Prepare For Energy Shortages In 2030
By Paul Homewood
More on UK FIRES:
https://ukfires.org/is-absolute-zero-pessimistic-about-uk-energy-supplies/
We have come across UK FIRES before. They warned us in 2020 that If it is to achieve its target of net zero climate emissions by 2050, all UK airports must close by mid-century and the country will have to make other drastic and fundamental lifestyle changes.
They do have a habit of pointing out the harsh realities of Net Zero, which are deliberately hidden from us by the government, CCC and the rest of the climate lobby. Just last month they published this analysis concerning the state of UK energy supplies:
The most common response we receive when we present Absolute Zero to governmental or incumbent commercial audiences is “Oh, but your forecast of future energy supplies is far too low. You should be more optimistic.”
Figure 1, shows the basis of our thinking at the time. The background of this figure is figure 1-1 in the Absolute Zero report, and here we’ve overlaid on it the government’s data on electricity generation. This data, which is available in the excellent Digest of UK Energy Statistics (table 5.6), takes a while to collect and validate, so when we wrote the report in 2019, we could draw on real data up to 2017 – which is the blue line in figure 1.
Figure 2 below, certainly seems to confirm that we are less optimistic than everyone else[1]. Compared to 15 other scenarios used to inform government climate policy, our forecast of the emissions-free electricity supply is by far the lowest. Figure 2 also demonstrates that all of these other scenarios depend on negative emissions technologies such as carbon capture and storage to deal with between 40 and 80 MtCO2e per year of “residual emissions.” In Absolute Zero we reflected the reality that to date no such technologies were operating in the UK, and therefore forecast that by 2050 we should continue to anticipate that they would not exist. So far, our prediction on that front has been absolutely correct, although – as always – there are lots of people in the oil and gas industries talking enthusiastically about projects that might happen.
Energy infrastructure is not a commodity product, like a smartphone. You can’t buy new nuclear power stations, or carbon-capture and storage facilities off the shelf. They are mega-projects. Before construction begins, a long and complex series of societal discussions has to play out, about public funding contrasted with other important priorities, about land-rights, local communities, safety, public perception, legal and environmental compliance, and the complicated processes of commercial contracting. Once construction begins, it almost always takes longer than predicted – because the contracts are often awarded to the most optimistic sounding contractors, who claim early delivery dates, but then have to push them back as “unexpected” features of the project delay their intended timelines.
Figure 4 shows how this story is playing out for the new nuclear power station at Hinckley Point C. The yellow bars show the International Atomic Energy Authority’s predictions of the timeline to introduce a new nuclear power station. The purple bars show what has happened to date – and don’t forget that when the latest delay was announced in 2022, the project owners also predicted that they would be announcing further delays later…
Yet the message isn’t getting through. Atkins in their excellent “Engineering Net Zero” reports have analysed the build-rates required to deliver the energy infrastructure predicted by the Climate Change Committee, leading to the graph in figure 5. Notice that the required build rate leapt up in 2022, to an unprecedented level with no ramp-up.
Almost unbelievably, when this report was launched, the audience response was to smile and shrug, and say “well we’ll just have to go a bit faster then, won’t we? We just need to be more optimistic.”
But surely the correct interpretation of figure 5 is that it isn’t going to happen. There is no possibility of this level of energy infrastructure being built by 2035, and if anything approaching this rate of construction is to happen beyond then, the public financing commitment needs to be made right now, before the next election.
We haven’t heard it mentioned.
When we hear people tell us that we “should just be more optimistic” we think what they’re really saying is “we don’t want to think about a future in which we don’t have all the energy we want.” But the whole excitement of the UK FIRES programme has been to recognise that that such a shortfall is (close to a certain) reality, and as a result a whole different range of innovations in technology, business, systems, governance and lifestyle are going to emerge as the enablers of real zero emissions living. By articulating and promoting those opportunities, we are aiming to open up a much more credible pathway to delivering zero emissions in reality. These are achievable goals, and it’s a pathway along which we can walk to a zero-emissions future – while living really well.
https://ukfires.org/is-absolute-zero-pessimistic-about-uk-energy-supplies/
The target for 2035 is especially relevant, because the government has committed to a cut in emissions of 68% from 2018 levels by 2035.
In the last three years, a total of 6141 MW of wind and solar capacity has been added. Last year’s CfD Round 4 auction adds another 10689 MW, most of which won’t arrive until 2026/27. As UK Fires point out, there is simply no way that we will achieve 14 GW a year between now and 2035, a total of 196 GW.
