The true cost of Labour’s net zero plans is slowly being revealed – and the sums are staggering
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
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At least the Telegraph is starting to dismantle Mad Miliband’s crazy agenda:
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Sir Keir Starmer has promised that a new Labour government would decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030 and would, at the same time, reduce average energy bills by up to £300 or roughly 20 per cent of their current level. We know that senior politicians and lawyers see visions that not granted to mere mortals. But is there any connection between this vision and reality?
Accelerating the current decarbonisation strategy would imply building about 35 GW of new offshore wind plants, 10 GW of new onshore wind plants, and 55 GW of new solar capacity in six years. As context, between 2009 and 2023 the UK built 14 GW of offshore wind, 12 GW of onshore wind, and 16 GW of solar plants. The vision implies building new plants at rates between two and six times what was achieved in the last 15 years. Where would the skills, other resources and finance come from?
Recent experience tells us that crash programmes of this kind incur costs that are anything from 50 per cent to 100 per cent higher than “normal” costs. Since Britain is not alone is trying to build lots of new wind and solar plants in next five years, it is a certainty that the costs will be much higher than claimed. Even at current costs, such a program is likely to require investment of £200-£250 billion. Adjusting for probable cost inflation, actual costs are likely to be £300-£350 billion. The sum of £8 billion promised for GB Energy is a rounding error in such a programme.
This is only the start. Huge investments are required in both transmission and distribution to deliver the large increase in electricity generation. National Grid has announced that it needs to spend £50-60 billion over five years in England and Wales to enhance its transmission network to meet decarbonisation targets. Scaling that up to cover the rest of the UK and allowing again for cost inflation yields an estimate of investment in transmission at least £150 billion by 2030. Roughly the same amount will be required to expand the distribution network.
Financing such investments will only be possible with strong government guarantees which means that, setting aside accounting fictions, real public debt will increase by 20-25 per cent of GDP for the decarbonisation programme. The cost of servicing that debt under current arrangements plus operating and maintaining the assets will about £40 billion per year for generation and about £25 billion per year for transmission and distribution.
Households account for a little more than one-third (36 per cent) of final electricity consumption. The same share of the cost of decarbonising the electricity system would be about £23 billion per year. To put that sum in context, in mid-2024 there are about 28.7 million households in the UK with an average electricity bill of £850 per year giving a total cost of electricity for households of about £24 billion per year.
In broad terms, electricity bills would have to double by 2030 to achieve Labour’s goal of decarbonising our electricity system with the costs incurred being passed on to electricity customers. The extra costs could be met in other ways but these are variants of robbing Peter to pay Paul – using taxes or deferring payments.
In addition, it is very unlikely that manufacturing and other industries would be willing to pay a 100 per cent increase in their electricity bills. Either such businesses must be protected in some way or they will simply close down. The result will be larger increases in bills for households.
No-one should believe that decarbonisation of the electricity system means literally that. Solar and wind power are highly intermittent sources of generation. Detailed modelling of the electricity system using many years of weather data suggests that some gas generation would be required for 50 per cent to 60 per cent of hours in the year even after the heavy investments outlined above and allowing for potential imports from other countries.
The options for preventing power blackouts in the early 2030s are either storage – mostly batteries – or carbon capture and storage (CCS). The first option is extremely expensive. It is only economic for load shifting from the middle of the day to the evening, so that gas generation would still be required for 40 per cent to 50 per cent of hours in the year. CCS is an experimental technology which up to now has failed everywhere it has been deployed on a commercial scale. Still, visions being what they are, this is the get-out-of-jail card for Labour policy.
Stepping back, there is an underlying trend that few appreciate. When we discuss energy prices most assume that the major component of what we pay is the market cost of energy – electricity or gas. That is wrong. In the period 2005-10 the wholesale price of electricity was an average of 38 per cent of the retail price paid by households. The figure for 2024 is 21 per cent, which reflects the typical value since 2019 excluding the 2021-22 when prices were subsidised. The share of the wholesale price of gas in the retail price paid by households is currently 36 per cent but has also been falling.
