Claire Coutinho Replies!
By Paul Homewood
Here is the reply from Claire Coutinho:
Thank you for your email of 4 March regarding the UK’s net zero policy .I am responding in my capacity as both your constituency MP and Secretary of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Please accept my apologies for the delay in my response.
As you note, and as Paul Homewood also raises in his article, solar and wind power are variable energy sources and energy is still needed when the weather is unfavourable. That is why we are supporting the development and deployment of a portfolio of low-carbon technologies for generation, storage and system flexibility. We have one of the most reliable and diverse energy systems in the world, and we intend to maintain that security as we decarbonise. We have also committed to a minimum 5GW of new unabated gas, to maintain energy security until the clean technology is ready. This is likely to come from a mixture of refurbishing existing plants and building new, net zero ready gas plants.
As we re-committed to in our recent Civil Nuclear Roadmap, we are aiming for 24GW of nuclear power by 2050, meeting around a quarter of electricity demand. We are looking to deploy both Small Modular Reactors and further large-scale nuclear over the next decade. We launched the arm’s-length body Great British Nuclear (GBN) in March 2023 to deliver a programmatic approach for new nuclear projects. It has also been possible to extend the original lifespan of some of the existing fleet, although the Government has no direct involvement in those decisions. The Roadmap can be found here: http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050.
We are also seeing exciting progress in other renewables that will supplement solar and wind. The nearly 94MW of tidal stream capacity procured in the last two rounds of the Contracts for Difference scheme will increase the UK’s installed capacity tenfold, while 12MW of geothermal energy was procured in the last round (AR5) – the first time geothermal bids had been successful.
Low-carbon hydrogen will be critical to supporting the UK’s energy security and presents significant economic opportunities for our industrial heartlands. The UK’s geography, geology, infrastructure and expertise make it particularly suited to rapidly developing a low-carbon hydrogen economy, with the potential to become a global leader. In December 2023, we announced 11 projects that will deliver 125MW of new electrolytic hydrogen production capacity. We have also opened a second round of funding for an extra 875MW.
Electricity storage can enable us to use energy more flexibly and decarbonise our energy system cost-effectively by helping to balance the system at lower cost, maximising the usable output from solar and wind, and deferring or avoiding the need for costly network upgrades and new generation capacity. A variety of storage technologies will be needed, including technologies that can deploy at different scales and provide output for different durations such as lithium-ion battery storage and pumped hydropower storage, as well as emerging technologies including liquid air energy storage and flow batteries. Today, there is around 6.4 GW of electricity storage operational in Great Britain. There is a pipeline of at least 35GW of lithium-ion battery storage and 3GW of pumped hydropower.
Our target is to remove coal from our electricity mix by October 2024, a year earlier than originally planned, and the remaining coal fired power station in Great Britain is scheduled to close before this date.
It does not need me to point out the massive holes in these plans.
I have now drafted this reply, which has now been sent along with a few personal comments of the constituent:
Many thanks for your reply concerning Net Zero policy.
I appreciate the Government has many ambitious low carbon plans for 2050, which you list. However, none appear to offer a solution to the catastrophic problems facing us during the 2030s.
To lay it out in simple terms, according to the National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios, peak demand for electricity will be about 100 GW in 2035. We will probably have about 10 GW of dispatchable capacity (nuclear, biomass and hydro) – this assumes that all unabated gas power is shut down.
Even with 20 GW of interconnectors, which we most certainly cannot depend on, we will be woefully short of electricity when wind and solar power is at low levels.
You plan on 5 GW of new unabated gas, but clearly this will be nowhere enough. We will likely need ten times as much. Building new gas power plants incorporating carbon capture may be a solution, but I see no plans to do so in the time scale we are looking at, ie the mid 2030s. In any event, carbon capture adds significantly to the cost of electricity, and increases the amount of gas needed to produce each unit of electricity. Are you happy to see energy bills rising as a consequence?
The other plans you mention are currently far too small to make any difference, and will certainly not be ready in any scale by 2035.
