Race To The Bottom
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
Labour has set out plans to make the UK the first major economy in the world to generate all of its electricity without using fossil fuels.
Sir Keir Starmer says achieving zero carbon energy by 2030 will be a key priority if he wins the next election.
Labour is unveiling plans on green energy and policing as the annual party conference gets under way in Liverpool on Sunday.
The government has already committed to zero carbon electricity by 2035.
But that pledge was made before the global spike in energy prices.
New prime minister Liz Truss has promised more renewable energy, as part of a plan to make the UK a net exporter of energy by 2040, ending the country’s dependence on foreign supplies.
But she has also announced plans to restart fracking and issue more licenses to drill for gas.
Labour has already unveiled plans to spend £28bn a year on making the UK economy more green.
Sir Keir, who will make his keynote speech to conference on Tuesday, is kicking off the week with a promise to turn the UK into a clean energy "superpower".
Labour says it will work with business to more than quadruple offshore wind power, triple solar, and double onshore wind by the end of this decade, while backing nuclear, hydrogen, and tidal power.
"Our plan for clean power by 2030 will save the British people £93bn off their energy bills and break the UK’s vulnerability to Putin and his cronies," said Sir Keir.
"It will also support our drive for higher growth and rising living standards."
Labour claim their plan would also "reindustrialise" the UK, by creating more than 200,000 direct jobs and up to 260,000 to 300,000 indirect jobs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63023277
Has it not occurred to this clown that all of the jobs he promises have to be paid for? And who does he suggest pays for them?
Half a million jobs at £100,000 a year each, a not unreasonable estimate once materials and overheads are included, works out at £50 billion.
Instead of simply making up numbers on the spot, and then doubling them, maybe Starmer would care to give us a properly costed budget for his renewable extravaganza?
He wants to back nuclear, but there is no way any new capacity will be added before 2030, other than of course Hinkley Point. And it will take a lot longer than a decade to build a hydrogen grid.
Starmer obviously does not know that bulk hydrogen can only be made in the foreseeable future by steam reforming natural gas, which hardly makes the resulting electricity fossil fuel free, carbon free, or for that matter cheap.
Producing sizeable amounts of hydrogen from electrolysis will need a lot more wind power than his plan targets, and the idea is still strictly for the birds.
His plan for renewables will see capacity rising to:
Offshore Wind – 45 GW
Onshore Wind – 30 GW
Solar – 40 GW
On average, however, this will only produce 32 GW, still leaving a huge shortfall. Nuclear and biomass may add another 10 GW, but that still leaves us potentially 20 GW short at times of peak demand.
And as we know, there will be weeks every winter when the wind stops blowing. With solar power also at a minimum in winter, Starmer’s precious renewables will often be producing less than 10 GW.
Maybe one of these days, somebody could explain why the media still take Keir Starmer seriously?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
You can’t fool the public any more. They are seeing where it’s hurting and there’s more to come this winter, thanks to the ridiculous pursuit of net zero. Starmer has just lost the next general election.
Thankfully!
It seems that there a number of hurdles to overcome.
– The green jobs promised will mostly be in China.
-A very large amount of CO2 will be generated in making the windmills and solar panels and their connection to the grid.
-Are there enough raw materials to make all these items, especially as we will be in competition with the rest of the world. Also China has already stolen the lead in access to many of the rare earth’s and lithium.
http://Www.wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/15/weakest-link-to-ev-growth-is-the-material-supply-chain/
https://smi.uq.edu.au/event/session/11743
There is no one to vote for who will listen to the arguements on both sides.
Looking at the polling Starmer is receiving and the press coverage, I guess that you can still fool the public.
Yes, you still see people wearing masks….outdoors.
Talk about slow on the uptake. The country is about to go through a winter which will kill many because of insane energy costs caused by green insanity. But he decides now is a good time to campaign for renewables.
Are politicians born stupid or is it taught?
Like most political manifesto decisions – it’s tied to two things:
i) Appease the young. They have 30 years of spending power ahead of them. Over 60’s have less spending power ahead of them (and besides which – they’re all old enough to have heard all of your phoney crap thousands of times before).
ii) Appease the shareholders. That’ll be the W.E.F (World Economic Forum). Labour have just as many WEFFERS in their ranks as the conservatives, the greens, the Lib-Dem gaggle (and whoever they are affiliated with this week) etc.