Over nearly two decades governments have used levies on energy prices as a form of taxation, both to subsidise investments in renewable energy and to fund a variety of programmes. A Labour government is likely to go further down this road. It could reduce energy bills by removing levies on energy consumption. That is about as likely as any of us being struck by lightning, because it would have to raise taxes to fund the change.
Instead, the prospect is for a very large increase in energy levies and bills to pay for the very high costs of pursuing the vision of rapid decarbonisation.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/27/labours-net-zero-plans-are-a-fantasy/
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Perfect way to kill-off all remaining manufacturing, massive loss of jobs. What does “Labour” stand for exactly?
“What does ‘Labour’ stand for exactly?”
Don’t really know. But they seem to have some sort of sacred text, entitled, ‘Neo-Marxism for Dummies.’
Labour L(eft) = Rob U All (electronic funds transfer)
I saw a discussion on GB News on this subject between Michael Portillo and a man from the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association. He argued that while the cost of Net Zero will be high. (I think he said something like 1.5 Trillion) The benefits of investment in green industries will bring in a huge income which will offset that so the real cost will only be 100 million. I might have got those figures a bit wrong but something like that.
What did Portaloo say to that?
If this is the same interview Portillo was very good, saying (1-minute clip) that Net Zero is self-machoism, not global leadership, and that all we are achieving is to export our jobs abroad, increasing both our vulnerability and global emissions: https://x.com/brexitblog_info/status/1805488229325369454?t=u3aXcRJJRlmG_D-9sHm_cA&s=19.
Doug: that’s a good point about exporting our emissions abroad: a recent court case was won (and becomes a precedent?) on the basis that as emissions from the product of an oil-well did not take into account future use of the product but only of the well itself, the well’s licence should be denied. Therefore, if the building of of lots of renewables increases the possibility of exporting emissions then they should not be built.
Has anyone taken a really good, hard, forensic look at these “green industries”?
Like SPECIFICALLY: Who? What? When? Where? And .. how much?
We know what ‘Green’ jobs are. Growth in them has be by reclassifying activities such as emptying the bins to ‘Recycling operatives’ and legal/financial consultancies with Renewables, Green or Climate in their titles.
The SNP has, for the past 20 years been promising hundreds of thousands of ‘Green’ jobs in the country and, to be fair, has achieved some of that – by reclassifying bin men as recycling operatives.
The reality is that any manufacturing of wind turbines was long since abandoned in the face of an onslaught from the Chinese and the only ‘true’ green jobs are devoted to maintenance of renewables, doubtless including window cleaners reclassified as Solar Panel Technicians.
I wonder which out of a binman or an oil platform engineer pays the most in income tax?
Net Zero economics always seems a bit suspect to me. Especially that it will be cheap and also provide tens of thousands of jobs. No industry that requires tens of thousands of workers is going to be cheap. It’s automation – reducing jobs – that makes production cheap. In reality net zero will do neither.
Jobs are a cost, not a benefit, as you say.
This is the video
Crikey, what a complete and utter cretin full of soundbites and sheer propaganda.
As the person who has written most about – going back to a long paper on The Myth of Green Jobs a decade ago – all of this is economic nonsense. The figures originate with the OBR. There is great – and deliberate – confusion between investment costs and operating costs/income.
The £1.5 trillion (or much higher) are the capital costs required. It is then claimed that you save money on things like gas, thus getting cheaper electricity, or earn income from selling wind turbines abroad, though we don’t! That is not the way markets work. Also it ignores the fact that wind and solar plants are much more expensive to operate than gas plants, have worse performance, need backup and have shorter lives. In addition, you have bigger networks to run, etc, etc.
You can only do such calculations in a full (and complicated) model of how the electricity system. The OBR has neither the competence nor the interest to do this kind of analysis properly. Hence, the numbers are purely invented. They are just noise!