Low carbon hydrogen, for instance, will need tens of billions spending on a whole new infrastructure – electrolysers, distribution networks, seasonal storage and hydrogen burning power stations. The new batch of projects outlined will only supply about 0.1% of the UK’s annual gas consumption, and are not grid-scale solutions.
On top of that, there simply won’t be enough wind/solar power in your plans to produce the hydrogen anyway. And if that is not enough, the contract price you have agreed for the next batch of hydrogen projects is ten times that of natural gas. Are you prepared to see household energy bills rocket to pay for these subsidies?
Similarly tidal and geothermal are extremely expensive, and the 106 MW currently procured is a tiny amount. While these technologies may bear fruit in thirty years’ time, we clearly cannot rely on them making any difference in the next decade.
You mention 35 GW of battery storage, but typically such batteries can only store enough for an hour’s use. Plainly these will be useless when we go days on end with little wind power.
So there you have it! We are staring at a gigantic black hole in our potential electricity supply come 2035.
I can only see one solution – begin construction now on a fleet of new CCGT plants, if necessary made CCS ready. (Bear in mind, CCS is still not a proven technology at scale). It will need to be at least 50 GW. In addition the current fleet needs to be contracted for at least 15 years, to provide standby capacity.
Evidently this is not part of your government’s plans. In which case, could you please explain how your plans will avoid the blackouts which appear inevitable?
UPDATE
The post has been corrected for typos and to exclude certain personal comments made by the constituent.
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Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Great response, slightly let down IMO by the unnecessary sniping about “net-useless” and “US Special Forces”, otherwise excellent. I hope that Claire responds and more quickly this time, that will be very interesting.
reference to the physical security threats are very relevant. The reference to inter connectors being unreliable could have been more strongly made.
No one has said security isn’t relevant. What’s been said is saying the pipeline was destroyed by us special forces is guesswork at best and conspiracy theory rubbish at worst.
It does not matter who damaged the pipeline. The point is that it was done. Similatr attacks on renewable infrastructure, especially when installed near the shore on or offshore, and in romote areas would be very easy to do on a large scale.
Unlike power stations there is insignificant security and no human onsite supervision.
replying to David above; arguments over who destroyed the gas pipeline are irrelevant, because the government doesn’t want to use any gas at all. Full stop, even if it comes from an elephant’s arsole. Stick to the point, the issue being that renewable energy is intermittent, expensive and can never fill the energy void we are headed into . .
My thoughts exactly. As there is zero evidence of US involvement the danger is the whole letter will be dismissed as conspiracy theory nutjobbery. It’s a pity because otherwise it’s a superb evisceration of the policy.
Thanks, well expressed, agree completely.
Agree. You should never put in anything that will enable a politician to dismiss the whole letter. Because they will always take advantage of it. If anything you should be understated so that there is nothing for them to pick out as being outlandish. Stick to clear facts, not opinions.
you wrote “As there is zero evidence of US involvement…”
There is no shortage of circumstantial evidence that Biden blew up the pipeline.
Ahaa- but Claire Coutinho knows full well that come the next election she will no longer be the Energy & Net Zero Secretary.
it would be interesting to send a similar letter to the Labour Shadow Energy & Net Zero Secretary and ask the Labour Party for their plans as to how they propose to deal with the energy security.
Yes it would but don’t expect any sort of coherent answer from our likely future energy secretary – the engineering and science free zone that is Ed Milliband.
The threat arising from inter-connectors comes primarily from 2 sources or combination of both.
1. When they break and they do, it takes a long time to fix them e.g. fire at the connecting station, line fault or anchor through the line.
2. Everyone on the other side of the inter-connector is following the same lunatic weather dependent electricity generation schemes. Norwegian hydro-generation will be tapped out by 2026/27. We will experience problems with electricity availability before 2030.
3. Economics, mothballing reliable generation plants costs money, there is no maintenance, once reliable generation plant is no longer maintained and the equipment is extended beyond its design life, maintenance costs and breakdowns mount. Power via inter-connectors when we need it most will not be cheap, especially when the dunkelflaute sets in for 2 weeks in Winter, these conditions are common.
