Fracking could have saved us from this energy crisis
September 24, 2021
By Paul Homewood
Rising prices and dwindling supplies of natural gas have sparked fears of an energy crisis. Energy bills are shooting upwards. The government is even having to step in to support the production of fertiliser – and its vital byproduct, carbon dioxide – which relies on affordable gas supplies. If only the UK had a bountiful supply of natural gas of its own…. Well, it does – but thanks to eco-warriors and spineless ministers, we’re not exploiting it.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
All because we are run by an Eco-terrorist in number 10
Who is married to our so-called Prime Minister
Correct. A serious undermining of the pretend democratic principles of that joke we call government only by elected officials..
And Boris is married to her.
The rot started under Blair.
Lest we forget, the green lot despise anything that works: nuclear, fracking, the list goes on… So all we are left with is solar and wind, the unreliables as backed by Boris and his “party”, the only ones who supported a 150 acre solar farm just this last week in Mid Devon. Thankfully, the LibDems, believe it or not, and the independents saw sense and chucked the plans out.
Given their marxist origins, have you ever considered the possibility that chaos could be their end game? Even a 12 year old with a calculator can figure out that wind and solar are BS! The Gween Solution is just a smoke screen on which the useful idiots (of which we have in spades) are working with such enthusiasm.
The LibDems and independents obviously don’t need to say thank you to anyone.
JF
We need all the oil, gas, coal and nuclear we can get hold of. If it hadn’t been for concerted efforts over the last 20+ years by environMENTAL activists and their stupid supporters in the media and in parliament, the UK by now could be independent of foreign supplies of energy.
Philip,
Quite right.
And the UK with plentiful coal gas and oil could have the EU by the short and curlys rather than the other way round.
Spiked might have mentioned that it was Potato Ed Davey who put absolutely absurd limits on seismic effects, far lower than frequent entirely natural tremors, and bragged about it whilst working for a GangGreen energy company.
And Cameron went along with it, whilst Samantha’s dad trousered £1,000 a day for hosting just 8 medium size wind turbines on his land.
Meanwhile, Vlad the Bad and Gazprom laugh their socks off with their trivial (for them) financing of the anti-fracking protestors.
Twenty years of absolute treason.
It is also PotatoEd that takes the blame for opposing support for increasing gas storage in the UK while at the same time promoting policies that would increase burning gas for generation which to me seems a criminal waste when coal is better suited. In a functioning democracy we could recall these morons and eject for their past incompetence but that is a long way off.
What is really needed right now is a week long blackout before it gets too cold to concentrate the minds of the politicians from Boris down in all Party’s as to their demise for sheer incompetence. There is a lot of hot air within the M25 but not enough to keep us warm.
I don’t think that will be enough. I expect that it requires some fatalities. After all, the ‘Intelligent’ Motorways have had several deaths, and the government hasn’t budged.
“Poll tax” riots here we come, I just hope they start November 1st in time for COP26, The last one was supposed to be in Chile but they had riots about cost of Metro rising due to the use of green energy. It ended up in Spain.
I was late for a hospital appointment today because of the roads in the vicinity being gridlocked by cars queuing at a petrol station.
The blame for that lies with the Road Haulage Association leaking confidential information from BP to the press in support of their campaign for more immigrants to drive HGVs instead of their members improving conditions for drivers. The legacy media wouldn’t miss the chance to create mayhem to fill their pages and bulletins.
There is no short term solution other than praying that there are no equipment failures and cold weather this winter. Having nailed the UK energy supply to wind and gas, the government has no power to do anything. And if they survive this winter there is always next winter since there is no political will to solve the problem they have created even if they could understand it, which I doubt when you hear that the answer is more windmills.
There can be no doubt that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are chuffed to buttons at seeing the UK self destruct
Cho Bide En. Too.
Boris should be given an ultimatum by the ERG because Tory party members are about to do so.
Really? What ultimatum is that then? The Tory Party leadership has been out of touch with their base since Major was PM. Tory party members may as well form a new party because their leaders aren’t interested in their views. The history of modern British conservatism is a history of continual disappointment and a complete absence of enacting true conservative policies. What was Cameron’s great conservative achievement? Changing the dictionary definition of marriage! What was May’s? Renacting the ‘Year Zero’, just with a few less skulls than Pol Pot. So far! And Boris’ legacy? More of the same. Brexit appears to be merely a hiccup in a continual slant of political and economic decline.
Can’t repeat it enough ….. the UK, Climate Change test dummy.
If the link below (from 2015) is to be believed then the leaders of the three main British political parties have taken climate/energy policy out of democratic debate by agreeing amongst themselves to:-
Work across party lines to agree carbon budgets in accord with the Climate Change Act and to accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy.
Click to access Leaders_Joint_Climate_Change_Agreement.pdf
However, the work of prof. Michael Kelly (Cambridge Uni.) suggests that current renewables have a low EROI (energy return on energy invested) which becomes even worse when the back-up systems required to compensate for their intermittency is taken into account. In short there is no competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy to be had with the current generation of renewables. That is part of the reason why prof. Dieter Helm (Oxford Uni.) in his book “The Carbon Crunch” suggests that we need Plan B.
Thus the “virtue signalling” by British politicians may be more correctly termed “misery signalling” as the UK heads deeper into energy uncertainty … and we have not even entered winter yet!
Regards,
John.
Except renewables are neither competitive nor energy efficient.
