Labour To Keep Strategic Reserve Of Gas Power Stations?
June 13, 2024
By Paul Homewood
There’s little in the Labour Manifesto on energy which we did not already know.
Except for this little snippet:
https://labour.org.uk/change/make-britain-a-clean-energy-superpower/#clean-power
This raises more questions than it answers:
- How long will this reserve be maintained?
- Does this mean they won’t decarbonise fully by 2030?
- What action will they take to ensure this reserve is maintained in the long term?
- How much capacity is involved?
- How much will it cost?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The next time Starmer and his chums thinks “strategically” about anything more complex than feathering their cosy little nests, will certainly be a first.
The problem being Martin, that energy is a complex subject and we have incompetence trying to manage it via unicorn farts and rainbow thinking from self benefitting advisors
Energy is not “complex”. Here’s a complex problem – providing lunch for everyone in London on any given day. Maybe 10 different categories of lunch, an indeterminate number of people all eating at different times, each making a choice perhaps at the last minute. Each choice requiring food supplies of dozens and dozens of different types from all over the world, much of which needded to be planted or breed months before. Yet markets make it work at the lowest price possible every day. Energy? Everything is pretty much fixed and pretty simple in terms of organisation.
Labour cannot control reality anymore than they can climate – the nonsense about decarbonisation of the grid by 2030 is utter incompetent deceit – the truth is, gas will be part of our grids generation and home heating for decades to come, because the net zero scam is unravelling and the more climate & carbon taxes these idiots apply, the more the masses will push back and say enough is enough, particularly as we enter the next ice age, which is definitely incoming
Feels like its here today. Mid June and not even 15C in southern England. Ive lit the woodburner again.
I was sorely tempted to light my stove this morning and wonder if I should break out the fleece shirts again. Since I moved to my far corner of Surrey in 2015 the latest the fire has been lit is 11 June – can’t recall which year but it might have been the one where lots of people had their heating on for the August Bank Holiday.
So what happens when the wind blows and the Sun don’t shine, and we need to 2 TWh per day as things are now, see Clive Best’s plot of this reality from the Link. The grid depends on gas for over half the UK’s electrical energy supply a lot to the time.
They will need a lot of nuclear power in a real hurry if they turn off the gas, and, “if you can get through the winter on nuclear, you don’t need renewables ” Sir David MacKay’s advice, often given to Civil SeErvants and Ministers when Chief Scientist at the DECC. All hopelessly and haplessly ignorant and unable to understand these basic energy realities.
There is no solution to intermittency that is practical using storage, because the costs are prohibitive and there isn’t enough surplus renewable energy generated to cover the gaps anyway. Absolutely stupid and utterly delusional from the dangerously vacuous brains of Ed Milliband and Bryony Worthington. Total energy reality by-pass.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zrk6kfc5e6k14qzl5ol6t/Fueltype2024.png?rlkey=zgbs9jb1p5at61tco0x4gl4qe&dl=0
As you say, ‘what do they mean by a few’
By 2050, we will need a minimum of 140 gw of generating capacity, to cover for transport, heating, and industry energy demands (when going all-renewable and all-electric).
So a large anti-cyclone covering the North Sea, which will house most of our wind generation, could easily knock out 100 gw of generation.
According to Statistica we currently have 45 gw of gas. Thus far from retaining a ‘strategic reserve’ of gas, we will need to DOUBLE the number of gas fired power station, to serve as a secure backup.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/496283/total-electricity-generation-capacity-uk/
In addition, this will mean a complete waste of wind generating capacity. Capacity factors of N Sea wind is about 40%, meaning we will need some 320 gw of installed wind capacity. Or about 24,000 of the largest wind turbines.
The golden dream was to use all this excess capacity, on good wind days, to charge up a storage system. But we have already debated the extreme cost and technical implausibility of building 30,000 gwh of energy storage. So if the backup is going to be gas:
a. Wind turbines will have to be switched off during good wind conditions, which is a waste of infrastructure.
b. We will need fracking, to supply 100 gw of gas (double our current gas-electric supply). Is Starmer going to allow fracking, despite his greeeney allies? Or is he going to make us dependent upon Algeria and Oman for gas, so we are subject to MusIim bIackmail (just as Germany and Ukraine were subject to Russian bIackmail.)
So many questions here – so many questions. And our dumb politicians are not asking the right questions, let alone giving rational answers. And the reports by the Royal Society and Climate Change Committee were no better – underestimating renewable and storage costs by a factor of 10, and quoting energy storage in gw, instead of gwh. Junior school reports.
We are led by twins of Dianne Abacus, who said that London could employ 2,000 new police officers for £200,000 (or such-like). Look at the video, it is priceless. And these are the arrsseholes who run the country. We need an entrance exam for parliament, just as I had a 3 year course and entrance exam for my career.
Ralph
Note the Russians never blackmailed anyone. They’ll sell and supply gas, but WE refused to buy and then blew up the pi[pelines. We, the West, are the duplicitous idiots.
That is not what happened.
Russia turned off the gas to Ukraine twice, during the naughties. And in recent times they turned off Nordstream-1 as retaliation for sanctions.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/09/05/russia-says-its-stopping-critical-gas-supply-to-europe-until-west-lifts-sanctions/
Which means you can never have any dispute with your energy supplier, because they have you by the short and curlies. We need energy security, via fracking and nuclear.