Two things:
1. Over 60’s have considerable assets – homes, pensions, savings.
2. WEF invest in nothing.
Both
Psychopaths cannot learn from error. They repeat their mistakes.
I guess if you are suffering from a chronic mental disorder characterised by abnormal or violent social behaviour then you don’t realise you are making mistakes?
It’s literally become a form of religion. There’s no reasoning with these ‘believers’ and the BBC/Guardianista zealots just keep pumping out the catastrophe propaganda every time it’s windy/rainy/sunny/cold.
Now that the excrement is about to hit the fan on energy bills, they’re all howling and finger pointing at Putin and the oil and gas companies. The politicians are just doubling down on their puerile green mantra to avoid admitting their stupidity. The consequences never affect them personally and they just move on to dig another political black hole.
Talking to Laura Kuenssberg this morning, Starmer wanted 100% renewable electricity by 2030. Lots more renewables, of course, but what about the 0ther 85% of energy that is not electricity? Doing the first bit is relatively easy, if you accept CCGT for back up, but the rest – also from renewables? That is a bit trickier! So better not ask him!
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“but what about the 0ther 85% of energy that is not electricity?” Well actually Ken do you really think he knows the difference between energy and electricity?
Ray, you are probably right! Take a look at page 55 of “The Future We Choose” by Christiana Figueres, the power behind the Paris Accords, and you will find she does not know the difference! And she is about the biggest name in the whole COP circus! So, what hope do us mortals have, when clowns like her are running the show?
He wouldn’t know the answer anyway.
Like most political manifesto decisions – it’s tied to two things:
i) Appease the young. They have 30 years of spending power ahead of them. Over 60’s have less spending power ahead of them (and besides which – they’re all old enough to have heard all of your phoney crap thousands of times before).
ii) Appease the shareholders. That’ll be the W.E.F (World Economic Forum). Labour have just as many WEFFERS in their ranks as the conservatives, the greens, the Lib-Dem gaggle (and whoever they are affiliated with this week) etc.
Dare we say that Starmer has just lost the next election?
If we have a bad winter and people see the future he is predicting, he might lose the leadership as well.
Actually he has removed any difference between Labour and the other “progressive” parties, expect a pact at the next GE, and a landslide.
err…If you get a landslide vote I don’t think you need any pacts.
He has taken his goalkeeper off so if the Tories under Miss Trussed can shoot straight it is an open goal.
The media take Starmer seriously because they are all in the same ‘socialism is the only way forward’ club. In spite of all the evidence that it doesn’t work.
Most ‘socialists’ of my acquaintance haven’t a clue what socialism means. Mention that Hitler was a socialist and they scweam and scweam he was a right winger.
Ask them to surrender all their savings for the common good though, and they soon shut up.
Socialism does work – it’s just that it has not been tried properly. I read that in the Guardian or heard it on the BBC….so it must be true. LOL
They have it all costed. £28 billion a year will solve all the problems.
Miliband is also going to save the British steel industry with £3billion to get to Net Zero. I suppose shutting down the steel industry could achieve his aim.
Well it’s not possible (without outages), so either he’s incompetent or a liar.
My old Physics teacher used to say “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things….and it’s a poor fool who can do neither” I think he is both…or neither… “incompetent or a liar” but probably doesn’t know anyway.
Both.
Remember the “Saudi Arabia of Wind Energy” was the goal of Boris and now the goal of Starmer – seems both idiots do not do detail – I guess reality based of facts dies not register. A bit of reading, and ignoring Gummer and the eco – carpetbaggers, might open their minds, but that would require intelligence, an inquiring mind and work.
” net zero electricity to boost growth “…. Another classically clumsy BBC headline
Mao Tse Tung and the CCP politburo embarked on a program to boost steel production and improve agricultural yields by waging war on sparrows and planting seedlings closer together …The result was insect plagues , stunted nutrient deprived crops and the loss of crucial metal farming implements melted down in crude smelters to meet quotas that
produced useless pig iron …….And then mass starvation
Someone should deliver a history book on the Great Leap Forward to Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Labor Party . A centrally planned and fanciful ‘net zero’ energy infrastructure will wreck the British economy and render the United Kingdom more vulnerable to Vladimir Putins ambitions
That’s the plan. A lot of dead pensioners, too
What are Putin’s ambitions re the UK?
