They're tugging at the heartstrings, scraping the barrel, lighting the gaslights and pulling out all the stops - Stop Burnham Approving New Oil & Gas! As a planted piece of the purest propaganda of desperation (and the Guardian is a willing receptacle) it would be hard to beat this one.
Burnham risks first revolt as PM over apparent support for North Sea drilling - Labour MPs fear No 10 team lack up-to-date energy insight and don’t fully recognise voters’ climate concerns
Burnham, of course, has done nothing more than offer a bit of glaringly obvious commonsense. As the article quotes him saying: “The question isn’t whether Britain will still be using oil and gas, the question is where does it come from.” Well, yes. What's more, the article helpfully goes on to display two graphs that prove his point: we'll be net importers of both oil and gas for the foreseeable future. QED.
So what 'arguments' do the green-reds throw into the mix? They are many, varied, disingenuous, shrill, and reeking with desperation: every damn' thing they can think of. Including Gaza! I kid you not - see below. As part of the usual service I distill them for you here in order of appearance, starting with the one in the headline:
- Burnham's team is ignorant / stupid / out of touch / whatever ...
- ... though not Andy himself, of course - so he's in danger of looking like a gullible dupe
- He'll face a revolt. His first revolt!
- FFS, Andy, we're on fire here and it'll be your fault!
- Climate Experts (no less) are against his proposed pragmatism
- The UN Secretary General is against it [features twice in the article]
- Labour MPs are fearful they'll lose votes to the Greens - a new 'surge' of defections looms
- The ice caps are melting, the world is on fire, etc etc
- It will only make a 'tiny' difference to energy prices. [Tiny? I'd say "undetectably small" or more probably zero - and it's wholly irrelevant anyway, see below]
- It would "send the wrong signal internationally". [In fact, the only argument that's even vaguely coherent {1} - and even then, it's wrong]
- Lewis said approving the field would show Burnham was “not looking at the evidence” ...
- ... and that Labour risked adding “the stain of the climate crisis” to the party’s record, alongside Gaza. [Are we getting into a new variant of Godwin's Law here ..?]
- Britain was the first country to industrialise and we have a duty to lead the world on net zero
- The case made by oil and gas companies is self-interested [- and presumably also that of the Unions that are also pro drilling - which is not mentioned, of course]
- Allowing production will be to exploit a (wicked) "loophole"
- It's (arguably) against Labour's GE Manifesto [Glad they added 'arguably' because on a close reading, it ain't - the Manifesto was carefully ambiguous]
- If it comes to a vote he would need Tory and SNP votes
- If it doesn't come to a vote [which it won't], it'll be a (wicked) "administrative measure", how evil is that?!
- Concerns "extend across the Labour party, transcending factions and 'tribes'. The Guardian has contacted or been told of concerned MPs including ministers and junior members of government, longstanding senior backbench MPs and committee figures and new MPs from the 2024 general election intake"
- Several influential economists told the Guardian that increased drilling would not help the UK economy ... [followed by some utterly ignorant 'economic' bullshit + doubling down on some of the above. Have these 'economists' not heard of the benefits of employment? Tax revenues? Balance of payments? When have they ever opposed local production of any other commodity or product?]
- It runs counter to the 'clean energy superpower' mission
- It will lead to "extra use [of oil & gas] and more greenhouse gases". [Now which is it, eh? Too small to have any macro impact on the market - correct, see above - or big enough to cause an increase in demand? FFS]
- "Keep the peace" by allowing Jackdaw but scrapping Rosebank. [It's fair to say the argument for Jackdaw / gas is much the easier to understand, not least because the gas will definitely be used in the UK, and will back out equivalent quantities of the far more polluting US-sourced LNG]
- It Will Cause Political Damage - and poor little Andy, badly advised as he obviously is, Just Can't See It !
Wow. If you think I'm kidding - when did a Guardian article last contain 24 arguments? - check it out for yourself. As I said: reeks of absolute desperation.
We must hope young Andy is proof against such stuff. From the C@W standpoint, he's on probation here. Anyone care to predict how he'll come down?
ND
_____________________
{1} I did say that, in amongst the plain risible and the politico-hysterical, I did say there was one semi-coherent argument in there, albeit false. It's the old business of asserting that we must nobly lead by example, even if that comes at a cost to ourselves. Well, as least that's a tacit admission we're talking about virtue-signaling, and that there is no other rational case that stacks up on its own merits. But of course it falls down when we recognise that none of the USA / China / Russia / India / Saudi Arabia / Brazil etc etc gives a flying f**k what we say or do - they are guided entirely by their own assessment of their own interests.