To reinforce your second point, it is vital to remember that hydro electricity (Norway) is also heavily weather dependent. Following a summer drought (not uncommon in Norway) and low winter snowfall in 2011, the country’s reservoirs fell exceptionally low. It was imports of Swedish nuclear generated electricity that held off widespread blackouts in Norway.
Additionally the Norwegian public themselves are most unhappy with inter-connector exports. These have massively increased domestic prices (fossil fuel shortages make no difference to you when all your electricity is hydro generated) and the proposed North Connect to Scotland was banned due to this.
Norway is most certainly not any form of a solution for the UK and likely an unreliable partner.
And when the wind stops?
“In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days. And in those 262 days, we would have had rolling blackouts, or a full blackout across the UK if it wasn’t for gas.”
Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas
Across Europe, 72 gigawatts-worth of gas plants are being built, as nations realise you cannot power a national grid on solar and wind.
Ah, she hasn’t thought through that bit, the Dunkleflaute, dark windless winter days and nights
She’s a wunderkind! – always looking on the bright side! ( sarc)
And where is Europe ( and the UK) getting all that gas from? US LNG will not be able to do it, even at triple the price of Russian piped NG. China is busily building the world’s largest LNG ships for Qatar to take it back to China.
The comments about NS2 above do not help matters. Its time people stopped pussyfooting around the US State Dept policies that are de-industrialising Europe; forcing no or expensive gas plus increased weapons costs on economies that are suffering through inept leadership. Denmark, Sweden and Germany are scared to produce their NS2 reports, only one country on earth can make them that scared, and that is no ‘conspiracy theory’.
NS2 never operated as Germans suspended its certification on 22 February 2022. NS2 B was not destroyed and Gazprom has offered to supply gas through it. NS1 A and B were destroyed. NS1 was not operating at the time. From Wiki: ‘On 2 September 2022, the company announced that natural gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would remain shut off indefinitely until the main gas turbine at the Portovaya compressor station near St Petersburg was fixed due to an engine oil leak. Gazprom justified this by claiming that European Union sanctions against Russia had resulted in technical problems, preventing it from providing the full volume of contracted gas through the pipeline; Siemens Energy, which maintains the turbine, rejected this and stated that there are no legal obstacles to its provision of maintenance for the pipeline.’
Destruction of both NS1 A and B enabled Gazprom to avoid claims for breach of supply contracts.
JW: As I have been posting constantly since about 2019 the answer MUST be to adopt the Ireland Alternative Fuel Obligation and compel all Gas Turbine Generators old and new to provide the facilities to operate on distillate as well as gas fuel. Natural gas is a diminishing resource – light distilates – kerosene, dliesel even condensate – are in surplus at least for the moment. While looking at Ms Coutinho’s nonsense I see she clings to the fantasy that green hydrogen has any role in our future. BUT, suppose on a limited scale it did, the co-produced oxygen could be even more valuable by using it to oxy-combust difficult fuels (eg waste plastic) to produce electrictity with no carbon emmissions. But I have my doubts. Only the Ireland approach can save us.
The ignorance of the woman is utterly shameful but not surprising. The total lack of any mathematical analysis on which to base her ludicrous policies shows a particular level of managerial incompetence, especially as she is supposed to have an Oxbridge maths degree. Whatever happened to common sense?
By the by, in both her letter and the response, surely battery storage should be expressed in GWh not GW?
A degree doesn’t confer common sense. I was pressure testing some pumpcase sight glasses to see how much the samples could take and when telling the client I had one withstanding more than the normal test pressure he excitedly asked for a photograph of this. I will leave that one with you. He came to our test lab and was working with our junior technician on a pump for testing and was if I recall trying to do something and ended up using an angle grinder and ruining a part. Our lad – still at college – pointed out a way of achieving the outcome that was simple and didn’t damage anything and the air turned blue as this degree and who knows masters guy was made to look a complete twat.
And the punchline from my story is that a photograph of a sight glass is the same with or without any pressure behind it. It went very quiet at the other end of the line when I pointed this out.
