a very limited range of moves are possible, and these are in themselves hazardous. Only very brave and far-sighted governments will set out on this long march to a better energy future, and we are far from confident that political will of this strength exists in any European state.
What the UK must do is simple and difficult:
The government must admit that the 2050 Net Zero target is now not only unattainable but a positive danger to national well-being. It must be suspended until the economy and the fuel supply have been stabilised. More renewables will only serve to further weaken our energy sector and increase critical exposure to natural gas.
The government should recommit to fossil fuels, giving a clear signal to the UK’s energy companies and to fossil fuel suppliers globally. This signal could take the form of
1. The rapid granting of consents for a fleet of new Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs) of higher thermal efficiency.
2. The granting of consent for a new fleet of coal fired power stations using the Ultra-Super-Critical technology.
3. The vigorous support of both further exploration in the North Sea, and onshore through hydraulic fracturing for both natural gas and oil.
4. The scrapping of plans for Sizewell C, allocating the public money to fund the construction of two to three Small Modular Reactor (SMR) plants by 2029, awarded by competition. 50% of public support will be paid as progress payments (for agreed waypoints) and 50% as a final payment when the project is fully operation on condition that the final date of end-2029 is met.
Long before these policies begin to yield physical dividends, the hard-headed realism of such actions would calm the international financial markets, and would permit UK traders to secure long-term fossil fuel supply contracts at more advantageous prices.
However, public opinion is so confused and poorly informed by low quality journalism in the print and broadcast media, and parliament so ignorant and unrealistic, that we do not expect any foreseeable UK government to have the courage to undertake such actions. Nevertheless, further delay and self-indulgent toying with renewable energy will only delay the inevitable return to physically superior fossil fuels.
It is almost certain that things will get much worse before they get better.
UN Owns The Science!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano comments:
By Paul Homewood
Regular readers will know I have been banging the drum about this for years.
It’s nice to see that Ralph Alexander has followed it up:
Two 2022 reports by highly acclaimed international agencies – CRED (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters), a Belgian non-profit, and the WMO (World Meteorological Organization), a UN agency – insist that climate-related disasters are escalating as the world warms. But the evidence shows that such a claim is indisputably wrong.
The buffoon delivering a permanent energy crisis
By Paul Homewood
Andrew Montford slams John Armitt’s latest intervention in the energy market:
IN 2017 it was announced that windfarms had agreed to sell power to the grid at just £57 per megawatt hour. It heralded, said the cutters-and-pasters of press releases in the mainstream media, a new era of cheap renewable power. A few stubborn souls pointed out that there was no sign that windfarms were getting any cheaper to build and run, but such naysayers were shunned and insulted, and the establishment carried on as if nothing had happened.
Five years on, and the windfarms concerned are busily selling power into the open market at anything between four and ten times the prices they had agreed. Their agreements have gone unfulfilled. The extra cost to consumers is running into billions of pounds every year.
We were tricked, big time. But we live and learn by our errors. You’d have to be pretty slow on the uptake to fall for a multi-billion-pound trick like that a second time, wouldn’t you?
Full story here.
Drax Is Burning Virgin Forest
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward/Robin Guenier
The BBC have finally caught up! There have been complaints for years about this:
A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.
Drax runs Britain’s biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets – which is classed as renewable energy.
The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.
The company says it only uses sawdust and waste wood.
Panorama analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove its findings. Reporter Joe Crowley also followed a truck from a Drax mill to verify it was picking up whole logs from an area of precious forest.
Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.
"It’s really a shame that British taxpayers are funding this destruction with their money. Logging natural forests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane," she said.
The Drax power station in Yorkshire is a converted coal plant, which now produces 12% of the UK’s renewable electricity.
It has already received £6bn in green energy subsidies. Burning wood is considered green, but it is controversial among environmentalists.
Panorama discovered Drax bought logging licences to cut down two areas of environmentally-important forest in British Columbia.
The Panorama team used drones to survey the area
One of the Drax forests is a square mile, including large areas that have been identified as rare, old-growth forest.