Here’s an extremely rough (and very non-expert) calculation considering only wind turbines; it demonstrates that Starmer is living in dreamland.
At present the UK has about 11,200 wind turbines – about 6,300 onshore and 5,000 offshore. These contribute 23% to the UK’s current electricity demand. Therefore, as all renewables contribute 28%, the total number of wind turbines would have to be increased to about 50,000 if renewables were to supply 100% of the UK’s current electricity requirement. But that wouldn’t be necessary as nuclear energy, despite planned closures, would probably still contribute say 12% of our needs. (Biomass is not of course ‘zero carbon’ so would have to go.) There may be another 2% contribution from hydro and interconnectors – although the latter must be discounted as it’s clearly not ‘self-sufficient power’. Overall therefore the 50,000 wind turbine requirement can be reduced to 43,000. From that must be deducted about half the turbines we already have (only half because many would have to be replaced by 2030). So the total requirement would be about 38,000 new wind turbines.
Starmer says he’ll double the amount of onshore wind and more than quadruple offshore wind. That comes to about 33,000 turbines. So, on the face of it he can just about do it. And, if the Tories were able to commission say 3,000 turbines before 2024, it would mean Labour would have to commission only about 30,000.
But there are two massive problems:
1. The above is based on today’s electricity requirement. But presumably Starmer intends to at least continue the Tory plans for electric vehicles and for industrial and domestic heating. It’s commonly estimated that electricity is only about 25% of our primary energy, so widespread electrification might well double the requirement for electric energy, taking the overall turbine requirement (existing plus new) to 86,000.
2. None of the above takes any account of the intermittent nature of wind power. So back-up will be required if disastrous blackouts are to be avoided. In a zero carbon system that obviously cannot come from fossil fuels. There’s no indication about how Labour plans to address this. Maybe the installation of a huge – and impossibly expensive – array of batteries. Or maybe, despite its many problems, ‘green’ hydrogen is the answer. But either (in the unlikely event that either was possible) would require a lot of additional electricity, perhaps increasing the overall turbine requirement by 30% – to 112,000.
And that would have to be done in just 5 years – i.e. about 430 new turbines commissioned per week (60 per day). Is that likely or even possible?
Obviously not.
Robin,
That’s an excellent analysis. One wonders who is advising Starmer and Miliband with regard to this omnishambles?
Indeed its absolutely extraordinary that they would be stupid enough to say this stuff. Johnsons previous procrastinations were unachievable so how on earth do they think an even higher amount was going to be delivered. Maybe back in the 50/60’s when we had the like of AEI,GEC and many smaller electrical manufactures we could replicate what we did with coal fired power stations in that era but there all gone. We manufacture no wind turbine nacelles just the the nasty chemical blades, we don’t manufacture big transformers nor switchgear nor much of the cabling but some investment is coming into UK for that. We don’t have the heavy lift ships we don’t have the fabrication yards to build the offshore transmission kit. So with pound heading south all this stuff just got a lot more expensive and finally the rest of the globe has been stupid enough to jump on this bandwagon so unless we order it now no chance of getting it before 2030.
Thanks Mark. But my summary was far from comprehensive: there are many other problems. For example, quite apart from the difficulty of acquiring the vast amounts of expensive material that would be needed (e.g. concrete, steel, copper, plastic and rare earths – all of which would entail the emission of vast amounts of CO2 in their production), who could undertake such a task?
We have nothing approaching the vast number (arguably about 1.5 million) of skilled people (managers, technicians, power engineers, electricians, builders, etc.) who would be needed to install, commission and maintain all these turbines (and solar panels) and their associated infrastructure (high voltage cables etc.) as well as to build and maintain huge numbers of EVs, to construct, install and maintain hundreds of thousands of charging points for EVs, to install heat pumps in millions of houses and commercial premises (after having improved the insulation of most of them) – plus a multitude of other requirements such as disposing of decommissioned renewable power plants, old internal combustion powered vehicles, old gas boilers, etc. Where would they all come from? How many people who are now studying or teaching for example English literature, philosophy, archaeology, theatre or medieval history do you think would be ready to abandon university and train as plumbers? Not so many I suggest.
