Because not many people know about it
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
So far like common sense!
With the current Conservative leadership race, we are hearing a lot about unity and tough talk about immigration, defence, benefits and the tax burden. If only many candidates have been around the Cabinet table recently, to advance Conservative policy our members wishes to hear.
But there is a discussion of less than net zero. Previous prime ministers, since Blair continued, dithered on energy policy. But all committed by varying degrees to the international climate agreement, even so far as a rule.
Tony Blair oversees the Climate Change Act (CCA) 2008, Theresa May’s 2050 amendment targets. We are one of the few nations that have legislated ourselves. But Parliament is sovereign and can repeal and replace laws as it pleases. I suggest, in terms of energy policy, that it works.
The results of this target are now clear, with UK consumers pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the world. We pay 2.5 times what US consumers pay, and four times what they pay in China. We then wondered why high-energy businesses, from steel to ceramics, prefer to invest abroad.
What all previous administrations agreed, no matter how misguided, there is a reduction in the use of fossil fuels with little or no plan on how to replace the gigawatts of power lost through detonating perfectly serviceable power stations, and all while planning for a massive increase in electricity. demand – electric cars, heat pumps and substitution of gas or coal power from high energy industrial processes.
As we dismantle traditional fossil fuel-fired power plants, our international rivals, especially China and India, have turbo-charged new builds. The decommissioned power plant has been rebuilt to burn pelletised wood, mostly from native North American forests.
CO2 output per KWh of energy is about 1.5 from burning coal and three times using natural gas. This form of biomass energy accounts for 15pc of UK electricity production, but we call it “zero carbon” energy. Net zero has really collapsed.
Beyond the burning of North American forests, the substitution, where planning at all, consists of wind turbines and solar power. Far from being “cheap”, the claim depends on the ideal situation of the generation in the right place, meeting the demand through the existing distribution network, the true cost has yet to be seen.
Different wind or solar farms must be connected to the grid through copper, aluminum and concrete pylons and cables, and the reserve power required to overcome generation irregularity has not been considered.
Options include storage batteries in unimaginable sizes. California studies suggest a cost of $15 trillion (£11.5 trillion) to the state, with changes every 10-12 years.
The plundering of Africa and South America to produce the necessary minerals has not been counted.
Other methods of energy storage include: water is pumped up into reservoirs, geography permitting, using stored gravitational energy to be released later; electrolysis of water into hydrogen; or liquid e-fuel production, but using current liquid fuel infrastructure and transportation through reliable internal combustion engines.
To deal with anticyclones of moderate winds, freezing conditions and low light, which can stay on the entire continent for several days, the cost of wind and solar with back-up is increasing. That’s a lot of copper, steel and concrete, and a lot of waste land taken from productive agricultural use.
Another “big plan” is for a large interconnector between countries to share generation and match demand. How is this supposed to equate to energy independence and security never explained. France’s threat to the Channel Islands’ energy resources in the face of a mini “fishing war” three years ago should have served as a lesson that depending on others, however bad, is not a good idea.
The final piece of thinking now involves maintaining and building new gas-powered plants to provide backup power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. It’s a waste of capital to build an unused gas plant (owners will demand super high prices because of fixed costs, capital intensive plants are only partially used).
Labour’s latest plan to end North Sea gas exploration ensures that imported gas, with a higher carbon footprint, will be needed to burn it in the plant. There will be some GB plc left for Qatar to buy over the next decade.
While the last decade has been a battle for Brexit, the next decade will be a battle for energy. Labor plans to decarbonise the grid by 2030 not only impossible, it would be astronomically expensive in futility and potentially dangerous. Power outage is possible. This will be the factor that will bring down this Labor Government.
Our energy policy must be different. I propose the following.
First, we need to amend the Climate Change Act 2008 to get the UK back on track with the rest of the world. Not only has CCA led to broken energy policy, it is now routinely used to oppose infrastructure development by well-funded activist groups. More worryingly, several Supreme Court rulings support this view. If we want to grow, we must earn the right to build the necessary infrastructure.
Second, we must move to a nuclear future. We are still considering Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), but the Conservatives spent their last years in government more hesitant. The large EDF reactors that are underway or on the drawing board are complicated, overpriced and delayed.
We need scalable Model-T Fords, not Bentleys. If nuclear fusion becomes a reality, a new chapter in human energy production opens with enough cheap electricity to produce hydrogen and electronic fuels at scale. Traditional fission reactors can still deliver this.
Third, we need “gas for domestic gas”. Gas is the bridging fuel as we expand nuclear. Domestic is the key and we need to open, as Norway has done, all and every extractable field in the North Sea basin.
We need to look well at fracking to ensure domestic gas consumption, diminishing as it is likely over the coming decades, best matches domestic production. Exports will be a bonus. The benefits are obvious: investment, high paying jobs, large tax receipts and balance of payments savings.
Finally, we need support to pay taxes for wasteful wind and solar projects. Energy auctions should be priced for 24/7, 365 energy provision. If wind and solar owners can provide this, then the economics should be a commercial decision for them, not an additional burden on taxpayers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/22/net-zero-is-sinking-to-new-lows
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