Worse still, as the nuclear timeline shows, it could take another 20 years for the next nuclear plant to arrive after Hinkley.
So let’s let that final paragraph sink in again:
When we hear people tell us that we “should just be more optimistic” we think what they’re really saying is “we don’t want to think about a future in which we don’t have all the energy we want.” But the whole excitement of the UK FIRES programme has been to recognise that that such a shortfall is (close to a certain) reality, and as a result a whole different range of innovations in technology, business, systems, governance and lifestyle are going to emerge as the enablers of real zero emissions living. By articulating and promoting those opportunities, we are aiming to open up a much more credible pathway to delivering zero emissions in reality. These are achievable goals, and it’s a pathway along which we can walk to a zero-emissions future – while living really well.
They may be excited. But I suspect most people will be horrified and extremely angry when they find out they have been duped, and that we will have to drastically tailor our lives for a future without all of the energy we need.
As UK FIRES noted in their MINUS 45 report two years ago:
We can’t say we weren’t warned!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Do the UK greens realise that few other countries are deliberately wrecking their economy? That emissions are continuing apace from the rest of the world and all our sacrifices will make not the slightest difference?
It seems to be European politicians and the current President of the USA that are obsessed with wrecking the economy and making live worse. All based on the lies of “emissions”, complete ignorance of history and actual science. Why they even think they can “play God” with Mother Nature in the first place…
>>deliberately wrecking
I am so pinching ‘lies of emissions’.
I don’t know about “few” – all of Western Europe, the US and Canada are doing this.
I should add that when the Left lost the Cold War and Communism collapsed, the lesson they learnt wasn’t that they were wrong but that they lost because non0Communist countries “appeared” to be doing better. So the solution was to make sure that didn’t happen. People in Communist countries won’t feel poor if everyone else in every other country is equally poor. To put it simply, nobody goes from Cuba to the US if the US is the same as Cuba.
CO2 is the gas of life. Halve it and the planet dies.
Sadly, we cannot get CO2 up to the desirable 1000 ppm even by burning all available ´ fossil ´ fuels.
Why don’t global warming alarmists protest the use of politicians private jets ?
Rammed earth, which can be used for foundation screeds and walls, is said to be a proven and potentially zero emission alternative, “which can utilise abundant local materials”.
“We can’t say we weren’t warned.”
Oh, but the guilty parties WILL be saying, ‘We did not know!’ And undoubtedly they will say, ‘lessons will be learned’ – when it is too late to change anything at all.
The whole thing reminds me of a certain film noir from the 1940s. A doctor has been coerced into patching up a shot gangster and warns him, “Do not move for a week!” The gangster thinks he knows better and hauls himself up from the bed with an oath. One of his minions says, “Doc, ain’t you going to say nothing?”
The reply is chilling: “He’s dead! He just hasn’t noticed it.”
We already see what will happen – look at the shameless Fauci in the US, claiming that all the lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates and all the rest were somehow nothing to do with him. He gladly took credit when he thought he was Saving the World. Now the harms are becoming clear, it wasn’t him after all.
There have been many warnings about energy shortages .https://utilityweek.co.uk/uk-faces-55-per-cent-power-shortfall-by-2025-warns-imeche/
And through this last winter there were power cuts somewhere just about everyday . But these were always explained away as routine maintenance / line faults or whatever to try to cover up the fact that we do not have enough generation capacity .
And with any increase in EVs or electric home heating it will only get worse .
But the media seem to be under instructions not to tell the truth about the inevitable disaster that net zero will bring .
UK FIRES appears to be little more than a bunch of Left-wing academics dedicated to using Net Zero to achieve their political aims. I note that one of their themes is “industrial Policy”, an idea comprehensively debunked decades ago by various Nobel Prize winners as the Knowledge Problem. Yet still after all thus time, people who think they are clever believe they can overcome this. Their solution to the shortfall in energy under Net Zero isn’t to abandon Net Zero but to abandon being wealthy as a nation.
And their “programmes” for reducing energy consumption are just as pie in the sky as the government’s plans for increasing energy production.
On the contrary, it’s been my view for some time that UK FIRES are bunch of very clever sceptics.
Sceptics? Possibly
In their report ‘Energy Sector Innovation with Absolute Zero (April 22) they said amongst many other things
“Hard to electrify sectors – including aviation, shipping and high grade heat in industry currently demand 200 TWh of energy (12% of total energy demand). UK Government’s Net Zero Strategy aims to install 5GW of hydrogen delivering 42TWh by 2030. Only one fifth of demand for these hard to decarbonise sectors in a third of the time from now to 2050. Even this modest ambition is unlikely to be met because of under funding”
and
“Future legislation will have to FORCE retrofit/replacement for long lived assets – buildings/houses- that will not be replaced before 2050.”