While you’re right on the facts (the extraction will make a negligible difference to “greenhouse gas emissions” and will merely displace other (worse) sources of natural gas an oil — to name but two, I won’t go into them all here, they’re all valid) I think you’re underestimating the importance of the politics.
ReplyDeleteIs it worth picking this fight for Burnham? Is it worth burning through (ah-hem) the political capital it’ll take to get this through? No. Agreeing to the Rosebank and Jackdaw licensing is gesture politics, in the big scheme of things. It won’t have any material impact on the UK’s import dependency and the energy mix is edging natural gas out anyway. Each month I look at the NESO report and see natural gas being edged further and further down the power stack. An electrification of transport and heating is only going to go in one direction too (we can argue about the pace, and the silliness of net zero by some arbitrary date, but the die is cast on hydrocarbons even if they’ll never go away entirely).
I suspect he’ll come up with some ruse like he’s done with assisted dying (saying it’s “premature” to table legislation while social care is still being “reviewed” — which is cynical, a lie but also quite a neat way of shunting the whole debacle into a siding). And he’s not — viewed through a lens of as a politician, acting for political reasons and with political motives — wrong to do so.
"Each month I look at the NESO report and see natural gas being edged further and further down the power stack."
DeleteUntil we get a dunkelflaute in mid winter, and suddenly gas is all rather critical again to stop people freezing to death.
An electricity grid supply system needs to not just be viable in the short to medium term, in needs to be viable over the long term too, effectively permanently. No one has ever explained how we power the UK grid using predominantly solar and wind power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. A problem that occurs fairly regularly in the UK, and Europe wide too, and can continue for days even weeks on end.
Its entirely feasible that we 'can' run the UK grid on renewables +nuclear at some future point. For a limited period of time. But the time is guaranteed to arrive when its winter, solar produces the square root of FA even during the day, and a large anti-cyclone sits atop the UK and the wind drops to virtually nothing, and its freezing and demand for electric is through the roof (because of course with no gas all domestic heating will be electricity based). What sticks juice into the wires then?
I think we’ve been over this ground before.
DeleteEven Ed Miliband worked out we’re going to need natural gas for contingency generation for low renewables periods.
8 to 10 LNG cargo ships would contain sufficient natural gas to be used for powerburn to run 30GW of gas fired power generation for a week. That’s it. That’s the lot. And that for an event that might occur at most every couple of years or three.
Last winter there were only a handful of days where natural gas covered more than half of the country’s electricity generation requirements. https://x.com/i/grok/share/b987ed01d3d3408582588ccac8e60cbf Existing and even highly curtailed projected future UKCS can cover this minuscule usage and that’s before you get to Norway and plentiful LNG.
And that’s before we complete wind generation build out which will double installed capacity based just on what’s already in development.
Even the biggest hydrocarbon fanboys recognise the inevitability of fossil fuels now being in long term decline and heading for being a niche player, certainly as far as countries like the UK with very limited natural gas resource potential. The only people that keep trotting out the dunkelflaute of doom blackouts-and-cold-showers nonsense are midwits that heard this argument 20 years ago and are too thick to know how to run the numbers.
"8 to 10 LNG cargo ships would contain sufficient natural gas to be used for powerburn to run 30GW of gas fired power generation for a week. "
Delete30GW? Nonsense. Peak demand (which is what you have to be able to supply when needed, and occurs on cold winters evenings) is currently 61GW (here: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/282686/download#:~:text=Peak%20demand%20for%20electricity%20(the,(GW)%20while%20in%20a%20year). Then its estimated that going to 100% electric cars and 100% electric domestic heating would add about another 70-75GW of peak demand (here:https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2022/2/11/how-much-electricity-will-the-uk-need-as-it-switches-to-electric-heating-and-cars) That takes peak demand to c. 130-140GW under a totally decarbonised UK heating and transport system. Nuclear is planned to be 24GW by 2050, so lets assume that actually happens (heroic assumption for anything a UK government proposes). That leaves a shortfall of c.110GW of peak demand capacity, that may continue for several weeks (the 2018 dunkelflaute lasted 11 days), should the wind fail to blow and the sun not shine (which it tends to do most days in the UK from sunset to sunrise).