Then: where would all these monsters be located? For an answer I suggest you look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7PHUMd7PYA&t=7s – bearing in mind that the UK would require at least five times as many wind turbines as the Netherlands.
Reply to Robin re the YouTube vid on Dutch windfarms…WTF!!!
That video should be prescribed viewing for school children, let alone our useless politicians. I bet there wouldn’t be so many budding Gretas then. I truly urge any here who haven’t seen it to take Seven minutes of your time to watch it. I thought things were bad in wind and solar but……..
Thanks, Robin.
Using green hydrogen (electrolysis) requires 8 times the installed wind capacity for any given amount of constant/reliable power. For instance, if we require 40 GW (our power requirement in winter) we would need 320 GW of installed wind capacity. This is calculated from the wind turbine capacity factor and the efficiencies of electrolysis, compression/storage and then the electrical generation from the stored hydrogen.
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My calculation says 11 times. I worked on a CF of 38%, electrolysis at 67% and conversion to electricity at 35% (OCGT).
I didn’t bother with practical things like compression/storage etc.
because we have a small electrolysis unit in Adelaide which feeds hydrogen at 5% into the neighbourhood gas supply and claims 67% efficiency, which doesn’t include those costs either.
GREEN hydrogen is the current political fantasy in Australia and “it will be generated by cheap renewables”. I am not the only local who has noticed that the more renewables installed the higher the increase in electricity bills.
Robin, I was going to drop a letter to the DT along the lines of:
Dear Sir Kier,
If you had 10,000 wind turbines and no wind, how much electricity would you get? And, if you had 50,000 wind turbines and no wind, would you get roughly five times as much?
But, having read your comment I think I’ll pass and hope that someone brings it to his attention.
Robin, You are spot on. The only point that I can add it that by the time King Starmer’s boondoggle is complete half of the existing turbines will be at the end of their life. A mouse on a treadmill comes to mind. Maybe this could be the back up power for when the wind does not blow.
Thanks Carnot – but I think you’ll find that I referred to that: see the end of my second paragraph. But what I didn’t mention was that turbines will continue to wear out over time – especially the massively expensive off-shore machines.
Robin , a good point , but your future needs does not take into account that , to change to electric home heating would need a 400% increase in generation capacity . And then , for electric vehicles to only charge up once a week , would need another 100% increase as well .
So the whole thing is just more Green Loonie /left wing insanity .
I assumed that Starmer doesn’t intend to convert to 100% heating by 2030 (likewise re EVs) and that a doubling of electric energy would meet immediate requirements. It’ll be interesting to see what Labour’s plan say about this.
Also bear in mind the Uniparty’s determination to continue increasing mass immigration, which was mainly responsible for increasing the UK population by 8 million since 2000. This certainly undermines their claims of AGW catastrophe, when they actively move millions of people from 3rd world countries into developed countries. None of it adds up.
Robin,
one of the things I find I am repeating in various discussion such as this is that gas is not just a U.K. grid back up, it is the backbone, without it we would not have any power.
Simply renewables are ucontrollable in output, and the grid has to have demand and supply matched at all times intantaneously which means modulating the supply to match demand. Gas (and coal if we had sufficient) can do this.
It is similar to driving a car on an undulating road and keeping aconstant speed, the throttle needs to be used; wind and solar have no throttle.
Paul, if I may, here is my take on Labour’s latest energy folly:
Extract from energy Overview – the math
Consider just the wind power needed to replace offshore oil in the Gulf of Mexico: At 5.8 MBtu heat value in a barrel of oil and 3412 BTU in a kWh, 1.7 million barrels per day of gulf oil equals 2.9 billion kWh per day, or 1,059 billion kWh a year. Yet the total 2008 wind generation in Texas was 14.23 billion kWh, and 5.42 billion kWh in California. Which means you’d need 195 California’s, or 74 Texas’s of wind, and 20 years to build it (Nelder).
And then start the process over every 20 years, the very short lifespan of wind turbines, when energy will be required to dismantle the old one and replace it with a new one (15 years for offshore wind turbines due to corrosion).
We call it “The Great Recycling”
Thre is limited recycling possible, however, the world supply of essential materials will be exhausted.
