FES 2023–The Emperor Still Has No Clothes!
By Paul Homewood
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios/documents
This year’s National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios has been released, and as before fails to address the real problems facing the pursuit of Net Zero.
As usual, there are four scenarios. The most optimistic is called Leading The Way, which has as much chance of being achieved as England winning the next World Cup. The most realistic is Falling Short, which only cuts emissions by about half come 2050.
But I’ll concentrate on the other two:
As before, I will focus on 2035, as nobody can predict what will happen in 30 years time.
Consumer Transformation looks a highly unlikely outcome. It assumes, for instance, that there will be 12 million heat pumps installed by 2035; there is simply no prospect of this unless the gas boiler ban takes effect a decade earlier. It is also unlikely that consumers will drastically alter their habits in terms of demand side response, or be willing to spend thousands on insulation.
System Transformation is slightly more realistic, but not much! This assumes 3 million heat pumps by 2035, but with an annual rollout of about 160,000 as soon as 2025, again extremely implausible. Because of this slow take up of heat pumps, the scenario assumes most heating will use hydrogen boilers, which in turn raises a separate question – where will this hydrogen come from? The FES answer is mainly from steam reforming natural gas, in theory using CCUS.
And in turn, this raises two more issues:
1) Steam reforming uses much more natural gas than you would use if you burnt it in the first place. It is therefore extremely expensive and inefficient.
2) Even with CCUS, there are still some emissions, as the process cannot capture all of the carbon dioxide, only about two-thirds.
Under ST, we will still be consuming 581 TWh of natural gas in 2035, compared to 986 TWh currently. This clearly makes a nonsense of the Labour Party’s plan to stop all new North Sea exploration.
But now we come to the crucial question of what our power system will look like in 2035. Below are the capacity assumptions in FES:
| 2035 | ||||
| GW | ||||
| Current | CT | ST | ||
| Interconnectors | 7.40 | 19.15 | 15.90 | |
| Fossil fuel and CCS | 35.36 | 24.11 | 27.39 | |
| Solar | 0.04 | 4.93 | 2.61 | |
| Offshore Wind | 12.75 | 78.27 | 69.84 | |
| Onshore Wind | 7.94 | 20.83 | 20.83 | |
| Other generation | 11.06 | 16.62 | 15.88 | |
| Storage | 3.34 | 21.15 | 14.35 | |
| Dispatchable | |
|
40.73 | 43.26 |
| Peak Demand | |
|
98.00 | 73.00 |
. .
* Others includes nuclear, bio, BECCS, hydro and hydrogen
In both scenarios, dispatchable capacity (excl I/Cs) is woefully short of what is needed. Even with interconnectors, a large shortfall remains, despite the retention of most of our existing CCGT fleet.
Storage, according to the FES, will only be about two hours worth on average, so only enough to manage short term peaks in demand. Solar, as we know will produce next to nothing in winter; ( the figures quoted for capacity are, by the way, grid scale installations, and exclude embedded local solar farms).
At a push, you could possibly count on getting a minimum of 5% out of the wind capacity, even on windless days, about 5 GW. But this still leaves us well short in both scenarios.
Sure, we might be able to reduce peak demand by maybe 10 GW, by smoothing out daily demand. But on the other hand. You would need to build in a reserve of at least 20 GW, to cover for plant outages etc.
The only way to ensure security of supply with these increased electrification scenarios would be to treble our existing CCGT fleet, if necessary modified to burn hydrogen. In the longer term, a tranche pf new nuclear might help to plug the gap, but that would likely take many more years to come about.
Every year I raise this problem. And every year a new FES comes out, which totally ignores the disaster staring us in the face. There seems to be a naive belief that all of that wind and solar capacity will somehow always provide the power we need. Is it just me? Am I missing something?
It really is a case of the Emperor having no clothes!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
‘Leading the Way’?? More like, Losing the Way!
IMHO – We have to stop arguing the case with these people at a scientific level. They don’t care! They know that the sheeple will believe all their promises and we will always be ‘deniers’ – unless and until we find a way to play by their rules. As a start, we need to show the public just how thick, stupid, and political are the people pushing NZ – as well as showing the public how many of these shysters are actually just lining their pockets. If Covid taught us anything it was that they’re only in it for the money.
COVID also taught us they like power and control over our lives. Net Zero feeds their mania.