So the UK would have to maintain sufficient gas generation capacity to fill that gap, plus the storage for the amount of gas needed for such a period, plus the LNG import facilities, plus the gas pipeline network to transport said gas from port to storage facility to power plant, plus the power lines from said gas generators to the National Grid, all of which might not get used for a decade or more, but must be ready to go at perhaps 24 hours notice, maybe less for some plants.
The UK currently has 35GW of installed gas generation capacity. So we would need to triple the amount of gas power plants we currently have, but leave them idle 95% of the time, but in perfect working order.
All of which is going to cost as much as the generating capacity of the renewables, but will hardly ever be used. So the consumer pays double - once for the renewable energy, and again for the gas generating capacity that it isn't using, but might one day, so it must be there.
Sounds like a great plan, Stan.
NESO has already debunked these sorts of extreme 100GW plus gas generation plus scenarios https://www.neso.energy/document/364546/download with demand response, vehicle to grid (an estimated 30 to 40GW available from this alone), grid battery energy storage and higher COP heat pumps.
DeleteAnd even if 60-70GW of natural gas backup generation is required with near complete decarbonisation, 75-80% of a gas generation plant’s cost base is in fuel https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6556027d046ed400148b99fe/electricity-generation-costs-2023.pdf — if they only fire up maxed out under a 1-in-20 year severe winter / low renewables turnout event, they are cheap to build and their only overheads are a small amount of maintenance. Certainly not enough to justify “paying twice” or any other nonsense statement like that.
And finally as for available gas distribution infrastructure capacity for any gas power generation build out, you can’t have it both ways. If there’s significant electrification, this results in an equally significant freeing up of gas distribution capacity to serve them. Same goes for storage. The existing 30TWh or so would happily keep a 70GW fleet of gas generation stations going for weeks,
Ah yes, NESO. That totally independent arbiter of whether Net Zero is feasible or not.
DeleteNot.
NESO’s report modelled different scenarios with different assumptions and applied different sensitivity analysis to come up with various different projections for how peak electricity demand could present itself under differing levels of electrification and adaptations to the problem of intermittency.
DeleteYou cited a bit of junk science from a source which kitchen-sinked every worse case input, ignored or was ignorant of every potential countermeasure and created a conclusion to make electrification look as risky and as costly as they could make it. You then said “there, that’s it, that’s the truth, that’s the only view there is and that’s the only way this will possibly end”.
It’s you that is dishonest, not NESO.
Been reading a bit of philosophy written by a 'proper' expert. Useful at teasing arguments and propositions apart but not very clear on 'is this true'. Like checking all the nuts and bolts of my car are in good order but not explaining why it does not start. Verry interesting - but liable to be useless.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly with climate. Obvs that we shall have to continue with fossils for a while and Burnham has made the pragmatic decision. At the same time BP is flogging off the North Sea. Better uses for its time and money elsewhere. Burnham buys a little time and tax revenue and the cost imposed by the whiners is worth it.
The whiners do have a point - in the long run we are all dead, possibly by roasting and starvation. For now definitely a PRQ. Not something that bothers Mr Trump et al.
Which begs a question (many actually). Why do our politicians bother their little heads with climate change and Net Zero and all that jazz? I doubt they are stupid enough to believe their efforts (and our money) will do any good. So why?
I suppose the difficulty is there is no new industrial revolution. New stuff that makes money is hard to find - and the Chinese and the Americans will grab anything good while Parliament discusses setting up a study group. So clever folk have to find something else to occupy them - you've got to have an 'ology. Well, you used to. Having an 'ology got you a good job and your 'ology enabled you to perpetuate the illusion of useful activity.
Which is why we have to have loads of folk working at DEI and so on. Not because they believe any of it but because it can attract or extort funding and hence pay wages and hence buy washing machines and pay rent. The smart money is now on having people pay you rent - for housing, money, cars, software, meeja. That is what politics is about - keeping the rent coming in.
Waste heat (from any form of energy use) will boil the oceans in 400 years - https://youtu.be/9vRtA7STvH4?si=KD04qe48LalfavHZ
ReplyDeleteEco-loons don't seem concerned about this as it doesn't have any grift or social control attached.
Perfectly fair, Clive - and I like your assessment of the politics.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really making a political assessment, actually - just reporting on & mocking the Guardian & the greenies, soliciting predictions, and suggesting Burnham is on probation over this one. But, prompted by you ...