And don’t forget that none of them can be built, maintained, even disposed of when broken or outmoded without carbon fuels for transportation. When was anything ever built without moving something somewhere? Even batteries or ethanol for biofuels. And Net zero capture and storage facilities. Of course, taking all those green people to endless climate conferences to warn us if we keep doing it means travel from all over the planet. Bring back the HMS Beagle?
And as Tim Worstall always points out, if they are going to get better and cheaper in the future then why not wait to install them when they are better and cheaper?
That’s a BIG “if”.
My only response to that document of shame is one correctly spelt and one misspelt word when real words fail me…. DANGEROUS WANKAS! Those thee men should hang their heads in shame.
Clegg scores well over 30 on the Hare psychopathy checklist.
Re the then forthcoming Paris climate agreement this ‘Show The Love’ (!) document says: ‘It is vital that this agreement is a success’. It wasn’t.
Then the first pledge is this: ‘To seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2ºC.’. That wasn’t achieved in Paris (very far from it) and there’s not the slightest chance of it being achieved in Glasgow in November.
Perhaps, in the context of energy crisis, these total failures might persuade some of our ‘leaders’ to abandon such anti-democratic behaviour and to start acting in the interests of voters.
Question for Paul:
Do you know of a long run series on wind speeds at least daily akin to the CET? Beaufort scale is probably good enough. Going back pre about 1985 as I have data for since then, but the whole series allow a cross comparison. The idea obviously is to estimate the impact of wind lulls over the long term, having heard the claim that winds have been the weakest since the 1960s as an excuse for the failure to generate. Of course, that’s the whole point – the system will have to cope with whatever worst cases occur.
I’ve not come across anything
I don’t know if any readers here can understand the Green mindset, I know I cannot.
The nearest I can come up with is the old psychiatrist’s ploy of placing people in a room which is being slowly flooded and separating them into those who turned the tap off and those who reached for mops and buckets. The latter would qualify as Green.
Faced with a failure of wind turbines to deliver enough over some months due to lower wind speeds the Green response has been “build more turbines”. That this won’t solve the present problem and would only make things worse is beyond their grasp. Coupled with fantasies about the future that are unworkable, unbelievable and unacceptable to the ordinary citizen they still believe that they are right and reality is wrong. I cannot see much chance of any change in official policy until the first snowstorm makes them realise winter is coming.
I see no joy for readers but I suggest that they see if they can install a generator, with an adequate fuel supply as well as a wood burning heater, (I dare not suggest one that burns coke or coal) because it seems that natural gas will be in short supply due to governmental inaction. Claims that gas will come from Norway only ignore the European gas grid with Russian supplies and the problems likely as the EU tries to antagonise them. Act now, if you haven’t already done so, and get a stockpile of wood under locked storage before the general public panics. (Remember that foresters in Germany have had to lock up their logs for some time now owing to ‘pilferage’). Soon the woods of England will echo with the sound of chainsaws. Good luck.
The Scandinavians make excellent chainsaws.
Fraccing?????? Common f¤#&”*g sense, BASIC SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES and the ability to understand cause and effect, the foundations of which we had in spades has been thrown aside and IGNORED, replaced by twitchy made up opinion and feelings based on a politically motivated newly invented religion and allowed to grow and fester, unchallenged by the abject cowardice of the corrupt political jobsworths infesting Westminster who care only about getting rich and of course power.
Welcome to the nightmare. Society has survived thus far because the balance of contributors to passengers for several hundred years has always been in credit. Welcome to the Fall of the Roman Empire Part II, the Western Civilization Special Edition…..except this time the demise will be recorded in every disgusting and sordid detail!
We have a wealthy, healthy and safe society because for 150 years the economy was largely taken out of the hands of those who ruled us. Industrialisation and capitalism shifted economic power from landowners and politicians and broke it into increasingly small pieces. Those countries where economic power was re-seized by the state all failed yet still 30-40% of people refuse to admit these simple facts. Since 1945 in the UK, and 1935 in the US, the state has slowly moved to reassert control over the economy, under various guises and using various excuses, with only Thatcher and Reagan offering temporary respite. Megalomaniacs like Carney now seek to place the entire economy under their control using Climate Change as the excuse. That economic freedom is highly correlated with other freedoms and wealth creation is basic economic fact, yet every party in the West now ignores that. Welcome to the new USSR with all its failures.
Our leaders competed at who was fastest at demolishing power stations, whereas a sensible policy decision might have been to mothball a few,
It reminds me of the government policy of railway closures in the 1960s, no matter whether the economic case was sensible or not, the tracks were ripped up and bridges demolished, to make sure the policy decisions, even if they were proved wrong, could not be reversed.
Most government policies fail, and we should not be upset or surprised when this occurs, as it has always been like that. Politicians can only do politics, get them involved in anything else and the result is a mess.
Beeching wanted the tracks turned into bus lanes. Labour ripped them up and sold them off.
As many followers of this site will know (and have criticised me for) I believe that Cuadrilla’s well tests of Bowland shale proved that it was not permeable enough to yield viable gas flows. Bur for heaven’s sake let’s drill, frack and test a few more regions and settle this once and for all. Another thought, before cheap gas from the North Sea arrived all our domestic gas and ammonia (fertrilisers) was derived from naphtha (light straight run gasoline). This oil derivative is still reasonably priced (ca $610 per ton) and is compatible with long term storage. Why not consider going back to it?
It isn’t too late to begin large-scale fracking together with funding Rolls Royce to complete its Small Modular Reactor programme within 12 months.