I agree Gezza. The point I was trying to make was that common sense should have told her to “do the maths” before parroting the usual, innumerate, nonsense out about wholly unattainable goals e.g. on battery storage. We are led to believe that she can absolutely “do the maths”, so why the hell didn’t she?
Before you do the Maths, you need to work out the Physics. And before you do the Economics (or more realistically, the Business Case) you need to do the Physics.
And which is worse, ‘insignificant security’ or ‘significant insecurity’? Decisions, decisions. The fact that we still don’t know, with irrefutable evidence, who destroyed the pipeline, is the most important aspect of the significant insecurity. We have a missile to fire, but we’re not sure who should be the target. And I don’t think we really have a missile, one that could be launched, in the appropriate direction.
There’s an agenda, and the evidence is made to fit the theory, the hypothesis or, more likely, the daily delusions of those controlling our admistrative class.
BESS is specified in MW/MWh, or GW/GWh – MW, or GW is the instantaneous power the system can deliver at any one time – MWh/GWh, is the amount of power released over a specified time
Very few people understand [ or refuse to understand ] the difference between Power kW , and energy kW.h .
What comes out of a generator is energy. It used to be measured in Joules [ 1Watt Second ] , but the numbers got out of hand . So a new FORMULA was used . Kilo Watt Hour is the rate that energy is being produced , then multiplied by time .
So 1 kW.h is 1000 watts [ 1kw ] per second them multiplied by time . So 1 kW.h , after 1 hour equals 3.600.000 joules . https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-hour-to-watt-second/
But it is difficult to get anybody to understand that so most people list it in Power ratings, although no power is produced until that energy is actually used .
Hi energywise, you’ve just had the reply from a nutjob (“In the Real World)n who doesn’t have a clue. He seems to think he is right and everyone else is wrong . Sad isn’t it, especially when he doesn’t even understand his own link!
I remember that any given (chicken’s Egg has an Energy content, in Joules (or Ergs, those were the days), while a hose-Pipe delivers Power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erg
You don’t need a Maths degree to be able to add up. And let’s be clear, she didn’t write this.
Well said Paul. I’m so glad you’re on the case on this.
We need people like you who’ve developed such a wide knowledge base on these energy matters and can refute nonsensical government claims with ease.
Low-carbon hydrogen will be critical to supporting the UK’s energy security and presents significant economic opportunities for our industrial heartlands.
What industrial heartlands? Under the Blue & Red Labour plans it will all have gone long before 2035. Red Labour are going to save the steelworks – fine, be nice to visit as a museum because with sky high electricity costs there will be no market for the steel at an economic price. Subsidise it? But with money from where given all the problems they plan to solve without borrowing any and even Rachel the Plagiarist has some understanding that raising taxes won’t raise much for very long as rich people leave, the North Sea shuts down and unemployment grows.
Again, she doesn’t understand hydrogen, or the energy intensive processes for producing it at mass – she probably thinks hydrogen can be accessed by drilling into some rocks
It’s still all weasel words around net zero and CO2 emissions – she needs, as part of her brief, to undertake some basic uncorrupted science lessons, primarily in Physics, Chemistry and Climate, then some basic Engineering & Energy lessons, because her background as an investment banker has not prepared her to make the correct decisions based on her own competence, rather than that given by biased activists and globalist net zero shills
Until we have a competent, engineering background Minister for Energy, decoupled from net zero fantasies, we will continue to be pushed by the Uniparty down the road to ruin
What about the Energy Security part of her responsibility. A green minion wrote that letter and she just signed it. Putting an unqualified person in charge of DESNZ is just plain stupid.
Make Dieter Helm a Lord and parachute him in to running DESNZ, if Cameron can be resurrected, anything is possible.
Please can we stop this sort of nonsense? People who understand all this stuff run the Grid, they advise government, they work in renewables. That doesn’t stop them believing all this guff. Engineers, energy experts, economists, all are involved in Net Zero. The problem isn’t qualifications, it never is. People who believe they are saving the world or solving poverty or ridding is of great evil put their beliefs above their knowledge.