Neither of us has mentioned another prominent factor: getting Trump onside (for 5 minutes) relatively cheaply. Tick. Also, the unions - another important constituency on the Left - and one of the major things about Burnham is, he's a creature of the once-industrial North faction, not the bedsit-progressive South faction. Coupled with "I'm my own man" - and pragmatic / realistic, with it: that quote of his - the qn is, where does it come from? - is spot on.
Finally, the delay between now and the end of the consultation / making the decision, is the month of August. There's a very decent chance that, despite the Guardianistas' utter hysteria, they don't manage to build a steady, 6-week drumbeat of "Don't Do It Andy Or The Sky Will Fall", which is what they are sort of hoping for. It takes a helluva lot to sustain a 6-week drumbeat in politics: Mandelson, e.g. Even Prince Harry, even the 2017 summer of "whoa, Jeremy Corbyn", even the World Cup, even the war in Iran, FFS; even they can't manage 6 weeks. So there's a good case for Burnham just moving onto other massive agenda items, week after week, and letting this one fall quiet. Then, one Friday evening ...
So I don't think I'm underestimating the politics - and I can make a case for him prevailing here after an adroitly-managed period of calm.
But - he's still on probation with C@W!
Traditionally August is the time when teenage scribblers are permitted to come to the fore on the Graun (whilst the grown-ups are safely ensconced in their agreeable Provence/Tuscan villas)...........
ReplyDeleteHey, Jim - no dissing Philosophy, eh? (Who've you been reading?)
ReplyDelete@ "Why do our politicians bother their little heads with climate change and Net Zero and all that jazz? I doubt they are stupid enough to believe their efforts (and our money) will do any good. So why?"
There is a real puzzle here, for sure, brought into stark relief this very summer. All across Europe, every government pays lip-service to the CAGW / "the oceans are boiling" shtick. Come to that, they pay billions of our money on "mitigation" / "prevention".
BUT - by the test of "so where are your fire defences / anti-drought measures / aircon subsidies?", it seems they don't actually believe it themselves! Perfect cognitive dissonance.
Alongside a CD account, another way of framing this is: it's a very extreme (and expensive) case of virtue-signalling - perhaps by way of collective herd-following among the international Davos-attending classes.
Also, back in 2010 it was the official position of all major parties - very few MPs voted against Miliband's 2008 Climate Bill or Theresa May's 2017 amendment (= NZ 2050) - and was arguably the visible will of the majority electorate. Such apparent total "conventional consensus" takes a while to evaporate. Same with the "Thatcher-Reagan-neolib economic settlement".
On "stupid enough", I am constantly amazed by the number of apparently bright folks I encounter who seem genuinely to believe that, as it were, "every little helps" as regards mitigation, completely failing to look at the stats on (e.g.) how much we currently depend on hydrocarbons (- that gas-squeeze you mention is purely to do with electricity generation, not the much bigger sector of heating -) and at the international level how little the UK counts, both 'morally' and in volumetric terms.
This number-blindness afflicts many of those economists the Guardian cites: as the post says, these people are capable of saying, in the same sentence, "too small to move prices one iota, but gig enough to drive an increase in demand". That's when you know we are in the grip of some very perverse psychology, which needs careful unpacking / unravelling. Because merely a slap on the face from Reality doesn't seem to do the trick at all.
'big', not 'gig'
ReplyDelete"a duty to lead the world" I'm not a great admirer of the Führerprinzip.
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be a distinct lack of understanding how fundamental hydrocarbons have become to our civilisation. For example, if we stopped all extraction tomorrow it'd take about 6 months for it to sink in we were on the verge of starving half the planet, and in short order the whole of southern Europe's coastlines would resemble Cueta from the other day. The border forces could try driving their new all electric cars without insulation, but I suspect that would end up as Flintstonian as all the gear that would siddenly need alternatives to plastics and other polymer-based materials, coatings, and additives.
ReplyDeleteThere also seems to be a lack of understanding of multiplier effects, an alternative to coking is something that could be globally applied, and have a much bigger effect than the UK achieving NZ. How about leadership in the technological area, rather than the hair shirt wearing one?
It's the kind of book-smart, everything-else-stupid, thinking you can only get from people whose career has been school -> university -> politics.