Paul. Are you going to send your analysis of the National Grid report to the authors and ask for comment?
A good idea Harry, but this is what we have been trying to do for the past 20 years. How do you suggest doing this when the MSM refuse to recognise or publish ‘deniers’ material?
What is a ‘gas boiler ban’, Paul? If it’s only a ban on buying/installing new ones the country will be faced with years of potential boiler failures/explosions; if it’s to be a ban on gas (do they turn it off?) they will be faced with lots of people dying of hypothermia etc.
Even the Guardian questions the plan to burn hydrogen in boilers, cookers etc.
The first problem for engineers is that burning hydrogen does not produce water only. It could lead to a continuation of the current nitrogen dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels such as diesel and fossil gas.
The second problem comes from hydrogen leakage. Two government reports show hydrogen is a climate-heating gas, with a 100-year global warming potential that is about 11 times greater than carbon dioxide.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/17/pollutionwatch-hydrogen-power-climate-leaks
Whatever you do, do NOT assume logic and reason and facts underpin NetZero. It is simply an ideological bible.
They are supposed to be the experts! Yet us knowledgeable individuals can quickly see that in the cold dark, windless winter, when we need the most energy, the figures just do not add up. When is the work going to start on upgrading the local 415 V distribution system, every substation and the supply to every home will have to be upgraded by a factor of 4 or 5 to get enough energy to run the heat pump and charge the car(s) at the same . Demand Side Reduction (DSR), the smart meter will ramp the price up until electricity will be unaffordable and many of the poorest will freeze. Desperate people are going to steal electricity in order to keep warm, by passing a meter is pretty simple.
A dystopian scenario of power cuts, looting, riots and attacks on the warm, brightly lit houses of the rich, charging two cars on the drive.
Illegal lower cost car charging at industrial sites using stolen electricity run by the criminal gangs.
I remember in the 1960’s when the electricity area boards ran advertising campaigns TO USE MORE ELECTRICITY and actually had their own showrooms to sell appliances.
Net Zero is not going to work.
Net zero is a very stupid idea and anyone who believes in it should stop exhaling CO2, right now!
Net Zero CANNOT work. And, assuming we can get 100% agreement on what it actually means, it doesn’t make any sense even if it could work.
We are consistently falling for the Jedi mind trick: “these are not the facts you are looking for”, the facts being that climate is doing nothing it hasn’t done dozens of times before; that human influence on climate is minuscule at best; that we have the ingenuity to cope with anything climate throws at us if we care to make use of it; that the most counter-productive route we can go down is to beggar ourselves to the point where the climate “wins”.
What is happening with gas plus CCS in Teesside e.g. Allam cycle (see https://whitetail.energy/)?
The Allam cycle always seemed interesting but a triumph of hope over reality to me. WCE don’t appear to have had a press release since 2021. But (h/t Duck Duck Go) apparently…
“A two-year construction project is planned from 2024. The partners hope Whitetail could be operating in 2027”
and…
“The ‘semi-closed loop technology’ captures 97.6% of the produced CO2, with only a small amount of leakage through seals. The process needs much less fuel than conventional combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants, said Whitetail director Steve Milward.”
2.4% of the gas leaks out? Does that happen at a gas (CO2) cooled nuclear reactor? Less fuel? Ignoring the power needed for the production of the required pure oxygen I assume, because I can’t see how the Allam cycle can be more efficient overall than a CCGT, but I’m not a power engineer.
350MW of dispatchable power is fine, and undoubtedly it will work technically, but economically?
https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/inside-the-plans-for-the-uk-s-first-net-zero-power-plant
I always seem to comment off in the weeds, but dragging it back on topic, if the first trial plant is 2027, I can’t see this saving us by 2035.
‘Consumer Transformation looks a highly unlikely outcome.’
Amen. I worked in power cost management for 30 years. I am an expert. Demand management WILL NOT WORK.
Suggesting it is ignorant.
Demand Management is a euphemism and will be made to work if everyone has a smart meter and those in charge simply cut off the power as and when necessary!
So we could call blackouts ‘demand management.’
When I say demand management won’t work, I am referring to the customer side. Cutting people off isn’t demand management. But would work.
Smart meters are too inefficient to control power in realtime. When there is limited power on the grid they will knock off the substations. The net effect of price rationing using smart meters will be an increase in electricity theft or switch to generators for parts of the day when extreme cold conditions hit. The problem is diesel also turns to sludge in such cold conditions.