Frankly the same criticism applies to the work done for DESNZ, the CCC, OFGEM etc.
Yes, but when you have declared “a climate emergency” there is no point the OBR doing a proper analysis since facts facts do not matter any more. As long as the government is doing what the UN/WEF tells them to do then all is OK as the country declines into third world status (as planned).
The OBR is not known for producing accurate forecasts and yet Robot Reeves will delegate economic policy to them.
I pay the costs of electricity. The shareholders of turbine manufacturers get the profits of any sales made, domestic or export. There is no connection between the two.
Spain showed that every ‘green’ job displaces 2.2 real jobs.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/the-problem-with-spains-green-jobs-model/
Theoretically that should be good news. Since jobs are an oncost not a benefit (except to the bloke with the job) if every green job means a net reduction of 1.2 (or 2.2 — it depends how you interpret ‘displaces’) employees in a given industry then that should reduce overheads and thereby cost to the end user (ie, the customer).
Something tells me it won’t work out like that!
It’s not a gain in efficiency; it’s a reduction of GDP.
Yeah – but we don’t produce any of this technology.
Look at Hornsea-3, the largest wind farm in the world I think, being built right now.
The wind turbines are Norwegian and Danish.
The gearbox and generators are German.
And the cabling is German and Japanese.
Just where is the Green Jobs and Technology Revolution for Britain, in any of this??
And don’t look to nuclear, because we have surrendered our lead in nuclear technology and construction, to France and China. Just where is the Green Jobs and Technology Revolution for Britain, in any of this??
Ralph
Absolutely correct and its the same for every windmill that has been installed in the N.Sea. Totally frustrates me that politicians say we are leading the way in windpower – the only thing we are leading is handing over our cash to foreign companies. Its diabolical that the developers of these windfarms using our money as subsidies haven’t been forced to increase local content to at least 50% bu now. Thats the only way your ever going to get home grown green jobs.
That’s just a bad variant of the Broken Window Fallacy. If all this investment doubles our bills are we twice as wealthy? Would we be much poorer if somehow bills were cut to nearly zero? “Income” is just cost.
Why are people still talking about solar???
Solar is irrelevant, at 52 or 55 degrees north in cloudy Britain. If you look at the past performance, solar simply does not work in the winter (despite what some renewable champions might say).
Summer 2023, with solar working (yellow).
https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=3-months&start=2023-06-01&&_k=h6lu06
Winter 2023, with solar completely idle (yellow).
https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=3-months&start=2023-11-01&&_k=oo6oir
What we need, is energy capacity in the winter, not the summer. So unless we can store that summer-solar (which is impossible), then solar is a complete waste of time.
The CCC said that 20% solar might be good to allow summer maintenance of wind turbines (wrecked by winter storms). But with lower energy demand in summer, that is probably unnecessary anyway.
Time to scrap all those solar arrays, and return the land to arable agriculture, and grow things we can eat. We are still importing half our foods, which is in effect, importing solar energy from abroad. There is absolutely no point reducing solar-foods at home (to generate solar-energy), and then have to import more solar-foods from abroad.
This is merely stealing from Peter to pay Paul, and then borrowing more money to pay Peter back for the money you stole in the first place.
R
Solar becomes worse than a complete waste of time. Further additions to capacity will result either in curtailed output with costly mechanisms to enable that, or even more costly investment in transmission to try to export it probably at negative prices, or in batterieswhich otherwise are unneeded.
With solar the ‘duck curve’ gets you every time. Maximum generation at the point of minimum demand and in the UK we don’t even have a large air conditioning load. And given the way the sun goes in and out, the output must vary rapidly and be a costly nightmare to balance on the grid.
“Why are people still talking about solar???” Because developers are still making a fortune from them and politicians from all political parties (except Reform UK) are either on the make or have been taken in by the renewables propaganda. All renewables (even if useless like solar) are part of government policy (and thus local authority policy) and it is therefore almost impossible to stop them.