And why isn't the Graun calling Burnham to tackle data centres? Have they not seen the amount of power and water they guzzle?
ReplyDeleteCritical infrastructure, no hosepipe bans for them, although I think that will come to a head in Ireland first. If we have another spring/summer like this one next year, and big tech is first on the list for thirst slaking, I imagine someone will run with it.
CH - Big Tech is explicitly first (equal) on the list for electricity in times of shortage
ReplyDeleteND - "it seems they don't actually believe it themselves" - see Obama's oceanfront spread - what about sea level rise?
ReplyDeleteAnyone see this?
https://www.ecoportal.net/en/engineers-studying-a-floating-wind-farm/30490/
"engineers studying a floating wind farm in the North Sea discovered it may be slowing the wind before it even reaches the blades"
Still as the first nation to industrialise (and be an object lesson) we can be the first nation to deindustrialise (and be an object lesson of a different sort).
Quite: all the morons who claim that Thatch deindustrialised the country are the morons who actually are deindustrialising the country.
Delete" the morons who claim that Thatch deindustrialised the country"
DeleteI was working 1980-85 in a firm providing a service to Midlands metal bashing companies of all kinds, and I could watch our customers disappearing and volumes dropping in real time.
Your wife's Chinese visitor was half right.
"I don't understand how you are so rich. Where are all your factories?" But she was IIRC in Cambridge, and might not have considered us so rich had she been in Dudley or Linwood.
It would have been much more fun (with not entirely inaccurate bases) to quip “Why is China still so poor?” — because the reasons include too many factories operating below capacity and inefficiency competing in high volume low margin product sectors facing global oversupply. Just like Britain in the 1970’s and early 80’s.
DeleteThe philosopher I am reading is Onora O'Neill on Kant and Constructing Authorities.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, my view is that Climate Change is likely to be happening. As with all human affairs multiple opinions will come forward driven by honest and dishonest voices. Seems to me any effective action is far beyond the power of UK and EU actors.
But Net Zero etc provides a makework scheme for our political actors. Actors being the right word. Acting out a play. A salve to some consciences and a money mine for others. So we go on.
The climate is definitely changing, and CO2 seems to be the
Deleteway to bet.
Again I point to this diagram showing that even if we in the UK go back to living in trees it'll make sod all diff to the climate:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region
Just wait if (a big if) Africa industrialises !
On the question of what's feasible, IMHO the truth lies somewhere between Clive's and Sobers' positions, but in this case rather closer to Sobers'. Some points:
ReplyDelete> Arguing along a priori grounds is notoriously dangerous. I'd be very reluctant to declare anything outright impossible in the 2050 timeframe because so much new technology might come along. There was a famous piece of academic work done some years ago that "proved" an electricity system couldn't accommodate more than 25% wind power ... That said:
> NESO, and its predecessor NG TSO, both have very bad track records indeed as regards (a) their long range assumptions, and (b) telling ministers whatever they want to hear. (Climate Change Committee is possibly even worse on both counts.) The proof is all around us. This, in context, is one helluva failing.
> as we speak, NESO might be on the brink of a total collapse of credibility, if the accusations brought by whistleblowers about its conduct prior to and during the June heatwave are broadly correct. Let's see how that plays out.
Sorry, Clive, but I decline to take NESO studies as any type of authority. A terrible state of affairs, but that's where we are.
The whole question of how the (genuinely inevitable) decline of natural gas as one of the nation's two main primary sources of energy, is to be managed in practice, is a very complex matter One thing I can tell you for free and with great certainty, is that on the way down, it will need excellent strategising and active management to get past several inflexion / discontinuity points (essentially, caused by losses of critical mass along several dimensions). A slow, gentle, decline into old age and a non-traumatic passing is as unlikely for gas as it is for human beings, despite what we all fondly hope for..
I believe we are expecting a government report on this shortly, so we'll return to it then, if not before.
You are of course correct Nick — everything we read about any energy transition is almost certainly coming from, at least in part, a position of taking a preferred answer and retrospectively fitting in the “science bit” to get to that conclusion.
DeleteIn energy there is no single definitive version of the truth and anyone who tries to boil it down into a particular figure is being at best selective.
So much of the debate turns on this or that report or this or that expert presenting a conclusion but not stating clearly their starting assumptions, risk appetite, risk management approaches and who are the unlucky winners of the unavoidable cost pass-the-parcel game.