It is more likely that the competent engineers, in the Net Zero conspiracy just want to keep their well paid jobs, easy life and final salary pension, why rock the boat?
Paul, I would add one point regarding the technique of writing to politicians. By mentioning Nordstream, you give her an excuse to answer that by saying there is no proof, and then dodging the more important stuff. You also put her on the back foot by saying her little announcements are… just little.
In the next round, may I suggest that you pick up on the Royal Society’s critique of CCC’s calculations on the amount of backup, based as it is on one very windy year, and set out the consequences of not addressing the elephant in the room, storage.
FES 2023 talked of 9 times current wind power by 2050, but that had nothing for storage. The Royal Society, from memory, said we would need 20% to 50% extra power to cover backup required, and batteries and pumped hydro are far too small scale to deal with that. Batteries cost about £120 million to generate 100 MWh, and we would need probably 20,000 GWh, at a cost of £2 trillion plus, even if there were enough available rare earths. Pumped hydro is similarly expensive and constrained by suitable sites. The Royal Society has suggested thousands of salt caverns storing hydrogen at high pressure created by electrolysing water using yet more wind turbines, but that would take decades even if it was practical.
NS was not in my original draft. The constituent particularly wanted it adding.
I hope we will see a response within living memory. When I challenged Lord Callanan regarding the risk of banks refusing to lend on properties given a rating below EPC C by a cowboy with a few hours online training and a tablet, thus making them unsellable, even though Sunak had got rid of the imposition of the nonsense by ditching the Minimum Energy Performance of Buildings Bill, I didn’t get a reply.
The best bit of advice I ever got about writing such stuff was when I was a junior analyst some 30 years ago. I produced a paper for my boss with lots of arguments proving our point. He tore it up and said:
“If you have 1 or 2 irrefutable arguments, that’s all you need. If you use 10, and 4-5 are debatable, people will feel the argument is weak.”
On Net Zero, the irrefutable arguments are that (i) the numbers do not add up unless we make heroic assumptions about ALL the new tech we need (i.e., it ALL has to work, which never happens) and (ii) the costs are unaffordable unless we make heroic assumptions about ALL the tech .
In other words, we are basing a policy regarding a fundamental part of our society/economy on nothing more than hope.
Good advice. One problem is where the argument starts with “climate change is not man made because…” While sensible people know this to be true, the believers turn off at this point. I think the focus should be on storage, pointing out we have a few minutes worth now, no technology that will get us beyond a few hours, and the potential for as many as 60 days a year with low wind and solar.
Discontinuho would be better methinks, at least in anything to do with energy.
Amazing the “Earth Tremors ” from the Cornish Geothermal drilling to heat a swimming pool caused no National Outcry, but “Fracking” brings out the Eco-nuts. Does she think Geo-thermal drilling will be more acceptable somehow? I mean “earthquakes” are what stopped fracking?
What stopped fracking was the irrational hatred of it by lunatic activists. See also cigarettes, vaping, sal, so-called junk food, chocolate, bacon, sausages, targeted pesticides, nuclear power…
Here’s that fracking seismic in Cornwall:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/P5OE0/4/
Two of the ideas popped out for me:
1 – 24GW of nuclear power by 2050
2 – at least 35GW of lithium-ion battery storage
To be of much use to saving the world, that nuclear power should go on-line next month. The battery storage will have to be replaced twice before 2050 rolls around. She has read too much science fiction: Deus ex machina
35 GW of storage may sound good until we remember it has to be re-generated somewhere, somehow every time it gets used up. It can’t be added to capacity if it relies on other capacity to exist.
She is still a great believer that CO2 needs to be curbed. With a fundamental belief in that it is rather pointless what she suggests.
Who knows? It is clearly impossible to reach a position of power without expressing such a belief and she clearly wants to be in positions of power. Whether she actually believes or not, we cannot say.
Paul nice work and good to get a response. See is speaking the party line and that is the dismal part showing that Gov in general is pretty clueless when it comes to real solutions.