Yeah, but it is fig-leaf engineering.
I went for a new house that had 10 m2 of panels, and a 7 kwh battery. Which is as useful as a chocolate teapot.
In winter, that is one 2-bar electric fire on for 3 hours. And the solar panel would be doing nothing to supplement any of that. But because it “had solar”, they had not installed any storage radiators, nor had they installed Economy-7 overnight electricity.
It was a complete waste of time, that would cost treble a normal gas-electric house to warm and use.
R
Ralf, there is a 37 acre solar (ex)farm a mile from me under construction, with another of 156 acres just about to start installation another two miles away. The thing is, as I pass the sites almost daily I can see no evidence of any kind of industrial connection to the grid – in what is, after all, a very, very rural area, many miles from any large conurbation.
They might have been forced to use underground cable, for environmental reasons. But these cables are very expensive, and made in Germany or Japan.
Another cost to the system, and another detriment to the balance of trade. Remember when the balance of trade figures were on the nightly news?? Whatever happened to that, eh?
R
How much has that devalued your property?
Ralf, re: connecting solar to the grid: I figured the connection must be underground because, in this rural area, most hamlets and villages (mine too) are connected by overhead using ‘telegraph poles’ rather than massive pylons. That being the case I have seen no massive earthworks saying power cables anywhere near the site. So, if the solar (ex) farm gets finished before it is connected does anyone get paid for unused (unusable) electricity generated?
(paid for unused)
Well that was the wizzard wheeze they were pulling in Scotland.
There was a transmission bottleneck in southern Scotland, so when the wind was blowing, they were forced to shut down the turbines, and charge the grid double because they could not generate.
Easy money, if you can get it.
R
Solar has its uses. I’m about to have two shutters replaced with solar-powered ones. My understanding from discussions with the installers and other sources is that with proper installation there should always be sufficient daylight to ensure that the mechanism operates for the two minutes a day needed. Actual sunlight is a bonus.
How far north this would apply in the middle of December (I’m in the middle of France) I wouldn’t know but the supplier believes that a slightly larger ‘array’ would solve any problems. The question, as ever, is how cost-effective this is but there are already parts of the autoroute network where warning and information boards are solar-powered. Also on parts of the UK motorway network.
In fact solar power is a useful part of the energy mix as long as we don’t look on it as a major part. It is at least “reliable” in a way that wind power isn’t and never can be.
Wut? What definition of “reliable” are you using?
It is reliably down 2/3 of the time.
Motorway signs use LEDS drawing about 1 watt each panel.
Houses want kettles and hobs rated at 3 kw, showers rated at 7 kw, and heating systems rated at 15 kw.
While industry wants to run processes drawing tens of megawatts. Even a small turboprop engine, runs at 2 megawatts.
Dumb politicians and their media poodles have no idea how much energy we all use, and will lead us down a deceptive road to ruin.
R
Probably from Fairyland where the Magic Money Tree grows.
I would question the figures given here.
Statistica says we have 30 gw of installed wind capacity, which will give 12 gw on average, at a 40% capacity factor.
But Drax Insights says that max wind output was only 21 gw in 2023, even on the best of days. So even in windy weather, these windelecs (wind turbines) are only achieving 60% of installed capacity. Lots of maintenance, I presume, because when I fly over these wind arrays, I see lots of dead windelecs. (See my other posting, for the Drax Insights charts, for 2023.)
This article says we need another 100 gw installed capacity, to go all electric by 2030. But they are assuming 50% of this will be solar. As per my other post on this page – solar is useless in the winter, which is when is when we have max energy demand. There is no point building solar, at 52 to 55 degrees north in cloudy Britain, when it produces zero energy. Absolutely pointless.
Alternatively, an extra 100 gw of installed wind capacity might be sufficient, giving us 130 gw of wind capacity in total. That would be 52 gw of actual generation capacity, at a 40% capacity factor. But since we never seem to hit peak capacity, presumably because of maintenance, that would reduce to about 45 gw – which is just about enough.