And some things are simply not amenable to straightforward cost/benefit analysis. Rural electrification, for example, never made any economic sense (there’s a massive subsidy to rural customers from high load density customers in cities and the like) but broader societal benefits made it a price worth paying.
NESO at least highlighted in their report the complexities. And the potential of non-delivery. There was quite a lot of nuance in their assessment and the technical appendices were more comprehensive than the report itself (having to tailor communication to a particular audience is another problem for those interested in the debate).
What though I won’t put up with is silly “oh, it will never work” or simplistic “we’ll have to pay twice for everything” hand waving that treats people like fools. When I see the opponents of net zero (which has its share or nut jobs in its advocates) and the risible things they come out with, I for one am not at all surprised the net zero camp gets such an easy ride (which it doesn’t deserve).
That NESO report has the stink of consultants about it.
ReplyDeleteNow Clive will claim that isn't a scientific debunk of the core message(s) but it does tell us a lot about the intended audience. Flashy graphics and a set of thematic messages tend (in consultant world) to be there to distract the reader from the bullshit included. Handy when it's the general public and politicians that might come across it.
But back to the actual critique, the first two "critical enablers" are "Energy Efficiency" and "Demand flexibility". Both are hiding the reality that the generation capacity is not planned to meet demand. Energy efficiency mean using (probably a lot) less than required and Demand flexibility means power cuts of reductions when you need it most. The report states they are planning for 18% less energy provision by 2050 and 54% reduction in demand by removing the choice of when to use electricity. Note also that the words "can" and "potential" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in regards to these reductions. The phrase "carefully navigating public consent" is also nudge unit phrasing for "boil the frogs slowly"! If this was all leading to a joyous outcome, why would it need careful navigation?
The "waves of action" is also a marketing message. Foundation is the pain we have endured that no one wants to continue. But, Comrade, now you have experience than pain, only three more waves before utopia (assuming we get there).
To try to draw some form of summary before this gets too long. The report is imposing a set of constraints around the free market use of energy. We've already seen that new demand from the likes of AI Data Centres drives a hole through this sort of centralised planning. It explicitly states that the end goal is to destroy demand instead of building capacity. Any savings won't be on a per-unit basis, rather each unit will be more expensive, but you'll use a lot less of them to make the overall cost lower. Even that is wishful thinking!
Your critique misreads key figures, mischaracterizes energy efficiency and demand flexibility as covert rationing or capacity shortfalls, and overlays a conspiratorial framing that does not match the report’s content or purpose. The NESO report is standard scenario modelling of credible pathways to a net-zero target. It projects large increases in electricity generation capacity and demand alongside efficiency gains and flexibility; it is not a plan that deliberately under-builds supply so that demand must be suppressed.
DeleteYou misstated numbers on “18% less energy provision” and “54% reduction in demand”. The 18% figure refers to the potential effect of energy-efficiency measures in cutting electricity demand in 2050 relative to a counterfactual without those measures (e.g., from ~694 TWh to ~567 TWh in one framing, or analogous sectoral savings). It is not a planned overall reduction in energy provision below today’s levels. neso.energy
Electricity demand still rises substantially (from roughly 290 TWh today toward 600–900+ TWh ranges across the net-zero pathways by 2050). Total/primary energy demand falls (one pathway shows ~47% reduction) mainly because electrification is thermodynamically more efficient than burning fossil fuels for the same useful services (heat pumps, EVs, etc.). The 54% is a modelled peak electricity demand reduction (not total annual demand) achievable via demand flexibility by 2050 (smart EV charging shifting ~83% of its peak, heat-pump pre-heating/shifting ~36%, vehicle-to-grid, industrial/commercial response, etc.). The report repeatedly frames this as consumer choice, empowerment, lower costs, and reduced need for some peaking infrastructure—not forced power cuts.
Generation capacity is projected to rise sharply: +60–73% by 2030 and roughly double by 2050 (offshore/onshore wind, solar, storage, nuclear life extensions/new build, low-carbon dispatchable plant, interconnectors, hydrogen-related capacity). The pathways explicitly build supply to meet the higher electricity demand from electrification while using efficiency and flexibility to manage peaks and system costs.