The provincial government of British Columbia says old-growth forests are particularly important and that companies should put off logging them.
Drax’s own responsible sourcing policy says it "will avoid damage or disturbance" to primary and old-growth forest.
However, the latest satellite pictures show Drax is now cutting down the forest.
Satellite images show forests cut down in British Columbia
The company told Panorama many of the trees there had died, and that logging would reduce the risk of wildfires.
The entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence has already been cut down.
Drax told the BBC it had not cut down the forests itself and said it transferred the logging licences to other companies.
But Panorama checked and the authorities in British Columbia confirmed that Drax still holds the licences.
Drax said it did not use the logs from the two sites Panorama identified. It said they were sent to timber mills – to make wood products – and that Drax only used the leftover sawdust for its pellets.
The company says it does use some logs – in general – to make wood pellets. It claims it only uses ones that are small, twisted, or rotten.
But documents on a Canadian forestry database show that only 11% of the logs delivered to the two Drax plants in the past year were classified as the lowest quality, which cannot be used for wood products.
Panorama wanted to see if logs from primary forests cut down by logging companies were being transferred to Drax’s Meadowbank pellet plant. The programme filmed a truck on a 120-mile round trip: leaving the plant, collecting piles of whole logs from a forest that had been cut down by a logging company and then returning to the plant for their delivery.
Drax later admitted that it did use logs from the forest to make wood pellets. The company said they were species the timber industry did not want, and they would often be burned anyway to reduce wildfire risks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348
It is amazing how Drax have changed their story as evidence mounts against them.
Trump Was Right
By Paul Homewood
Mad Mike mentioned Trump’s speech to the UN, warning about German overreliance on Russian oil and gas.
This is the video, with the German delegation acting like a bunch of overgrown schoolboys.
Follow the link for the video:
https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/06/germany-russia-oil-gas-pipeline-putin-dependence-donald-trump/
Fact Checking BBC’s Hurricane “Reality” Check
By Paul Homewood
The BBC has packed three lies into a 3-minute “Reality Check”. That’s some performance, even by their standards!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/61843574
Weather girl Louise Lear introduces the latest reality check on hurricanes, which is just a clumsy attempt to use Hurricane Ian to fool the public that they are getting worse because of global warming.
In particular there are three outright lies:
Colder, Wetter September Pushed Up German Gas Consumption
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
That danged weather!
Notable US Hurricanes In History
By Paul Homewood
Graphs only tell part of the story when it comes to hurricanes. They give the numbers, but don’t give much idea of the devastation they bring.
The National Hurricane Center has produced a list of some of the most notable hurricanes to hit the US:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/outreach/history/#camille
I won’t reprint the whole list, but it’s worth a read.
The list certainly is not all-inclusive. There are many more which could have been added, such as the 150 mph Indianola hurricane in 1886, and Carla in 1961, the 8th and 9th most intense hurricanes on record.
But the list gives a good impression of how catastrophic US hurricanes have always been.
The timeline I have prepared below just covers the period 1900 to 1969 and summarises just how frequent these disastrous hurricanes actually are.
Police rescue passengers from powerless electric ferry!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
From the NZ Herald:
The police boat and the ferry. Photo / Supplied
Passengers on Wellington’s new electric ferry were rescued by a police boat after the ferry lost power.
A police spokesperson confirmed to the Herald the Ika Rere had run out of battery in the harbour and all passengers on board were transferred to the police boat.
They were then escorted back to Queen’s Wharf, and the police boat went back out to help tug the ferry back to port.
Harbourmaster Grant Nalder said the boat was on its way back to Queen’s Wharf from Days Bay when the power issue began.
"The skipper got it to a safe spot and put the anchor down."
Luckily the police were already in the harbour so the operation was a swift one.
"Everyone was safe on board, just a bit of a delay getting into town," Nalder said.
The ferry was launched in March of this year after lengthy Covid-19 delays. It was originally supposed to launch in the middle of 2020, then in September 2021, however the pandemic delayed the project and subsequent sea trials.
Maybe they had better take some oars with them in future!
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 