Remember the 12 million trees that the Scottish equivalent of the Forestry Commission calculated that had been felled to make room for the windmills that were in Scotland? So thats another 25 million or so going in the next 7 years. Don’t think that would go down well with factions within Labour if that was well publicised.
Shows how utterly STUPID this man is !!! Either he just goes with the “flow” or he hasn’t a clue ? Net Zero is THE MOST EXPENSIVE DREAM EVER !! Nobody will be able to afford it and with the cost of heat pumps and their INABILITY to deliver HEAT we will have to live under ground to try and keep warm !!
Thank you Robin. That was a true and indisputable summary of the situation. The Labour people like Tombstone Milliband will obviously still keep their fingers in their ears, but is there perhaps a small hope that Liz and her mates will get this message and pull us round to sanity. They still need to make some steering corrections before we can head to a safe exit from our current perilous course.
Not a hope in hell!
Just look at Kwaeteng’s insane “mini” budget on Friday – they have absolutely no sense of history!!!!
A question I asked recently is still relevant.
“What proportion of renewables can the grid tolerate?”
National Grid claims that they will be able to handle 100% by 2025, but NG publications are full of optimistic spin. I’m still suspicious about why a chunk of NG was relieved of its responsibilities earlier this year and a new lot called Electrical Systems Operations took over. This was done very quietly. I suspect the new lot are better “yes” men.
Germany’s Energiewende transition project has been running for over two decades. It is my understanding that when the wind is blowing, Germany now has more electricity than demand. For a while they had to get rid of the excess, including paying for others to take it, plunging their market into having negative electricity prices. I presume they now turn off some turbines.
Suddenly, following the Putin gas turn off, Germany got into a panic about gas. The point of Energiewende was to replace fossil fuels but it seems that fossil fuels make gas essential in order to run the grid. This coincided with a GWPF report by John Constable. If I understood his report correctly, grids cannot handle erratic supply and have to use gas to smooth things as well as to balance supply and demand. Of course, sometimes the wind can be very low for weeks, so in the case of Germany that can require a large amount of gas.
All political parties are hell bent on throwing money at renewables which I have always considered to be a useless waste of money. I recognise that it is now time to conduct a thorough technical and financial review of the subject.
Of course, all of this is a complete waste of time if GHG absorbance bands are saturated or ECS can be shown to be low. But with none of the parties willing or competent to question IPCC dogma, we need to work with what we have, which are the policies of ignorant politicians.
And of course no politician ever explains what will happen if on a windy and sunny day we get 115GW of wind and solar when we have say 8GW of nuclear providing baseload and demand is 30GW. The ignorance of politicians and their advisers is unbelievable.
An ignorance that comes from thinking that a PPE degree has any value in the real world outside academia.
They don’t even understand the E of renewables.
Piss Poor Ejukayshun. Why would they understand?
Phillip,
they would, I assume, do as they now do when North sea wind is too powerful for the Scotland England grid link to carry it, curtail production and pay the wind farm operators handsomely not to feed the grid.
Curtailment costs a lot now, I hate to think how much it will cost if this system is continued?
Exactly.
If they are paid for what they could have produced when it’s too windy and they have to curtail production, then they should pay for electricity they should have produced when there is no wind.
Has Labour got a net zero plan for aviation, shipping, road transport, construction, agriculture, forestry? If not, windmills are pointless?
Starmer’s plan is essentially a rehash of the Boris plan, just marginally speeded up. Here’s what consultancy LCP Enact had to say about that
https://www.lcp.uk.com/our-viewpoint/2022/04/british-energy-security-strategy-homegrown-clean-power-but-at-what-cost/
Politely, it is infeasible and unaffordable.
The BEIS Select Committee was supposed to be critiquing the Boris plan. I submitted a detailed critique as written evidence, and there has been nothing from the Committee since the call for evidence closed back in June. With the change in government I wonder if they will be persuaded to ditch their enquiry. There is a desperate need to hold it, and for the disastrous nature to ve exposed. I see no sign that Truss and Rees Mogg will deviate much from the essence, even now that they are putting some support around shale and North Sea. Neither has the expertise to question.