Energy efficiency and demand flexibility are not “hiding” insufficient capacity
Efficiency reduces the energy needed for the same services and lowers bills/infrastructure needs; flexibility shifts when energy is used (via tariffs, automation, smart controls) so that variable renewables are used more effectively and peak plant/storage requirements are moderated. Both are standard, least-cost tools in high-renewables systems worldwide. The report used language of “can,” “could,” and “potential” because these are scenario pathways exploring ranges of outcomes under different assumptions about technology uptake, policy, and behaviour—not binding mandates.
“Carefully navigating public consent” appears in the context of delivering large infrastructure (networks, generation) at pace. That is ordinary planning language.
The four waves (Foundation = past technology and cost reductions that have already occurred; Acceleration = to 2030; Growth = 2030s; Horizon = to 2050+) are a narrative framing of the transition timeline. The Foundation wave is described as groundwork already laid (cheaper renewables, EV progress, etc.), not “the pain we have endured.” The report uses graphics to explain thematic messaging. That does not make the underlying modelling “bullshit.”
It is exploratory modelling of pathways consistent with the legal net-zero target, not an imposition that “destroys demand instead of building capacity.” Useful energy services continue; the energy intensity of delivering them falls. AI/data-centre demand is treated as an uncertainty/growth factor that pathways must accommodate (higher demand cases exist). Market are discussed, but the document remains scenario analysis rather than a detailed free-market abolition plan.
Energy policy is amongst the most important things in determining a country’s long-term viability and prosperity. Debate on it deserves much, much better than people talking out their arses.
OT - interesting if slightly wrong-headed BBC R4 series. Asking how we got here from the glorious Clinton/Blair years when "we" could bomb a European country into giving up territory.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002zhn9
Episode 2 this morning
"They discuss the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, under the "one country, two systems" framework, and the Asian financial crisis of the same year, which left China's capital controls looking vindicated while much of the region required IMF assistance. The episode also covers the 1999 Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and concludes with China's accession to the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, an agreement built on Western assumptions that economic integration would bring political liberalisation, and one whose consequences are still being worked through today."
Classic British understatement, that last bit. A few people saw the future ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Conflict_with_China
https://www.fingleton.net/extract-from-in-the-jaws-of-the-dragon/
"Two bets are on the table. One has been placed by the Washington establishment, the other by the Chinese Communist Party. Analyzing China’s prospects in terms of fashionable globalist ideology, Washington is betting that a rich China will be a free one. The theory is that the only way China can continue to grow is by embracing Western democracy and capitalism. Moreover, the very process of China’s enrichment is supposedly undermining the Beijing government’s authoritarianism. More wealth means more freedom means more wealth.
Here is how President George W Bush put it: “As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed. As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well.” Similar optimism pours forth from the American press. The Wall Street Journal commented, “Sooner or later China’s economic progress will create the internal conditions for a more democratic regime that will be more stable, and less of a potential global rival.” Abroad too the Washington view is increasingly prevalent. After visiting Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair cited the rise of a Chinese middle class and the spread of the Internet as factors that had produced “an unstoppable momentum … towards greater political freedom [and] progress on human rights.”
The Washington view has become so widely accepted that almost no one has noticed that there is second bet on the table–that of the Chinese leadership. It has been placed on a disturbingly different outcome: that a future China can be both rich and authoritarian."
You're mistaken on my point (and in fact confirm what I stated) - the NESO report states it'll deliver 18% less energy than what is required. That it's dressed up as "Efficiency efficiency" is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteHeat pumps and EVs won't delivery that efficiency. Heat pumps are crap for houses that aren't built for them (a large part of the UK housing stock) and EVs are not selling in the numbers required.
Which brings us onto vehicle-to-grid, whilst it's a wet dream of the eco-loons that we'll all be driving milk floats in 15 minute cities, that isn't proving to be the case. The virtue signalling early adopters have all bought an EV, government subsidy is removed (and new taxes added) and the car makers are haemorrhaging 10s billions restructuring their production lines back to ICE vehicles. Cheap Chinese EVs aren't going to plug the hole as one hand of government will place tariffs on them whilst the other is planning around them saving the grid!
So a more realistic scenario would be that governments progressively rollback the coercing demands on car makers for a greater proportion of EVs which means we'll have far fewer than expected.
Increasing wealth is driven by cheap energy in the economy and we're going the other way. The Germans are deindustrialising at an alarming rate with a significant part of that being down to their insane Net Zero energy plans.
Even the EU it looking at watering down it's environmental policies as it can see the writing on the wall. Still, Clive seems to know better...