But, but, but, but…..
Where is the stored backup?? I hate to bang on about this, but none of this renewable energy will work, without stored backup. And if we use gas as backup, we will have to retain or expand our current gas generation capacity, to backup intermittent wind. And what corporation would want to invest in a gas generation plant, that is banned from operating 50% of the time? Nobody – in which case, either the price of gas generation would have to double, to pay for the enforced inefficiency of the plant, or the government would have to nationalise gas generation. Whichever the case, this would substantially increase electricity prices.
And if they wanted to build real PWS stored backup, we would need 10,000 gwh of backup by 2030. That is 1,000 Dinorwigs, or 300 Coire Glases. Where on earth are we going to build those, and at what cost, and on what time-scales??? This is simply not possible. It would be like building all generating plants out of turbines made of unobtainium.
Ralph
A long term study of wind output shows that a 40% factor is not possible .
Click to access Aris-Wind-paper.pdf
For over half or the year is is less than 20% of capacity .
It never reaches anywhere near max capacity , so an overall figure is more likely to be under 20% of rating most of the time .
And all of the best sites are already used , so any new units will probably be less than that .
I know, I was being generous.
But the Climate Change Committee report to government claimed they would get 50% capacity factor. And the CCC (and government) wondered why I challenged their costings.
R
You’ll find wind CF is nearer 25% onshore, 30% offshore
EW: This is why there needs to be a law – like advertising standards – that will stop anyone claiming that a wind/solar array can provide power to x-thousand homes. A very deceitful statistic.
Capacity Factor is more like 40% now. Although that is with newish equipment, which will become more unreliable with age.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1368679/global-offshore-wind-capacity-factor/
R
I am having doubts about all of the claims that are being made .
Today , one site is claiming over 11 GW from wind , another says just 8 odd GW from wind .
So it seems that the figures are being adjusted to try to claim renewables are producing better than they really are .
Because if there is 30GW generation capacity available from wind , then why is there such low figures on a good day .
And I have seen days when wind is putting out less than 1GW , but that does not get much mention .
Main reason wind is underperforming against max output is the grid system isn’t just up to moving available output especially in N.Scotland. Look at today over 60GWh already constrained off. Its plain daft to continue with “connect and manage” yet more windmills are coming online in the already constrained areas with no fix until Eastern Link cables are built towards end of the decade. This is a massive failure by OFGEM and the ESO not to have coordinated transmission and generation build out and nett result is balancing costs have ballooned to manage constraints.
Interesting.
Do you have a link to the data, for amounts of wind power being constrained off?
R
Two sites have figures based on Elexon data
https://wind.axle.energy/
and
https://enact.lcp.energy/
although today they are way different from each other. Methodology on both is to use declared FPN for each settlement period and then look at whether the ESO issue instructions to modify output due to constraints or other system issues.
Nicholas,
a factor in these constrained payments is the small amount of time in a year that wind generators are producing at a high level relative to the transmission capacity (Reference the Capell Aris paper linked earlier).
Knowing the total annual generation output and what the proportion is constrained would be interesting?
The fact that we have any constraint cost is disgraceful and the wind generators should take the loss as they overbuilt the supply capacity in the knowledge that at times it would be too much for the transmission system.
This problem is ultimately on the govt as they should have scrapped connect and manage a long time ago but they wanted the headlines on how much renewables have been installed and no one callas them out for energy being thrown away because the grid can’t transmit it to where its needed. The policy has been flawed for a decade and by now any power station developer should to have to fund the full cost of the impact of the power being injected into the grid (oh and provide all the ancillary services that come with being unreliable).