With the usual excellent contributions here it’s quite obvious how many additional wind turbines will be required. I’ve raised this problem with our local North Devon MP. Would constituents be happy with the pleasant rural landscape and coastline being carpeted with these monsters?
What impact will they have on the crucial tourism sector? There is a belief we can be bought off with cheaper electricity bills if we consent. Not a chance.
Its only money and Labour have past history on spending what you earn wastefully.
Keir Starmer’s totally unrealistic claims that a Labour Govt would make the UK’s electricity generation carbon free by 2030 were not challenged by any of the media correspondents. Why wasn’t he asked to explain exactly how he would achieve this?
Because they either support his policies or are too stupid to understand the implications? Or maybe both?
A major concern Chris is that the media are part of the problem. As is the Tory Party.
Starmer’s much hyped zero carbon electricity by 2030 plan is absurd – it’s unachievable, seriously damaging and completely pointless. So in a sensible world it would be a major weakness in Labour policies, undermining their overall credibility . But we don’t live in a sensible world: polls show that the public – egged on by the MSM – believe that ‘tackling climate change’ is a key priority. The only practicable way of overcoming that and exposing Starmer’s plan for the dangerous nonsense that it is would be for the Conservative party to mount a vigorous, reasoned attack on zero carbon policy.
But that’s most unlikely to happen: even if Truss wanted to mount such a campaign (and there’s little evidence that she does), she wouldn’t get the backing of her MPs – many of whom strongly support the absurd policy.
Chris, see my comment on Mark’s article here: https://cliscep.com/2022/09/25/cloud-cuckoo-land/
This is the first time I have heard anyone at the BBC put the intermittency question to a green politician. Needless to say Starmer batted it away.
I wholly agree with the second and third paragraphs of your cliscep comment. Not so sure about the first however.
An interesting graphic that shows wind output assumptions versus reality. As said in the appropriately titled Under Siege 2 Dark Territory, “Assumption is the mother of all *#@! ups.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdkDGeaX0AAtiWi?format=png&name=900×900
The creation of clear policy objectives and a national energy policy must be no 1 for Liz Truss – that will involve clearing out the green blob such as Goldsmith and Debden – there is clear water between Tory and Lib Dems/Labour which the Tory party must exploit if it has a future and this will involve some greenish MPs holding their nose – BBC will go into melt down and the party needs a sophisticated communications plan
Some good news: Zac Goldsmith has been moved and they are advertising Lord Deben’s job now. Have a go at getting it – but you will need to disguise your true beliefs about Net Zero. I tried to join the CCC, but they turned me down – wrong ideas or just too old???
Well yes Richard. But it doesn’t seem likely that ‘greenish’ Tory MPs would be willing to toe the line.
Yes I agree with your comments re potential conflict with MPs – extract from today’s Telegraph which suggests that the PM needs to force the hands of these potential disruptors , making energy a confidence issue and withdrawing the whip if necessary –
Liz Truss’s net zero adviser has risked a clash with the Government after he warned fracking will be a “non-starter”. Conservative MP Chris Skidmore warned investors they could wind up with “stranded assets” if they back shale gas drilling and they should put their money into renewables instead. His comments appear at odds with the new administration which has talked up the prospects of fracking as it lifts the ban on the practice as part of a rush to shore up domestic supplies of energy.
Not at all encouraging. It seems the net-zero nonsense is firmly entrenched within the Tory Party. How can we change this – because change it we must if the UK is to avoid an even worse future than seems likely anyway?
Yes agree I think the grass roots party needs to make it an confidence issue too and not just an additional extra and ensure that The Energy Strategy is the No 1 priority – and put the skids under net zero / green – I wonder whether the PM has the bottle – Boris, I regret, clearly didn’t and the new PM will have to be prepared to be vilified more than Mrs Thatcher was, if that’s possible but without this sense of realism (completely absent from Labour and Lib Dem) we are sunk and a vassal state to China – this is to my mind a Churchillian moment
Richard: I doubt if it will achieve anything there’s something I can try. My MP – a backbench Tory who until recently had a junior position in Government – was quite a strong supporter of my thinking until the summer of last year when he saw the possibility of promotion. Then he suddenly decided he would endorse net-zero. I know him reasonably well, having exchanged emails with him, spoken with him on the phone and at a meeting.