That is very likely. We will be allowed to choose to do the right thing but if we don’t choose, we will be forced to. Smart meters will be used to ration. You will get an allowance and once you’ve used that, out go the lights.
Power rationing must be on the cards, how else can demand be balanced with supply? With all mainstream political parties firm believers in the Net Zero cult, what can be done? Bring on a few blackouts this winter and let’s see how things develop.
Rationing is definitely the plan (as far as any plan exists). Transport, power, food, money, anything the power mad administrative class can think of after their triumph with the covid proof of concept.
Everything will be rationed. You will be confined to your designated area and given a certain amount to consume of what the state decides you should want. The problem is, lots of people, including many politicians on the right, don’t understand that this is the only place you can end up. They continue to believe that Net Zero is achievable with only minimal changes.
Back to battery-operated radios and reading by candlelight on cold winter evenings?
We can use those wind-up radios that were developed for Third World countries like the UK government is working to make us.
COVID also taught us they like power and control over our lives. Net Zero feeds their mania.
You can bet that there is nobody in government (or the shadow government) who has a clue of the disaster that National Grid has in store for the country. When the fan gets hit, the bosses at NG will no doubt take their big salaries and bonuses and retire to somewhere with a warm climate (the Caribbean perhaps).
National Grid is required to do what the government wants and now seems to be run by those who agree with this anyway – see the Institute of Energy membership as proof. So they are not offering any sensible comment on Nut Job Zero to the idiots in government. At some point reality will intrude but it will take a while. Look at Germany where unemployment is rising as companies goes bankrupt from energy costs, companies are planning on moving to other countries, educated people in their middle years are leaving at the third highest rate in western countries, and yet their morons are ploughing on regardless with their destruction. I guess they are proud to have doubled the amount of energy they need to import having closed their nuclear plants.
Geoff. Good point. If they are not even announcing a planning stage to upgrade domestic electricty supplies for EVs and heat pumps etc, then what are the odds that they don’t mean to go through with NZ? I know politicians don’t do joined up thinking but I smell a rat. Is NZ a diversion for something else (though God knows what)?
Or they do plan to go through with it and those who can’t afford it will be required, as Scrooge put it, “… reduce the surplus population”. What the élites will do when they discover they have run out of “cannon fodder” is anybody’s guess.
Here’s a couple of curveballs. Given how long our host has been calling out the numbers and how long TPTB have been ignoring him (and others) it’s fair to say an unexpected (for gov’t) crunch is going to occur.
What happens next?
Would it stimulate a harder NZ legal push or the exact opposite, a NZ deadline relaxation as reality bites? What about technology? Is there a panacea just around the corner, or could there be a change of Party in government that’d drastically amend NZ targets?
If so, in all cases, what gives?
The reason I ask these questions is we’re NOT GOING TO HIT NZ TARGETS. We can all see that. When that happens, and it will, something unexpected will also have to occur in response.
True. We know it will fail, we just don’t know what it will look like.
A linguistic aside, re: “couple of curveballs.”
To me, that is an American metaphor, referring to baseball. Is there a British equivalent? Are you an American, Mr Red? Or is “curveball” relevant to Brits?
No, not American. English as they come, old chap.
The reason for the Q is everyone is still talking about NZ 2030 & 2035 but as stated we’re just not going to hit those targets.
NZ is already a giant slo-mo car crash. At some point a policy change has to happen.
Hey GC, baseball originated in England. Derby County Football Club used to play at theBaseball Ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_Ground
You guys nicked it from us on account of not being able to understand cricket.
Ray, your link is decades after a professional league was established in the U.S.
My question, again: When a Brit hears “curveball,” what sport do they think of?
Googly? Rabona?
Chinaman?
“curve ball” = “top spin”
Ryan Maue has (finally) updated his Accumulated Cyclone Energy page:
https://climatlas.com/tropical/
The three charts in the middle are easy to understand and continue to show no overall trend in either frequency or violence for the last half-century.
I find the table at the top and the chart at the end always very confusing because of the fact that the Southern Hemisphere season straddles two calendar years.