Currently on grid upgrades they have to fund the full cost up to point of connection and contribute towards any upgrade at the local substation. Beyond that they aren’t liable and its left to ESO to manage consequences which are largely down to thermal constraints of the overhead lines . Unless you change the policy of paying for switching off, unlikely, you need to reinforce the transmission system which is what Eastern Links are doing but first of them is 4+ years away. The problem with that is ever more windmills are coming online just contributing further to the problem and thus constraint costs. The same issue would have blown up (pun intended) in East Anglia but the stalling or delaying on several of the windmill farm in that region have delayed the problem although that’s done is give time for locals to galvanise their opposition.
What we need is a complete halt on any further new build on unreliables, transmission upgrades and storage until come up with a coherent plan to deliver this economically for consumers.
The Shadow Treasury Secretary was not wrong when he let slip hundreds of billions per year.
This time the Tories will leave a note saying that there is no money and that the credit cards are maxed out. The moneymarkets won’t let them borrow it all so somehow people will be better off but face the highest tax bill in history.
£3Tn plus – stupid figures for a stupid idea, unless of course, you’re one of the few monetary beneficiaries
A big thank you to Gordon Hughes for his hard work and informed views. My rather more amateur take on net zero costs and the lack of green jobs can be found here:
Not remotely possible.
It shouldn’t be necessary to cite cost as the barrier, but if that works to stop it, all’s well.
Correct. It will unravel in the first few weeks and months of a Labour government when they meet people who know what they are talking about.
Those people will refuse to even meet with them.
For some unknown reason, ALL politicians bar maybe two or three, actually believe that having 10 windmills will produce ten x the power of I, mathematically correct except that it is only true if the wind is blowing because 10 windmills not turning are just as unproductive as 1- therefore even if we covered the hills and seas with turbines, 100,000 or more, if the wind ain’t blowing, they ain’t producing. The sheer cost of decarbonisation is utterly deliberately kept as a dirty,dark secret- ultimately the consumer will pay, both via subsidies, high prices and general taxation. The manufacturers and grifters who work for the Climate Cult see only one thing, unlimited income, bonuses, stock price inflation- while the customers will soon realise that Heating or Eating are the least of their problems. When the power grid shuts down as it inevitably will due to the way the National Grid is designed to handle surges in distribution- both up and down, actually restarting the grid is not a question of going to the electrical consumer (fuse) box and flicking one of the Off switches back ON, each transmission station has to be introduced to the Nat.Grid, balanced and the next ditto until the system is back to normal- with a continuous power supply Nat.Grid planning allows 5 to 35 days- but, wind and solar are not continuous, so the system may never recover nationally- that is a sobering thought. Ah, what about the interconnectors we are linked into with our European “partners”, best of luck there, if we are in trouble, given they are also betting on Wind and Solar, they will also be in trouble, any spare capacity will be sold at the “market” price, and will be sold to “preferred” buyers. Again, I ask you to think about just what happens when power supply fails- water and sewerage are pumped, no power, no water; no lighting, no heating, effectively we are moving to re-live the early 1800’s. It will bring about a new slogan “Heating, Eating, Lighting, Water are optional, Life is Not Zero”.
A Brave Bad World awaits the People, the Politicians have there Get Out Off Jail cards, they will be protected to enable “Democracy” to continue.
Can Nett Zero ever be compatible with a UK population of near 70 million? How many will have to leave/die before the Government see the error of their ways?
you have forgotten about the reduction in individual CO2 if you die, so the UK can achieve Nett Nett Zero if only 69,999,999 do the RIGHT thing and die.
Ofgem are less than enthusiastic about any more interconnectors:
https://watt-logic.com/2024/06/28/ofgem-throws-a-spanner-into-gbs-interconnector-ambitions/
Wrt to the impact of power failures, aiui, most water and waste treatment works have back-up diesel generators.
As I have said and proved many times. It is a national disgrace. Net Zero cannot and does not achieve anything positive. Only totally unnecessary poverty. It is an Authoritarian gimmick.
And one I hope the masses give a huge NO to in the coming months
The shortest route to pointless lower emissions is lack of electricity supply, coupled with laws restricting fuel use. That’s the current direction of travel of the big parties and a large majority of MPs, so no UK parliament is going to back anything else.