We all know the problems and have ideas for practical solutions. If Startmer and the his clueless sidekick Miliband take over energy then we are in a worse state than we thought that will require even more letter writing or emigration.
I cannot see tidal electricity generation being available in a decent amount this century. The cost will be phenomenal and the environmental objections huge. If one is proposed tomorrow it will still be being argued over in 2050.
I note her use of the word ‘decarbonise’ which I thought is what happens when you scraped burnt toast.
Oh goodie! We’re going to be a world leader in yet another gubmint boondoggle.
A comment up-thread said that Coutinho couldn’t care as she won’t be in office when the blackouts start. That’s as maybe but the Civil Servants who work in the dept will be.
I believe that in the US, when a government changes the top people in their CS are replaced with political supporters. If so, it would be good that it happened here.
To put storage requirements in context, current daily energy delivered by the UK grid is roughly 700 GWh. Double that to provide for proposed all electric economy. So daily storage would need to be upwards of 500 GWh, as wind is asserted to be the dominant source going forward. Now multiply by the number of low wind days, and continue aggregating low wind days until the storage becomes fully recharged ready for the next low wind cycle. This will total quite a few TWh!
The Royal Society report on Large Scale Electricity Storage (Sept 2023) said
“some tens of TWh of very long duration storage will be needed. For comparison the TWh needed are one thousand times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro, and far more than could be provided cost effectively by batteries”
They concluded large scale battery installations (20 – 190 MWh) would only provide short term grid balancing services
And even that shouts ignorance of how battery installation owners would operate them.
What the heck is the business model for short term grid balancing services?
In another part of the report they put it differently
“Conventional batteries are not expected to provide large-scale storage, although they are likely to play a role in stabilising the grid”
Or return to gas and coal fired power stations and start fracking for shale gas
We are grateful you engage with these people but I have doubts that long correspondence in conversational mode is the way to communicate. Looks as though you need a technical author to add focus to the nub of the argument, bullet points et al, to make your argument more forceful and easier to comprehend when dealing with an executive who may not entertain a dialogue and may pretend to overlook your argument hidden in long discourse.
I thought it was hilarious that when many GWs of energy are needed she was talking about new projects of MWs, talk about clueless.
But worryingly as Paul pointed out no mention of costs, or price increases.
“The nearly 94MW of tidal stream capacity procured in the last two rounds of the Contracts for Difference scheme will increase the UK’s installed capacity tenfold,“
I interpreted that line as someone taking the piss!
Paul, a good reply except that I believe you’re too sanguine about CCS. Here’s an extract from an article just published by the excellent Francis Menton:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-5-1-the-biden-administration-ever-more-delusional-on-energy
I hope you have all seen this week’s exposé on Panorama on the Carbon Credits Scam. On BBC iPlayer.
Afraid not. I don’t have a TV licence and gave up watching the BBC (and other TV) some years ago.
You are completely wasting your time engaging with this woman Claire Coutinho.
She clearly has not got the mental capacity for the job or she is simply a puppet because her reply is sickeningly contemptuous. The truth is that she can’t hide the reality that she and everyone else understands all too well, she is simply coasting before getting the hard boot out of her job within a few months. This is just another example of just how useless this Conservative Government is.
Bye bye Claire Coutinho and with Gods help you will never get the keys to this position ever again. We need strong and intelligent people in Government to succeed and unfortunately what we have now falls well short.
I prey for this country going forward after the disaster of this Governments ridiculous cloud cuckoo land energy policy. I say this as a long term Conservative. But this support has ended because we no longer have a Conservative Government, in fact we currently don’t have a Government. What we have is embarrassingly pathetic.
indeed David we are ruled (not governed) by donkeys. Btw I loved your inadvertdant use of ‘prey’ that is certainly what ‘they’ visit upon us.
Very good reply but as she will be out of office soon I presume it was easier for her to just quote the party line. Most politicians are totally ignorant of the futility of renewables and if they are aware they don’t have the guts to come out and say so. The exceptions are those associated with Net Zero Watch.