I think it best to show the results for the Southern and Northern ‘campaigns’ sequentially with global figures inserted; it looks pretty here but will probably lose formatting when uploaded:
Southern 2021-2022 134
Global 525
Northern 2022 391
Global 635
Southern 2022-23 244
Global* 379*
Northern* 2023 135*
The Climatology, based on 1991-2020, says the Southern “should”
be 205 and the Northern “should” be 575 and the Global for any two completed seasons “should” be 780.
The figure of 379 includes the recent, completed Southern season which was 39 high and the present, on-going, Northern season which is 56 high, to date.
Of course, it will be understood that all these “shoulds” are only a manner of speaking. The actual data is EXTREMELY variable.
For example the recent Southern number has a contribution of 88 from just one event – Cyclone Freddy. This was able to travel all the way from Australia to Mozambique – because it never met land – surviving and racking up ACE, but doing no harm, until it reached Eastern Africa where it caused 1,000 deaths.
It is to be noted that Eastern Australia escaped a cyclone for another year and so the Great Barrier Reef continues to be fine – to the chagrin of the ‘they’ who like to shed crocodile tears over it.
* To date.
It just needs a long cold winter to descend on Europe. When it does the power cuts will kick in and reality may dawn on the nitwits.
Yep, the formatting went wrong.
134 + 391 = 525; and so on.
We live and learn. A mechanic was re-gassing the
air-conditioning system on my faithful 2005 petrol Toyota Avensis. I mentioned that I had heard that new diesel cars were good on emissions. He said, “Yes, but at a high cost. There are all sorts of ‘clever’ tricks involved and when they go wrong – as they always do on crap modern cars – the cost of fixing them is horrendous.”
It is too early to wish for a cold winter. The conditions are not ripe for the total catastrophe which is needed to persuade enough people that ‘their gods have failed.’
In some respects the ESO should be applauded for this as it shines a light on the scale of what is required to achieve NZ. Take offshore wind 50GW by 2030 aint going to happen and they suggest 78GW by 2035! Any right minded politician knows this but its difficult to retreat back from but it will slowly happen. The real risk here is if we cut ourselves adrift of fossil fuel capability prematurely which is what all political parties are promoting albeit Torys have given themselves space to row back from. The others haven’t and aren’t even honest enough to tell people the real sacrifices required for NZ and when they start to find out support will melt away.
I would resist piping H2 into a building I live in.
First, put into the housing and offices of all government ministers.
A 10-year trial ought to be sufficiently long to show the consequences.
Guido Fawkes and Co. ‘Hydrogen suppliers to the administrative class’, sounds like a plan.
“Guido Fawkes and Co.”
We test for gas leaks with a match and for electricity leaks with a wet finger.
Paul – in case you missed it.. BBC Newsnight Monday.. Piece on “Global Warming” and hotter than ever… Although reference was made to El Nino etc, they then had a nice conversation … not an interview… with Michael Mann… (is he still credible?) who spouted his usual garbage without question.
Interestingly this was preceded by a piece on the BBC sex scandal where there was an interview with a person called Alison Hastings (who was chair of the BBC Editorial Standards committee from 2006-14) discussing truth and BBC standards and handling of complaints. Would she have been the person responsible for the BBC “science is settled” approach to climate change that mandated no dissent? If so, strange coincidence given the way BBC handle your complaints
Mann has been “interviewed” by the BBC recently. Must have met Rowlatt at a conference in an exotic location
Paul. Are you going to send your analysis of the National Grid report to the authors and ask for comment?
Maybe, Paul, the looming disaster is all part of the plan. The powers that be want to deindustrialise and depopulate and wrecking our national energy infrastructure is a good way of going about it, just as they attempted with the wrecking ball of their fake Covid plandemic.
It has taken a long time for me to come round to the idea that their is a masterplan to impoverish us, organised by the elite rich to get even richer, but it can be the only explanation to what is going on.
Agriculture, meat is bad and artificial nitrogen fertilizer is causing dangerous NOx levels in the air, waterways and the air are polluted. Re-wilding agricultural land and installing solar panels in prime crop growing areas (Solar panels in Yorkshire on Potato fields). Farmers get paid to stop growing food! Look at what happened in Sri Lanka and how Holland has tried to close down half of its farming.