R
They only turned it off when the bills werent paid.
We do need fracking and nuclear but dont blame the Russians for our homemade stupidity.
When dies ‘not being able to pay’ become ‘extortion by the seller’…?
The fact remains, that if Algeria and Oman jack up gas prices, we may well be in a commercial dispute, and they will simply turn off the taps and plunge us inti darkness.
No responsible government can allow that. But we now have fantasist governments, not responsible governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–Ukraine_gas_disputes#Dispute_of_2008–2009
Ralph
ralph: the governmebnt did not “ban” fracking, they just imposed an unrealistically low (0.5 LM) seismic disturbance. Cuadrilla’s tests at Preston exceeded this (to 2.7 LM) but still gas didn’t flow. Our shale, like most shales (read up on the experience of San Leon Energy in Poland) is too impervious. Cuadrilla then asked for permission to frack to 4.O ML which experience in the USA has proved to be way over the safety level for surface structures.
.
There are many types of ‘ban’, overt and covert.
This one, was a Sir Humphrey ban.
R
Permission was granted for geothermal fracking up to ML 4. Cuadrilla merely sought parity.
Has anyone calculated the climate change caused by extracting 2,000 gw of wind energy all across Europe, whenever the wind blows?
This will cause layer mixing, as can be seen in the image – warming or cooling the surface, depending on the mix of layers.
This may also (paradoxically) cause higher windspeeds. Wind speed centra-petal reaction around a low pressure system, plus coriolis force, balance the pressure gradient (suction) of the low pressure core, maintaining the size of the low pressure system. This is why hurricanes and typhoons are equatorial phenomena, because coriolis is at a minimum there, allowing the pressure to pull the system in tighter, and produce a more intense core – a hurricane.
If wind turbines slow down the wind, as they must, there is less centripetal reaction to balance the low pressure core, and so the winds must tighten up their spiral and head closer to the core. And just like a skater (or hurricane), this tighter core will increase wind speeds.
Has this renewables-induced climate change been modelled? I am sure that if nuclear power stations were causing fog-banks all across the North Sea, there would be a greeeney outcry.
Wind turbine climate change.
Ralph
Throwing a rather small bone to the GMB?
And Labour are going to create wealth apparently. That will be a first for any socialist government anywhere!
I thought they had a magic money tree.
They are going to create 650,000 high paying ‘Green’ jobs somehow. You do wonder if Diane Abbott wrote that bit. The Labour manifesto is of course incoherent drivel but the major factor that our legacy media will overlook or be incapable of spotting is the lack of muslim appeasing policies. It could be because the main writer of the manifesto was an Indian Sikh…..
Surely, it’s only whities who can be racist?!!
There is not a chance thst the Keeling curve will be checked. Therefore all decarbonisation is futile.
By 2030. Good luck with that.
You’re going to get screwed. Again. Start screeching. Imagine what Energy Independence means to Labour!
Labour owns gas power stations? What does this even mean? Are they going to use taxpayer money to pay gas operators to stay on standby for weather-dependent renewables? A huge expense, ratepayers paying for 2 different sets of capital equipment to make electricity. It’s foolish on its face.
Are they going to maintain a gas delivery system for said stations?
“We will respect you as we destroy your jobs. That makes it okay, right? Right?”
Sounds like they are trying to have a boot in both camps. Saying and doing both. Either way it sound expensive for us the proles.
Chemtrails are causing this cold weather
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hunga_Ha%CA%BBapai_eruption_and_tsunami
is a possibility?
Yes and Iceland’s volcano keeps going off. There are also volcano’s going off in the Pacific ring of fire.
“Chemtrails” has a specific conspiracy meaning and it isn’t “contrails.”
I hope Labour remembers to spend a not inconsiderable sum of taxpayers’ money on a strategic reserve of gas to power its strategic reserve of gas power stations.
Starmer would sell his granny if he thought it would help him become Prime Minister!
But wouldn’t let ger go private to save her life!
I wonder if his father was disappointed that his son didn’t learn a proper trade like toolmaking as opposed to becoming a legal spiv?
Starmer would sell his granny if he thought it would help him become Prime Minister!
How is keeping us supplied with sufficient electricity, something we’ve managed without any fuss for the last 50 years, now “strategic”?
A very good question.
Yes the Labour green/climate plans are as flawed as all the other mainstream parties manifesto promises but to make that statement over gas shows is a clear indication that they know a fossil fuel free leccy system isn’t doable for 2030. To my mind this is a huge positive as its a clear indication reality is now beginning to gain traction and it was always going to take a long time to push back against the eco zealots who have been allowed to infect societies thinking. So this is going to be a slow burn and im afraid more renewables will be built but im pretty sure we will end up with a mixed system won’t be cheapest outcome but at least it will keep the lights on.
As most of our gas plants are ageing and need replacement, Sir Kneeler will hit the same problem other countries such as Germany are encountering in that private investors are not willing to fund new gas plants as the economics don’t add up on ROI. That means the taxpayers having to offer bribes.
The capacity market already provides a heavy subsidy so that can easily be tweaked to keep them in play.
Referring to “Shagger” Starmer as a gas power station seems a little rude.
Maybe if they are run all the time but the energy they produce is exported, then Starmer can claim that we are still net zero.