They also talked about fitting electric motors to vintage cars and retro fitting a VW Beetle for £25,000 or converting a new beetle to electric for £47,000. ( At first I thought they were living in la la land but now wonder if this was ‘tongue-in-cheek’)
That needs immediate court cases to stop what would effectively be retrospective legislation which is contrary to all principles of law.
>>Future legislation will have to FORCE retrofit/replacement
They appear to want to halve meat eating and do away with flying. How does that make them sceptics? At least one of them is an IPCC author. And they want “industrial strategy”, the usual fallacy the Left fall for.
Is there another sort of academic other left wing in the UK?
I assume that the numbers of new wind turbines must include the replacements for those (many) aging turbines. No?
Oh…and figure 1 is laughable. It gives the impression that wind and solar installations will have similar delivery capabilities to nuclear whereas, renewables are so intermittent and unreliable that it should be a crime to build them.
‘the public financing commitment needs to be made right now’ . . . while you still have money.
Prosperity provides the money. Net Zero ends prosperity. Any ‘financing commitments’ made now are with make believe money. You can’t kill your economy and have the money, too.
Net Zero is a policy of decadence. You can’t do it. It’s preposterous. It is a high-level nincompoop’s silly dream. In the prosperity-decadence-collapse cycle, you are in late decadence.
Plus 1!
UK Fires are more aware than Lord Deben of the CCC, about the futility of net zero, the overall aim is to impoverish us, Klaus Schwab of WEF has outlined the plan. As long as the climate change act is law, then legally we have to go for net zero, the greens have won numerous court cases enforcing carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The only way forward is to repeal or water down the act, the UK Fires analysis is actually useful to our cause.
Total repeal of such lunatic legislation (climate change act) is what is needed. It is shocking that so-called MPs ignored the entire electorate.
Realist: I have been thinking recently that best hope for defeating this nonsense is by a legal trial whereby all the argumenyts for and against can be aired in a controlled situation. I have no doubt who would be found guilty.
With reference to Figure 4, I find it difficult to understand that the British commenced building the first grid scale nuclear power station – Calder Hall – in 1953 and it was officially opened on 17 October 1956 and now we’re lucky if we van build one in 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_Hall_nuclear_power_station
I suppose that’s progress.
Cold War imperatives probably helped a lot.
Hinkley Point: In February 2023, EDF announced that costs would rise to £32.7bn and completion would be delayed by a further 15 months to September 2028.
Many people that were around for the announcement will have checked out before a single electron leaves the site.
Standard delay on the completion of these plants is TWELVE years. In 2016 the completion date was end of 2025 – so judging it by the other 2 plants we are looking at end of 2037, unless they have improved with experience. Cost overruns vary from THREE times for the Finland plant to FIVE times for the Normandy plant.
Figure 4 (Nuclear Power Timeline) omits demonstration of performance, especially when designs are new.
A design (not just nuclear – this applies to any) should have several thousand hours under its belt, possibly a complete fuel/maintenance cycle, to fully confirm the design concept. Plus, a design should have at least a couple of units delivered on time and budget (we can say the same for CCGT and OCGT).
Until this has been achieved, we cannot say the timeline should end with “Start up”. The yellow bars in Figure 4 need 4-5 years added to them under a label like “Demonstration”
I suspect we will be facing shortages sooner than that. Nuclear power stations will be closing along with the last of our coal. There will be delays to wind investments from AR4 and bidding for AR 5 is almost sure to disappoint. Capacity markets have yet to procure adequate backup, and with lead times even stamping on the accellerator now will be too late.
‘These are achievable goals, and it’s a pathway along which we can walk to a zero-emissions future – while living really well.’
What can you say? Utter bollocks, which I think gives the lie to the UKFIRES group being sceptics. They are just out of step by telling the truth unlike all of our politicians and the snivelling service.
Nothing to worry about. UK wind output has leapt up from 1.6% to 20% overnight. We are saved.
This is Net Zero, and the locals don’t like it.
Uproar grows at plans for 100-mile network of giant pylons across the beautiful Scottish Highlands
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/uproar-grows-plans-100-mile-29851254
But as the Beauly – Denny link has been built this one will go ahead no matter what.
Hey everybody chill out. The new king has influence and connections. Let’s not forget, he knows the movers and shakers at W.E.F. He will be a loving and caring new monarch. He will end this madness. We only have a week or two to wait now.