I think I’ll have another go: putting my views to him as eloquently and succinctly as I can. He’s quite influential so, if I were successful, it might have an impact. As I said, I’m not very hopeful, but we’ll see. This issue is so important that it must be worth a try.
Therein lies our problem. An MP listened to reason but when promotion beckoned hypocrisy and self interest took over.
What hope do we have when our elected representatives behave in such a manner?
Agree – I shall be doing it with mine and also via the Conservative Policy Forum which has a session next month on manifesto issues
Net zero electricity is impossible whether in 2030, 2035 or 2100 for two main reasons.
1) There is not the technology to store the really, really vast amounts of energy between periods of wind (and I doubt ever will be). Even massive V2G won’t be enough.
2) Even last night for 6 hours wind power was curtailed and CCGT kept running at 3GW to provide a reliable base load – as others have mentioned the grid cannot handle more than a certain perecentage of renewable power.
Therefore gas generated electricity will be around for the long term. What I think we will see for ‘net zero electricity’ is that the additional 30~GW of renewable output planned will in effect be charging more and more EVs (and maybe powering HPs if that plan is not scrapped) – thereby reducing the Petrol/Diesel (and domestic gas) consumption. Then the politicians in power will use some creative accountancy to show that with reduced vehicle and grid fossil fuel conusmption this equates to a net-zero grid at 2022 levels IF vehicle fossil fuel consumption had stayed the same. Id est Net-zero electricity will actually mean perhaps a 10-20% overall fossil fuel consumption reduction.
Don Quixote, where are you??
Slippery road ahead. Skidmore review, sorry if it’s a repost, tried a search.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chris-skidmore-launches-net-zero-review
It is not widely known yet , but Sir Keir has a dedicated team of socialist scientists who , alongside their comrades in Mother Russia are on the verge of producing a new type of wind , which will blow day and night at optimum speeds to drive wind turbines . Work is also at an advanced stage on producing constant sunlight . These marxist miracles will lead to a new age of clean power generation , which will free personkind from the tyranny of carbon and allow all individuals to have rich and fulfilling lives . There will initially be some cost implications , but Labour will also soon have good news on the sister project that will provide alll necessary ‘ funding ‘- the new genetically modified magic money tree . ( Denarius hilarious crappus )
A previous generation of labour MPs was not quite so credulous as the current crop. Dennis Healey , a minister in Wilson’s Govt told a joke either in a conference speech or at a fund rasing dinner about a member of the public who came to him with a brilliant idea about the threat from soviet submarines in the Atlantic ( during the Cold War). “Drain the Atlantic” the chap said “and send in bombers to destroy the stranded submarines”.
“so how do we drain the Atlantic ” asks Healey
“thats just a detail for your scientists to work out – I ‘ve given you the basic idea”
was the reply.
I get the impression that to Starmer and cronies Net Zero is the basic idea and how to get there is just a trifling detail for “the scientists/ engineers ” to work out.
I always knew my O Level Latin would come in useful some day. 🤣🤣
There will be plenty of well paid positions, hundreds of people standing in fields blowing at windmills, or pedalling furiously to power daylight spectrum light bulbs strung over the solar panels.
For floating wind there isn’t even enough chain for the mooring lines.
What none of the Green planners, as far as I’ve heard about, have factored into their plans for ‘Net Zero’ is what to do about oil. Presumably get rid of it as a source of the hated C02? But without oil in the world, there will be little or no plastic. That means no mobile phones; no computers or electronics; no internet; no modern health care; no most anything. We will then be living in the world of the 18th century at best, but not as comfortably as we have lost most of their skills. So then a large nation on the other side of the world, would see an opportunity.
Energy storage is fundamental to increasing reliance on renewables. There was an article on the Net Zero website recently which included this statement:
“On average, economies the size of the U.S. (and in normal times, the EU) store one or two months’ worth of coal, oil, or natural gas……..Advocates of the energy transition propose that building more batteries can store excess energy from solar and wind installations. But matching the energy value of the two months’ worth of natural gas Europe now has in storage would require building $40 trillion worth of batteries, which would take all the world’s battery factories combined about 400 years to produce.”
While 2 months is more than would be needed (I’m guessing) to support an all-renewable system, this does put things in perspective.