I find it mildly amusing that it seems polls have not shown a bounce for Truss when she has only been PM for less than 48 hours
She did do well yesterday and today is extremely important, but it will take time and not just weeks for the government to show progress and of course her refusal to join the chorus of demands for a windfall tax may well be a negative, while being the right thing to do to get the producers investing in the North Sea and at last a change in the narrative to a pro business government
I would be concerned if she is polling like this this time next year, but everything pivots around Russia and the outcome of the war
If Putin and Russia suddenly fold for any reason then things could change overnight, or as an analyst said last night this could go on for a decade or more at which time we will all be penniless
We should encourage investment in North Sea wind farms, but not in fossil fuel extraction. We all now know how real climate change is. We’ve made good progress in switching to other forms of energy production. We’ve got to accelerate that move.
We should do both.
Climate change is real but tackling climate change means reducing our domestic fossil fuel consumption over time, not extraction.
Consuming Qatari or Russian hydrocarbons instead of North Sea ones doesn't achieve a single thing for climate change.
If we reduce consumption as much as we need to, then there will be a huge excess of production. New extraction developments will be economically unviable, in the North Sea, in Russia or in Qatar.
We'll just have to introduce aluminium smelting to use up all that lovely power. Just rejoice at that news.
We should install wind and tidal with a peak generation capacity many times our needs.
In light winds our needs are still covered; when the wind blows hard use it to create (net zero) hydrocarbons:
The UK is enormously rich in wind and tidal capacity.
Tidal I agree with. If wind is many times our needs, who is going to pay for all those turbines to idle? Companies have invested to build those turbines; if they're not being paid to generate power, do they still get paid not to generate it? That's the regime at the moment. In fact they get paid more than double not to provide energy than they get to provide it. That would be a vast bill for consumers (added on to energy bills). We could cancel constraint payments (that's what I would do), forcing wind owners to find their own solutions to store power, but I am realistic that that would dampen the 'gold rush' of building wind that we have at the moment.
Duh! You have answered you own question.
The lasted offshore wind electricity contracts are being won by generating companies committing to 4.8p per kWh.
(Edit: it's now actually ten times cheaper than gas)
This is only going one way.
Investing in hydrocarbons from excess electricity will be a great way to maximise the benefit of wind capacity.
Um, there is no 'Duh' warranted except for the very basic concept that you have failed to grasp. Wind is currently booming because whatever happens, wind providers are guaranteed money; in many instances, free money. Stop that free money, and you get diminishing returns and therefore investment, especially as more and more capacity gets added to the system, which is what you want. You won't get investors adding that wind capacity if half the time they won't get paid. Do you understand that, or shall I draw a diagram?
And when do you imagine such a time will come ?
By the time we have the amount of capacity you're talking about, we will also have multiple HVDC interconnects with Europe, along with a substantial base of electric vehicles, and a growing menu of options for energy storage.
The point of having excess generating capacity at effectively zero marginal cost is that markets will find a way of utilising it. In the meantime, incentives to make installation of capacity make sense both economically and strategically.
But your post is full of suppositions.
Firstly, you're supposing that those interconnects work as they should - this has proven time and again not to have happened - a huge project, multiple billions paid for by the taxpayer via the national grid, for a new West Coast interconnect to link Scottish Wind Farms to English power users, has never worked as it should.
Secondly, you're supposing that continental power users will want our power exactly when we're at capacity due to high wind. Why? Is it not more likely that it will be windy there too?
Thirdly, you're supposing that people will be able to coordinate their car charging easily with times of high wind. Perhaps they will, perhaps an alert via their mobile phone can buzz to advertise cheap power, but will they be at home? Will the wind last a full charge? Charging at night makes sense, charging when windy makes a lot less sense.
Fourthly, you're supposing that the much mooted 'energy storage options' will kick in, but why would they? We have the technology to store this power now, and the schemes are ready to break ground, but at this time, there's not enough profit in it. And whilst wind providers are conpensated so amply for not producing power, why would this be?
At some point, constraint payments will need to reduced, and eventually cease. At that point, watch investors flee. At the moment we have an industry where the ulimate guarantor is the taxpayer - the boom around student accommodation is another. These are not booms based on reasonable assessment of risk and reward, they are based on guaranteed free money.
Interconnect it’s have had problems in certain projects.
We are currently exporting electricity on a pretty fair scale via interconnectors, though.
Jeez. Perhaps very selfish, but I'm presently in Edinburgh and want to catch a train back south tomorrow, so I hope that bit doesn't play out too quickly if so.
I *think* you'll be OK. You need the special train to Edin, then the formal announcement and the lying in state, and so on. I can't see the move south happening before Sunday or Monday?
Further to that, looks as if the train will go south from Edinburgh something like Monday night, if Op Unicorn is adhered to and if I don't miscount. Which, happily, would miss the train strikes.
Comments
It shouldn't be controversial.
https://www.elletalk.com/the-queens-dubonnet-cocktail/
NEW THREAD
We are currently exporting electricity on a pretty fair scale via interconnectors, though.
@TSE may not agree...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/08/operation-unicorn-plans-if-queen-dies-scotland
new reign