Dark days ahead
Time for my (monthly?) reminder:
Move your business to South Carolina while the best sites are still available.
https://www.sccommerce.com/buildings-sites
Labour are flirting with the idea of a Dept for Net Zero to accelerate Britains decarbonisation – I hope when they hit reality, they hit it damned hard
“Britains decarbonisation”
Was that a Ray Milland movie?
Maybe that’s what they’ve got lined up for Lammy when they drop him from the FCO. That would be fun….
The idea creating a department of civil servants will speed up anything is quite funny.
Since we already have a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero presumably they acknowledge they are dropping the idea of Energy Security.
Come on, everybody, why no talk about the utter futility of Net Zero? CO2 is harmless. Our percentage is global nothing. The Paris Agreement is dead. The cost is not the issue we should be discussing
Maybe not, but there’s an election next week!
reduce average energy bills by up to £300 or roughly 20 per cent of their current level – easy, just transfer most of the subsidies to general taxation, like some other countries have done.
I sent the same content as in paragraph 2 above to Ed .Miliband and the local Labour candidate at the start of the year based on data from the 2023 UK Energy digest. No response from EM. Just waiting for the train crash about NZ after the car crash this autumn when car manufacturers stop production to make sure they don’t get fined for not hitting their EV sales quota. Difficult to sell cars to people who don’t want them. This is going to be a mess.
And all for ridiculous wind and solar. How did everyone get lined up behind these sources as the path forward? At a surface level I can see people buying in, an individual windmill turns and electricity comes out. But, you don’t have to scratch the surface very deep to see that it’s just not feasible either physically or economically.
Carbon capture & Storage is an expensive scam of course. If you try to remove CO2 from the air all that happens is that the oceans release more into the air: Henry’s Law. The reverse happens of course. If you emit CO2 into the air, it will be absorbed by the oceans. The balance is a natural process and quite unaffected by ‘extra’ human emissions.
National Grid’s figure to upgrade the national grid for the decarbonisation of electricity by 2035 (and hence even more expsensive by 2030) is £220bn :
https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/149501/download
Then to decarbonise heating and transport 80% or more of the local grids will require upgrading according to this engineer’s report to a HoC Committee :
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/82722/pdf/
People who say ‘carbon’ when they mean ‘carbon dioxide’ are lazy, have an agenda or are lying. Hold that mantra in front of you as you navigate the drivelling reefs of climate unchanged.
It is a declaration of orthodoxy.
As previously posted by several here, the energy storage costs alone make NZ financially unviable
Again, if consideration of cost gets it killed, all is well.
But ‘storage’ is a nonstarter. Storage is finite; outages are unbounded. The notion that you could have days of electricity stored up and ready is absurd, cost being but one reason.
The screenwriter in me thinks of a scene, in black and white, where people are several days into using stored electricity, and it’s about to run out. What will they do?
Pedal harder?
The notion that you could have days of electricity stored up and ready is absurd,
It’s technically feasible in the UK, just build lots of pumped storage. The Lake District could become useful, although there would probably be some complaints re: general repurposing of the Lake District.
There is probably a “performance specification” somewhere which states how many days of (very) low wind should the energy storage system be designed for and how many days replenishment are permitted before the next extended period of (very) low wind.
Harry is right. People will have to produce their own power when central generation fails. A pedal powered generator is one way. The affluent will find others. Decentralization of power generation is going to bring huge costs due to loss of efficiency. Environmental issues will also be huge.
The electric supply at two of Manchester airport’s terminals shut off this week causing a bit of chaos. I assume that it would be too much to expect a massive airport to have immediate access to stored electrical energy, but is backup at all possible at this scale from conventional generators which run off diesel fuel?
but is backup at all possible at this scale from conventional generators which run off diesel fuel?
With no knowledge of the electrical demand of Manchester airport’s terminals, my guess is yes, but the generator(s) probably wouldn’t arrive on the back of a lorry.