Covid was used to stop industry and scare us into taking an untested vaccine. I still see people wearing masks when out shopping, they even admitted having a “nudge unit” to lie to us
What is the point of ULEZ zones and 15 minute cities together with LTNs, just more rules and hassles, the pollution levels are the lowest they have ever been so they just get a bigger microscope and introduce a WHO limit based on dodgy statistics
Then we have the UN 2030 document to lift the poor (Africa) out of poverty, but it is really to equalise living standards, so an implied reduction of the rich western life style.
Then our worst nightmare Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum, The Great Reset. “You will own nothing and be happy”
https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-great-reset
All the nutty leaders around the world and rich elites diligently go to Davos and get their instructions from Schwab.
All that can save us is what remains of democracy, its happened in New Zealand, Finland and now Holland (and Scotland, but that was Woman with willies).
Rishi Sunak was the boss of Chris Hohn’s Childrens fund which is the charity funding XR (Extinction Rebellion), his first decision on his first day was to restore the ban on fracking, signalling to his boss (Hohn) that all was well.
Starmer of course went to Davos this year so our only hope is one of the right wing parties getting some MPs into parliament otherwise we are doomed or the riots start. It does not look good, a cold winter with blackouts, food shortages would be the greatest thing to happen to change the political make up off the UK, but I have been hoping that would happen for the last 3 years.
“Am I missing something?”
If anything is inexplicable it is because either the full facts or the ultimate aims or both are not divulged.
The country is under attack.
From the communists who wish to destroy the west through the unilateral chimera of Net Zero designed to bankrupt our economy.
From feudal elites/corporates who wish to destroy individual wealth so we “own nothing” and they can own everything. The giveaway was when our PM, then Chancellor, said at COP26:
“So our third action is to rewire the entire global financial system for Net Zero.”
From the snake-oil salesmen who peddle the ludicrous idea that the country can run on expensive and unreliable renewables when both the production and consumption require huge taxpayer subsidies and a parallel energy system to exist at all.
From the Malthusians whose religious zealotry to save the planet has effectively brought back the blasphemy laws to prevent any discussion of how the implementation of their ideology will mean the deaths of millions of people through starvation.
All using the completely false narrative that there is a climate crisis brought about by a mild warming after the Little Ice Age currently running at 0.13 degrees C per decade caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere from 3 molecules per 10,000 to 4 molecules per 10,000.
Peterson’s Dictum: “If you can’t figure out what someone is doing, or why, look at the outcome. And infer the motivation.”
Climate change (sic) isn’t about the weather. The cultural Marxists found it useful for getting people to accept global, totalitarian government. The social impact of climate change will dwarf any alleged weather impacts. The British government is demanding the end of gas boilers, ICE vehicles, and gas powered electricity generation. Just what kind of weather event could be worse than that ?!?!
The problem with long term plans is that innovation can make them irrelevant in a blink of an eye. I don’t think there are any immediate energy generation fixes available (including fusion). However savings in energy usage at the margins can make a lot of difference. Here is a YouTube link about fertiliser production:
Phasing out the Haber Bosch process for something better, if it is correct then a saving of 2% in gas use could be possible.
We have ‘phased out’ our last Fertiliser works on Teesside.
It was kept alive by a taxpayer subsidy to produce, ironically, much needed CO2.
Any update on National Grids ‘estimate’ of a Trillion quid to update the Grid, transmission and Distribution to service all this guff?
Stating the obvious – except to net zero numpties – one more time…
Climate change challenges hydropower-dependent Austria
“Solar energy is wonderfully abundant in summer… But production is too low in winter, precisely when we need it for heating,” Neunteufel [senior researcher at Vienna University] said.
“And with wind, it’s even harder to plan: There can be days any time without wind, and then wind power production largely stops,” he said.
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-climate-hydropower-dependent-austria.html
UK emits one per cent of global CO2. So what are we playing at? Lord Deben says we have “leadership” the poor sap. Over the other side on WUWT Willis Eschenbach shows that wood and dung produce three times more energy than wind and solar. Two per cent after $trillions means that these forecasts are garbage.
I agree National Grid are living in a fantasy land. The video of their launch event looked like a Soviet Politburo discussing tractor production. They really want even more centralised planning.
I’ve done my own critique of FES, covering slightly different points. The Emperor certainly has no clothes.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/national-grid-fantasy-energy-scenarios
Re: ‘Because of this slow take up of heat pumps, the scenario assumes most heating will use hydrogen boilers’
Looks like that scenario just bit the dust…
Shapps: “The problem with that is the hydrogen molecules are very small.”